Uncle Morley has saved Tilman $10m in taxes so far this season

I do if it makes it more likely that Tilman will spend down the road on a transaction that Morey believes we really need.

 

Awesome, now where the f*ck are the trades that actually improve the team?

 

Dedmon and Bazemore are available RIGHT NOW. So, what's taking so long?

 

Les is a real baller, tilman is broke

 

Edit

 

Still better than Chriss, Nunally, Knight and Ennis lol.

 

Biff's behind-the-head dribble was a thing of beauty.

 

With Ariza we were a championship contender. Without him, we are still currently looking for his replacement and could fall out of the playoff race completely.

It's not $35 million. Let's check out his "replacements"

Ennis - $3.5m (2 years guaranteed)
Melo - $2.4m (1 year)
TOTAL: almost $6m

Subtract $15m - $6m and you're only talking about $9m (almost equivalent to this year's MLE). We gave up $1.6m cash to the Bulls to get Melo off our books and we now are locked in with Ennis next year at $1.8m.

I don't get how Ariza @ $15m one year contract isn't better than $1.6m cash and Ennis for 2 years for $3.5m? Ennis will 29 and riding the bench next year at $1.8m. Ariza would have continued our run as a championship contender or would have been a huge expiring trade asset for teams wanting to get under the luxury tax. Who wouldn't want Oubre now? He would easily have been the second best player on our team right now.

 

From my understanding, Ariza wanted to be back here but we didn't want to pay for his services (which was a front office problem).

We had the BEST roster from day 1 last year. We were #1 in the West. Was up 3-2 against GSW and you know the rest of the story. Stop trying to make this a non-comparison when it absolutely is.

Read my post above to foggy94. This off-season we basically locked in 7-8 players that we shouldn't have locked in. As of today, Tilman is paying luxury tax for sub-par results. He should have either paid more in the beginning utilizing his MLE or paid market price for Ariza. Doing neither crippled this franchise. He basically had Morey gambling with vet minimum/two-way contracts to where we now have nothing but G-League scrubs/fringe NBA players being starters for our team.

 

Durant took a pay cut because he wanted the same team in tact and wanted to be there. That is a big difference.

See my post above regarding Ariza now worth 15m. That's YOUR opinion and you can read mines again.

You just explained it perfectly. The Front Office (aka Morey/Tilman) decided not to sign Ariza or Luc due to not wanting to pay market price for them. How can you not say this is being cheap? How do you improve from Ariza by signing Ennis/Melo to worst deals? Please help me understand that.

 

Did we save money when we cut Zhou Qi?

MCW, Nanu, Melo, Qi....getting rid of all the bums. The purge continues!

 

Durant took a pay cut so they could have the same team intact. This is because the owners didn't want to dish out the money for the full cost and luxury tax implications of keeping that team intact. Durant literally took a pay cut due to the Warriors owners caring about money. This is what I said, and this is what you disagreed with.

The Rockets decided to not resign Ariza.. NOT due to market price, but because they thought they could improve with new players in his position. Plainly put, they felt it was time to move on. This is proven by the fact that they told Ariza he would not be offered a contract and that he would not be returning to the team BEFORE any market prices for him were even set. Ariza said that in an interview.

I'll try to help you understand, but I need to know what you don't understand about what I just said above first.

They made mistakes yes, just like Morey was super hyped up on MCW and all of Moreys analytics told him that MCW was a diamond in the rough and he would excel in our system and yadda yadda yadda. Mistakes like that happen. PJ Tucker really sold Morey on Ennis. Morey and them truly did believe that Melo and Ennis was an upgrade over Ariza. The organization really beleived in Melo, so much they chose him over Bzdelik. They did want to keep Luc, it just didn't work out. That was possibly a being cheap move, however you can't make that argument for Ariza because that wasn't a being cheap move.

 

If you want to keep this core together long term you have to be fiscally responsible.

Saving money to get rid of dead weight isnt being cheap, it's being smart.

It's a solid plan to reduce the burden of tax early before it gets hectic in years future.

Beside that if your envisioning acquiring a medium to high end talent via trade at some point, shedding fat off the top to make it much more palatable when/if makes sense.

Everyone so quik to blame being cheap just because there is a contract stalement with everyone's love fest House

 

I'm OK with what they have done if it results in adding a significant wing at the deadline and spending the MLE money. Most of the preceding moves become easily defensible.

If we just pocket these savings and address no needs then the front office will deserve every bit of criticism headed their way.

 

Les could see the luxury tax hurtling towards us. He knew Harden would be in the $50M per year range, and Capela near a post-rookie deal max. And he knew we’d never tank with Harden on the team. He was the real cheapwad. Go take a look how many times we were ever into the tax with Les. At least Tilman agreed to put us in there to hold onto Harden CP3 and Capela. Les would probably have force Morey to let go of one of CP or Capela.

 

People get on Morey's case for cutting Tillman's LuxTax bill but believe other teams should give us quality rotation players or borderline allstars just so that they can save on their bills. Make up your minds people, does the luxury tax matter or not?

 

Holding out for the trade deadline. If we aren’t buyers, then I’ll officially be disgusted with Tilman’s first year.

 

Im asking how in the **** is this so hard for people to understand ?

Its a 1 year contract anyway. Literally nothing can go wrong

 

There's some stuff wrong here. Firstly, our MLE is $5.3m. Secondly, you're asking me how the $35m Ariza's contract would have cost isn't better than $1.6m we spent to get off Melo in cash (which has no luxury tax ramifications whatsoever) and the $1.6m that Ennis is earning this year. I don't know why you are counting his two years in your calculation, luxury tax bills are for each season, who knows where we will be next year, we can trade Brandon Knight's expiring and be under the luxury tax so the 2nd year doesn't matter. With Ennis's contract and the rest of our roster we are currently going to have an $11m luxury tax bill this year. If you add Ariza's, take away his replacements and fill the roster with minimum salary guys that still balloons to $45-50 million. If you can't see the difference between those two figures, that's on you.

 

Saving tax money is building for the future if by doing so, the Rockets manage avoid the repeater tax.