[Woj] Morey aggressive in all deals improving team even possibly Paul

That's the catch. As an unrestricted free agent, the Rockets weren't allowed to make an offer before midnight July 1 (no teams were). The Suns called Ariza at 12:01 and offered him $15M and he accepted immediately.

Morey could have said things prior to that like "we want you back" or "we don't want you back" or "we want you back, but not at a bigger salary." But the two facts are: 1) the Rockets couldn't have made a legitimate offer, and 2) Ariza agreed to the Suns' offer without giving the Rockets a chance to match.

I get that the best thing in hindsight would have been to offer him $10-$12M and hope that he takes it, but even that probably wouldn't have gotten the job done, and it would have been a risky thing to do because Trevor was 34 and coming off a shaky playoff performance. Morey was right to look elsewhere; he just chose the wrong guys for the job.

I think all this Ariza hand-wringing is nothing but CFers wearing rose-colored glasses, assuming we could've re-signed him on the cheap and that he would have been a difference-maker. Both of those are flawed opinions, but it evidently makes a lot of people feel better about us not being as good a team this year because they need one single move they can point a finger at as the thing that "ruined" us.

 

I don't know that he "never wants to pay the luxury tax" …. I think hope it was their way of getting ahead of the repeater tax issue in CP3's final year. Problem is they cut their own nuts in the process.
If WINNING was all that mattered , they would have bit the bullet , paid the tax , had the assets to improve and worried about avoiding the tax later - You can always dump salary. Like Morey once said - Be predatory. Well , other teams feel the same way and would pounce on the opportunity to take good players from you while you are cutting costs , it happens every year.

 

This 100% was said. Basically we gave him a number. It was lower than what Phoenix offered. Phoenix said take it or leave it. He took it.

 

I'll believe it when I see the quote. This has been re-hashed on ClutchFans endlessly, and on two separate occasions I've done a buttload of Googling to try to determine what actually happened. At no point did I ever see a quote from Ariza, even an indirect quote, that said he wanted to return and the Rockets said nope.

 

If that "100% was said," it means the Rockets broke the rules of free-agent signing because they had no time to offer him anything unless they did it before the signing period. Since there was no action taken by the league, I find that difficult to believe. All I see are guys on ClutchFans saying it definitely happened, but nowhere is there proof of that.

 

Okay, @J.R. just arrived to shut me up.

I officially capitulate on this matter. You guys were right. Sorry, @Corrosion.

I'll still continue to argue that it wouldn't have made a difference in the long run if we'd ponied up enough to keep Ariza. Definitely wouldn't have gotten us past the Warriors because it didn't get it done the previous year when he actually was here and sucked against them. It also would have sucked up cap room and prevented other personnel moves.

 

You just said the exact opposite of what Corrosion is saying. It was reported that Ariza was looking for one last big paycheck and we would have offered him a lower number than Phoenix as we should. He took the $15M from PHX and never looked back. People can whine about the after-the-fact all they want, but the point is, offering Ariza anything near $15M is absolute insanity. People keep also spouting nonsense of him being a trade asset for us, but seem to forget that we would most likely be signing Ariza for keeps not as an expiring trade bait. Then there is the whole whether or not we could still get Rivers, Faried, and House bit if we had signed Ariza.

 

Didn't take much googling ….

https://clutchpoints.com/rockets-ne...-told-him-houston-wasnt-going-to-re-sign-him/

I dunno how to embed a twit. click the links.

Link

Link

 

I recall it was being unable to bring him back because Ariza was looking to get paid a lot more while he still could. I could be wrong though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

And there couldn't have been any other deal out there ? Ariza was a pretty hot commodity.

The fact is , Ariza had been underpaid most of the time he was here , he got a fair market value contract for what he did while he was here. He didn't perform to that same level but that's irrelevant to him getting the contract based upon past performance.

The other fact is that Washington did get desperate …. and did make that trade. It could have been you and if it wasn't big deal , he probably helps you in the playoffs. His decline was more from the system change than anything else. No more Harden effect - wide open 3's in the corner.

 

Like I said, I believe it now. Thanks for the follow-up, because I honestly had never heard that interview with him.

Still, keeping him wouldn't have made us better than the year before, and likely would have made us worse because it would have cost more than he was worth.

 

Didn't see this until after I responded to your quotes.

 

It's cool. Even if you were double-shaming me, you had every right to.

 

Trevor Ariza claims that Daryl Morey told him that he would likely leave the Rockets for offers the Rockets could not match.

Unofficially the Rockets have alluded to being willing to bring back Ariza possibly if they were able to complete other moves first.

Morey has said that while he knew he could lose Ariza, he did not expect to lose M-Bah Moute.

 

Na …. that's not what I come here for. I'll leave those games to the kids.

 

You’re really responding with anger. I hope everything is ok. Just remember you’re talking to other people when you engage on here . We are all in this together.

 

This sounds about right. Morey made some bad moves last summer, that much is obvious. But I don't think not re-signing these two was a bad move unless the intention was to bring back exactly the same team again and hope they get past Golden State this time. Luc cost the Clippers $200,000 a point and $500,000 a rebound last year.