Harden's Houston trade reshapes Western Conference

Haha Ryan, yeah I knew after I wrote it, damn bynum....... In anycase last one was David Lee the 2005 #30 pick... Lots of small market teams are run alot better then the big market ones but the issue with big market teams is that they are under massive scrutiny to do well. Also they can actually afford to go over the hard cap where as some small market teams dont even want to touch the soft cap. Thats all I was saying......

Whoops, poor choice, Melo. Andrew Bynum was an All Star last year, and the Lakers drafted him. In any event, it's pretty hard for a franchise to draft an all star when they're hardly ever in the lottery. When was the last time New York drafted someone who became an All Star? Was it Patrick Ewing in 1985? I'm not sure picking on the Lakers is a wise choice. Yes, they're fortunate enough to reside in a big market, but they're also extremely well run and make good decisions. Drafting Van Exel in the second round, trading for the rights to select Kobe Bryant, etc, etc. I could go on. Let's not run through the Knicks mistakes, shall we? The Spurs are a small market team and they've been successful. Let's not excuses for poorly run clubs.

im starting to think they didnt.... First in first served the NBA way

I think it's important to recognise the Small market teams in the NBA like the Kings, GSW and OKC what those teams do is feed the health of the bigger ones, please someone name me the last All Star the Lakers drafted... please....

I can swallow my pride Mushi you were right the Poison Pill deals are pro-rata only eating into 18mil in the third of the soft cap, my apologies......

I actually take back that last paragraph. Just read an article that looked at his Durant on court off court splits and his efficiency was better with Durant off court. good move houston - better than eric gordon for the max

I was going to write a piece but I’ll just put my super long winded thing on here: So two things that I feel really undermine Simmons position (and I’m an avid reader of simmons going back to the turn of the millennium). He basically disregards the effect of the luxury tax. As he keeps referring to Clay Bennet as a billionaire in his previous articles – he’s not. Forbes and other net worth sites have him well below that, I found one saying he was around the 400m mark. Now that number may be wrong but consider this over the course of Harden’s contract he would have paid roughly 250m to the four main guys – before luxury tax. Let us just say I don’t think Simmons is going to be fielding too many wealth management offers. The second is that he says roll the dice at the end of the year. We’ve just seen how many examples of GM’s getting near nothing for a player because they got forced into a corner due to waiting to late to make a decision. Simmons has been paid a lot of money to rubbish those guys and yet his recommendation is…repeat the exact same mistake? This one baffles me. It is also a mistake which would have far greater ramifications for the thunder as they wouldn’t bottom out they would slide into purgatory with no real way to get that value back again without a huge dose of luck. Given that we probably aren't seeing a change in the CBA next offseason, OKC would then be in a position where every decent GM in the league knew they had a fire sale on their hands given their payroll versus their market and ownership. Here they were able to name their price and potentially shop multiple assets at the same time which enabled Presti to turn him into three genuine quality assets. He got more for Harden than Hennigan did for the second or third best player in the league. Also most importantly he’ll have three rookie scale contracts to provide 3 to 4 years of talented contribution to the team on the cheap. If he finds a player of Harden-esque value in that haul then he can then rinse and repeat the process for more cheap assets in three or four years. Does it make immediate basketball sense in one way no – their on court product is appreciably worse but clubs that play the long game build teams that are perennial playoff contenders rather than era reliant. In terms of who they traded I think Harden was the guy who had the lowest value to OKC and the second highest on the open market. At the end of the day they made this decision when they paid Ibaka’s price tag. If they hadn't paid all star money to him they potentially could have found a way to make this palatable or at the very least bought themselves an extra year with the Perkins amnesty and better assess who was more valuable to the team and who could get the bigger price tag from a trade partner. For me I think this is more of a risk on the Rockets side. They still have room for another Max contract but we are yet to see if Harden’s efficiency is driven by lighting up the second or third best perimeter player.

Mushi, I reader just sent me Bill Simmons take on the trade. Be keen to get your thoughts (on his thoughts!) http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8573213/the-harden-disaster

I'm starting to think the Thunder made the right move then.

The tax is calculated from the luxury tax threshold, but it gets calculated on a marginal basis from next year. So if they are at 90m and the tax line is at 70 then their tax payable is circa 45m (so 135) in 2013/14 and then goes to 65m (155m) by his fourth year as they’d be paying the repeat offender tax. Ouch The cost of his 1.75m per year would be 7.44 inc tax until they pay the repeat offender which would be 9.19m. In reality it would be worse as the contract structure leads to 1m extra being paid over the average in the final year - meaning 14.43m that year. Ouch again, Now off course that assumes that they don’t amnesty Perkins which off course on those numbers they would have to. The issue was always going to be they can’t afford 4 near max contracts with a repeat offender tax and a marginal rate. If they kept Harden they needed to move Westbrook.

Also some other factual points On the Dwight and Paul example you put forward they aren't restricted free agents. You can only be a restricted free agent under limited circumstances towards the start of your career – generally coming off your rookie contract as a first rounder or having less than 3 year experience in the league. The Gilbert arenas rule is then a sub set of that which only applies to restricted free agents without bird rights so less than 3 years generally (often 2nd rounders or undrafted players). Most restricted free agents don’t fit under this (like Eric Gordon and Nic Batum from this summer just gone who signed deals far above the non tax payer MLE) MLE and minimum salaries do count towards the cap they are just exceptions allowing you to sign them in the first place- they still count as a number against your cap and tax line.

Ryan it is circa 30m on those players -still room for a max contract plus

Also I loathe when people use per game raw stats as your essentially saying the rockets will only play them 13 minutes a game? Lins per 36 minute numbers and advanced stats all look pretty good and Asik's +\-, synergy ratings were exceptional and his career win shares per 48 minutes... Same as carmelo Anthony's, he's like a reverse carmelo - Absolute elite defender but horrible offensive player. At a cap price of 8.5m a steal

the entire point behind the poison pill contract is that it take advantage of different treatment of the salary for the offering and matching teams. A poison pill is pointless if it is also poisonous for the offering team. Under the cba the offering team is forced to use the average salary, this was intended to stop teams with only limited cap space back ending deals. So in this instance both Lin and Asik's contracts are treated as 8.5m per year for three years for cap and tax purposes on the rockets roster, but the catch is if the bulls or Knicks had matched they would not get to average the salary. To the rest of your point on dwight well you can't offer ten year contracts and 50m per season is above the max, also you can't offer a poison pill if you only have the mle available due to the averaging

Mushi I just checked to give you a better understanding, what your referring to is what is known as the Gilbert Arenas rule by where a team can not come in and offer more then the minimum to players who are restricted free agents. Restricted free agents can be matched easily by their current franchise as all they need to do is match the minimum and use an MLE (mid level exception) as it doesnt count toward the cap. Anything above the MLE is a salaried player that counts toward the cap... If what you were saying were true what isnt stopping Brooklyn from giving dwight 500 million dollars over the next 10 seasons given he's a restricted free agent at the end of this season same with NYK and Chris Paul??? Anyway proving your point a little less pointy, in Lins and Asik's case they are what is know as a poison pill deal and as soon as the Rockets offer them more then the minimum (5mil) then they become salaried players that count toward the cap meaning those two players would in fact be choking out 50% of houstons cap in the 2014-15 season.... Hope that makes sense

It's pretty simple both those players were Restricted free agents so over the first 2 seasons contract offers could only be 5mil (which is a max under CBA) in the first small increase in the second year then the final year (Poison pill) Teams this year have a cap of 58million Asik and Lin's contract wont count toward any of the exceptions as they were restricted free agents, however in that 3rd year or 'balloon year' those two players will be exceptions and earning 14.8mil and 15mil between them which is roughly 50% of Houstons cap..... tied up in combined career stats of 13 PPG 6.6 RPG 2.6 APG 2.2 SPG and that to you doesn't raise eyebrows?

The return of Eric Maynor may have had a small impact on the decision too. He's more of a traditional point guard, which the Thunder lacked at times last year. So perhaps they felt they could do without the 'luxuary' of Harden, especially at his asking price.

I dont think harden wanted to be a role player off the bench and OKC would argue with Westbrook and Durant locked in they didnt really need the offense in their starting line up, however while those 3 were on the court their efficiency was through the roof. Harden is a scorer but he's also a great passer and I think Houston will use him to run the offence much the same as OKC did. OKC and Harden won in this trade.... Houston just managed to give their offseason rating from a F- to F

Which is also what Perkins will make this year, incidentally . . . I just read that he passed up $55 million over 4 years because he wanted $60 over 4 years. That's a bit of a worry and says to me that perhaps he didn't really want to be there. So I've changed my mind on this trade, maybe it was a good one after all.

Jesus you don't know how the CBA works do you and yet you are slating someone's contract moves. The offering team gets to pro rata the salary over the life of the contract, the matching team does not. This has been covered to death over the course of the fields, lin and asik contracts. it never takes 50% of their cap - never ever ever