The NBA’s overlong moratorium on signings and trades has been lifted. That means all those swaps and new deals we were talking about over the past week-and-a-half can be approved by the league office. Well, actually, nearly all of them. The Houston Rockets have been pursuing Chris Bosh over the past few days, and they’ve now run into an obstacle they didn’t foresee. The salary cap for the 2014-15 season was supposed to be $63.2 million, but the official number is just a tick over $63 million. This means very little to most teams, but Daryl Morey was counting on that $63.2 million figure because it would have allowed New Orleans to trade for Omer Asik. That deal is currently on hold.
The Pelicans didn’t have the necessary cap room to make the transaction back when it was agreed to in late June, but their plan was to renounce all their free agents, release Melvin Ely and Luke Babbitt and used the stretch provision — which lets a team waive a player, but stretch out his cap hit across double the remaining length of the contract plus one year — on Austin Rivers, Jeff Withey and Alexis Ajinca. This would have just barely given them the space to absorb Asik’s contract. Now, that “just barely” has turned into not enough. Unless the Pels want to dump a member of their starting lineup, they’re going to have to find a way to trade Rivers, Withey or Ajinca. This is probably doable — a team might take a flier on Rivers and Withey is, at the very least, a quite tall human being — but Morey will be checking in with Dell Demps every hour looking for updates, because if the Rockets can’t get rid of Asik’s contract, they don’t have a prayer of landing Bosh.
Morey also has several other irons in the fire. He has to find someone who will take Jeremy Lin. The 25-year-old’s contract is reasonable cap-wise — an $8.3 million hit — but his actual salary for this upcoming season is a little bit under $15 million. Whichever GM wants to take him on will have to check with his boss to make sure the rich guy in charge is OK with grossly overpaying Lin in 2014-15. The tankin’ and stankin’ Sixers have been the leading candidate for Lin all along, considering Sam Hinkie would take five garbage water shots if you promised him a future second-rounder in return. If the Sixers aren’t down, surely someone will take Lin for free. He’s a useful enough player.
By the way, that max contract the Rockets supposedly extended to Bosh? It can’t happen. With James Harden and Dwight Howard already on the books, Morey would essentially have to trade everybody else on the team to offer Bosh four years and $88 million. It’s more likely they send away Terrence Jones, keep Patrick Beverley and offer Bosh something like 4 years, $81 million. This might not be a dealbreaker, especially since the Heat have apparently been lowballing Bosh and Texas has no state tax, but seven million bucks is seven million bucks. Not being able to offer a true maximum salary doesn’t exactly help Houston’s case. Also, the whole Bosh dream is predicated on LeBron leaving Miami. If LBJ stays in South Beach, Bosh has stated his preference to play alongside him.
Morey is hoping James hurries the hell up — and picks Cleveland — because he’s trying to get all this stuff done as soon as humanly possible. The Mavericks have given Chandler Parsons a three-year max offer sheet — which he signed in a club, natch — and that means the Rockets have until midnight-ish on July 13th to match Dallas’ offer and retain Parsons. The problem is, once they do that, Parsons’ cap hit balloons, and the Bosh signing dies.
The Rockets’ intention is clearly to have a core of Howard, Bosh, Harden and Parsons. They can figure out the rest later, using the various exceptions afforded to them and by attracting serviceable old, ring-chasing dudes willing to play for the veteran minimum. Morey might be able to pull this scheme off, but this is like one of those scenes where we see the bank robbers blowing the safe, then the camera cuts to tens of police officers piling into their Crown Vics. (Except, y’know, we’re talking about text messages and meetings as opposed to C4 and bags full of cash.) If Morey gets by, it’s going to be by the skin of his teeth. The clock continues to tick down.
