Dwight Howard‘s three seasons in Houston weren’t exactly an unequivocal success, and the veteran center didn’t mesh particularly well with Mike D’Antoni in Los Angeles during his brief stint with the Lakers. Still, appearing on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey told Howard Beck and Noah Coslov that his team, and his team’s new head coach, would “welcome [Howard] back” (link via Tyler Conway of Bleacher Report). Even if the club is saying the right things about re-signing Howard, hiring D’Antoni seemed to signal that the Rockets are at least as willing to move on from the eight-time All-Star as they are to re-sign him.
Here’s more from out of the Southwest division:
- In pre-draft workout news, Croatian power forward Marko Arapovic tweeted today that he had a workout with the Rockets, while Ronald Tillery of The Commerical Appeal writes that the Grizzlies‘ Monday workout group featured Ryan Anderson (Arizona), Demetrius Jackson (Notre Dame), Thon Maker (Athlete Institute Canada), Patrick McCaw (UNLV), Retin Obasohan (Alabama), and Tyler Ulis (Kentucky).
- Spurs assistant James Borrego made a strong impression in multiple head coaching searches this year, and looks like a solid candidate to land a head coaching job in 2017, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical (via Twitter). Reports within the last couple months connected Borrego to the coaching searches in Houston, Memphis, Orlando, and Sacramento.
- Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News identifies a few pending free agents who won’t command the max and who could be good fits for the Mavericks, including Kent Bazemore, Brandon Jennings, and Joakim Noah.
- David Aldridge of NBA.com conducted a lengthy and interesting Q&A with new Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale.
If 24 teams have enough for a max deal, and half of those have enough for two max players, and if there isn’t enough free agents to absorb all that money, why wouldn’t teams outbid each other until Kent Bazemore gets a one year maximum deal?
Not spending up to the cap floor does not save the owners any money. The difference gets distributed between the players.
So why would a team leave cap space unused? Why wouldn’t the Sixers outbid every other team for Bazemore or Fournier, since they can’t use that money elsewhere anyway?
The Sixers, with $60M, can sign both for the maximum, and give them four year deals. And the Sixers would still be under the cap this year. And would have over $30M to spend next year.
Other teams with cap space are not going to just let their players walk off to the Sixers, or the Magic, or the Lakers?
There is absolutely NO downside to the Sixers offering Kent Bazemore or Evan Fournier a one year, maximum contract. Imagine, we can offer 1yr, $22M to both of them and still be under the salary cap floor.
Giving $44M to Bazemore and Fournier does nothing to hurt our cap flexibility. We’d still have $30-50M to spend next year, once Carl Landry and Stauskas come off the books and the cap goes up again. Even if we didn’t have cap space. We can still sign all of our draft picks with our “Bird rights”.
Other teams placed themselves in similar positions. Which means the Magic or the Lakers or whomever will beat that Sixers offer with two years, and that offer will be beat with three years, and so on.
has DH go along on any team?
Yes I live in Milwaukee and would like to see Howard here, our rebounding and interior defense is not good