Free Ballin’

If the Rockets want to trade Tracy McGrady, they’ll trade him, (despite my quiet, irrational protests).  But I’m not really sure how they’re going to be able to do it and stick to their healthy obsession with maintaining roster flexibility.  Presently, the Rockets have 11 players under contract next year, for about $40 million.  That will put them about $10 million to $13 million under the expected salary cap, enough to buy a 6-bedroom townhouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, all of Montana, or a very good NBA free agent.

Among the 11 players already next year’s roster, 9 are bonafide rotation guys, and 5 or 6 of them are starter-for-playoff-team-level guys.  And excluding Yao’s salary, Daryl Morey and company has the lot signed for $22 million.  This is all to say, if Yao successfully comes back from his injury (and Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ success after the same surgery is very encouraging) the Rockets are very well positioned for the future.  But the T-Mac thing makes everything very foggy.

Now, most of the time you try to figure out what an NBA team is going to do, you have to figure in the intelligence gap.  That is, you have to dumb yourself down to think on an NBA management level.  A good technique is to look at a list of the 30 highest paid players in the NBA and try to justify the contracts of each of them.  Sometimes it’s pretty easy, “Who knew Jermaine O’Neal was going to break in half?”  Sometimes it’s not so easy, “Sure, we overpaid Rashard Lewis by at least $8 million, but he’s a really good player and a perfect fit with Dwight Howard.”  Sometimes it’s just impossible.  The Rockets, however, are mad smart, and you really can say, “What would a really smart team do in this situation?”

As much as it pains me that T-Mac will be leaving the Rockets, it’s kind of exciting to see what Morey is going to do, because the Rockets aren’t just mad smart; they’re mad smart and have access to a crack research team and metrics that I don’t.  But in this case…  Thing is, unless McGrady does something to demonstrate that he can be a serious contributor, he’s just a giant expiring contract.  Who want one of those?  Well, lots of teams, like the Rockets.  A $23 million expiring contract is extremely valuable chip and something a smart team would only trade for something really, really valuable.  Like what?  Well, pipe dream trades that will not happen and…nothing.  There’s nothing else out there.  If the Knicks had their 2010 draft pick, the Rockets could deal with them… if Portland had a healthy roster…  If the Wizards had top notch young talent…  If Toronto hadn’t gone all-in to keep Chris Bosh…  If Amare Stoudemire publicly declared he absolutely would not re-sign with the Suns…  Nah, I really don’t see anything, at least nothing straight up.  Sure, I could conceive of stuff with Sacramento or Golden State that NBA 2K GMs would go for, but in the real world the Rockets just have to find a sucker, or someone on the verge of bankruptcy.  Otherwise, T-Mac is more valuable to them than anything they can get.  But yeah, the Rockets are mad smart, and they have 6 weeks to find a sucker.