The Future Is Extremely Bright For The Houston Rockets: 2024 Free Agency/Offseason Series – Ep 14

The Future Is Extremely Bright For The Houston Rockets: 2024 Free Agency/Offseason Series – Ep 14

welcome back everyone I’m Yosi golin NBA salary cap expert and in this video I’m going to talk about the Houston Rockets who I’m really excited to talk about I think they are extremely well set up to make a big addition in the near future they just moved up in the lottery so they have the third overall pick and they have an additional four first round picks that they can offer in the trade and several other young players that other teams will covet so they can be really aggressive in the trade market this summer for an All-Star level player so I want to talk about some of the players they’ve been linked to recently how they can get a guy like Donovan Mitchell or Mel Bridges and if they don’t get a guy like any like either of them they also have the possibility of having Max cap space in the following summer so I’m going to get into all that and before I do if you’re new to the channel or you’ve been here already please like And subscribe it’s still a very new channel and it will help with its growth a lot so let’s take a look at the Rockets payroll and see what their situation is like heading into the off season so last summer they had cap space which they used to sign Fred Van Ved and Dylan Brooks to large deals and this year they are going to be over the cap they could have cap space if they if they wave some of their non-guaranteed players but that’s not going to happen which means as an over the cap team they are going to have the non-t tax pyramid level exception as their highest form of spending power just under starts at just under 13 million and they have the flexibility to use it they are projected to uh be about 14 million below the 1713 million luxury tax line which they’re not going to exceed uh they won’t want to exceed it this year but I think they’re going to Prior prioritize that flexibility in the trade market and the players to take a look at include Jeff Green and Jack L Jack lale they were signed to contracts last offseason that were basically designed to be traded they were only guaranteed last season so they could have traded these guys and the teams taking them in could have just cut them and not have any obligation in future Seasons now if they’re going to trade him now they’re probably going to have a significant guarantee or or even the salaries this year fully guaranteed to make the trades work but then for Jeff Green he’s not under contract after this season and Jack lale they could just cut him and they’ll be off the hook after that so their salaries along with a player like Jaylen green who has been mentioned in trade rumors during the trade deadline that’s about $30 million that they could combine and trade for just about any of their targets and they’ll probably look to add some of their first round picks in a package including the third overall pick now that pick is projected to make $10 million this upcoming season however it can’t be used toward salary matching in a trade until 30 days after it signs so likely the earliest would be August 1st and they can add up to four more additional first round picks if they wanted to make the most maximum maximal uh first round pick package possible which includes picks in 2025 27 29 2031 and they could put pick swaps in between uh now I’m sure the Rockets are probably going to try to make their trade package uh based on picks but I don’t think it’s going to be that simple because in this era of parody a lot of teams now want established veterans or young players that have shown that they’re going to be a good player in the league but the Rockets may have a too many good young player problem they have a lot of really good young Talent on the roster and I’m sure that a lot of the teams they’re talking to they’re gonna require like a guy like Jabari Smith or ammen Thompson which I don’t think the Rockets want to part with and even to a lesser extent tares and cam Whitmore uh and I’m sure that when it comes to actually making these offers they’re probably going to to include uh one or more of these guys but for Simplicity sake when I go through these uh scenarios and what a trade could look like I’m going to put the least amount of players possible just show what is the minimum needed to make a trade work and before I get into projections and what those scenarios could look like I need to talk about some extension candidates starting with ALR Shon who had a major breakout year last season and in my opinion should have been an Allstar and he’s now a top 10 Center so I don’t know if he’s going to get a Max contract but this is the most he can get with Houston and I think there’s a pretty good chance that he gets it or something pretty close to it now there is an advantage for the Rockets to not extend him now and that is so they could potentially have Max cap space in 2025 in the next offseason the Sixers recently did this with Tyrese Maxi they held off from him having an extension last offseason and now they’re have they’re about to have a lot of cap space now and then they’re going to reward him with a Max contract uh this summer so there’s a way that the Rockets can have around 6 million in cap space next summer if they let shenon hit restricted free agency and then resign them after they use all their cap space so this could make them a really credible threat to outright sign a top free agent like Donovan Mitchell for example if he were to become available and is interested in going there so they’d only do this if they feel like they have a legitimate shot at a player like him but if they can make that trade early on in this upcoming offseason then they might as well extension goon as soon as as they can Jaylen green is also extension eligible for the rockets and he really came along late last year after shenon got injured he had the best play of his career and it helped keep the rockets in the plane tournament picture but is that stretch enough to get a Max contract I don’t think so as of now I wouldn’t think he gets quite that much and if he does command one then I could see negotiations getting pushed to closer to the deadline uh before the start of the season so this is something I could see him getting if he does extend uh roughly $35 million a year I could see it as in the higher end of his extension outcomes it would have him making more than guys like Tyler herro and devid Mella earning and then less than Desmond Bane now I do wonder if the Rockets do consider holding off on an extension even if they can get him at a rate that they like and that’s for trade purposes as far as this season goes because once they extend him there’s going to be some complications towards trading him mid-season depending on whether they give him an extension or not we could get an idea a pretty soon how the Rockets view him in their long-term picture so let’s aim high and say that Donovan Mitchell wants out from Cleveland and he’s interested in going to Houston so the Rockets are already reportedly interested in pursuing him there was a report by the athletic that uh they would really like to get him if possible and they have more than enough assets to get them to get a deal done and like I mentioned earlier I’m just going to make things simple I’m not going to include other young players that uh in these trade scenarios because there’s just so many guys and there’s so many permutations of how these trades could end up looking like so I just want to talk about what is the least amount of money they can send out along with draft picks because again I think the Rockets are ideally going to want to try to make a draft picks uh base package so they include the third overall pick uh multiple first round picks in the future and whatever swaps they can offer and they send out Jaylen green Jeff Green jock Londale all together that’s $30 million are sending out they only need to get within 7.77 million of Donan Mitchell’s 35.4 million to acquire him and so this trade would work so I plugged in Donovan Mitchell for Jaylen green Jeff Green Jack landale on the third overall pick and they have a pretty strong roster pretty deep starting five and and they still have all their young players uh coming off the bench so overall just extremely simple for Houston to make the money work for a player making as much as Mitchell and uh here I have them using the non-t tax pyramid level exception because they still have enough flexibility to use it while staying under under the tax and filling out the roster uh they also could use it as a trade exception into the season if they can’t sign anyone that they want with it they could now acquire players within it like a normal trade exception it’s a new addition to the CBA starting this year but I want to get into Houston’s cap space situation The Following season and how Alper and shun would factor into it because they could easily generate the maximum cap space needed to sign an All-Star like Donovan Mitchell while being able to resign shenon after so let’s say the Rockets make it through the end of the season and they didn’t make any major trade in fact they just keep the same roster for the most part including the third overall pick they still have all their picks so if they were to decline Fred Van vet’s $ 44.9 million trade uh tee option for next season and they cut jock landale and they were announced all their free agent cap holds except for Alper and shenon who’s got that $16.3 million cap hold they could generate over $60 million in cap space so shenon has that cap hold which would interfere with Houston’s cap space projection and basically what they’ll be able to do is spend that $60 million or so get back to the cap get up to the salary cap and then they could resign them up to the whatever the max now I doubt that they’d be able to sign a player like Donovan Mitchell out right in free agency just because that’s just not how the league really works anymore ever since the 2019 off season teams are going to preemptively make a trade if they have the feeling that the players going to leave but just the threat of having this option to go out and sign just about anybody they want could uh push a trade if an All-Star uh Express an interest in going to Houston let’s go back and do smaller scale trade Mikel Bridges a player that the Rockets reportedly have had interest in and have been in discussions with the Nets they supposedly offer Jaylen green and some of the Nets picks that they own from the James Harden trade but the Nets declin but let’s just say that the Nets get a feeling that there there is no All-Star coming in the near future they’re not going to be able to turn this around anytime soon and they decide to Pivot to a rebuild and regain some control of the draft picks that the Rockets own from them which includes the number three overall pick this year they have one more first in 2026 and two swaps in 2025 and 2027 so uh the picks aside the salary matching component is even simpler than a Donovan Mitchell trade uh they only need to get to 15 a. half million to match for Bridges is 23.3 million so at the minimum Jaylen green jock landale that works so I plugged in Mel Bridges for the players I have being sent out in the trade and still a very deep team they could still use the mid-level exception if they want but better yet they could use that flexibility for another consolidation trade they still have some more expiring contracts like Jeff Green and Jan Tay and stepen Adams that they could do to be even more aggressive if they’d like and the great thing about having Mel Bridges is that he’s owed about $50 million over the next two years so they could still potentially have some cap flexibility in the future to pursue somebody else and let me show you how so here’s Rocket’s cap situation for next off seon but I plugged in Mel Bridges and with his team friendly salary they’d still be in a position to generate over $50 million in cap space and that’s more than enough to sign an Allstar level like Donan Mitchell to his maximum starting amount now again I’m going to reiterate like I mentioned earlier that if an All-Star caliber player like Mitchell or Mel Bridges does become available there’s a very strong chance that the Rockets are going to have to part with some of their young players because that’s just what other teams are going to want but that’s not the end of the world because let’s just say that the Rockets they don’t want to trade any of their young players they want to keep every single guy they ever drafted they believe in every single one and they want to roster all of them and then in the future it’s not possible for them to pay every single one of these guys they can’t pay every single one of ALR shenon Jaylen green Jabari Smith uh tar een uh amen Thompson whoever they’re going to draft with the number three overall pick if they keep it it’s just not possible they’re going all these players are going to make a lot of money in the near future and this is the why I’m this is what I meant by that the Rockets have a good young player problem and they’re going to have to consolidate some of these guys and start choosing who they want to keep because realistically in this new NBA with all the new CBA changes you could only really pay four to five guys like like really pay P those guys but this is a great problem to have and thankfully they have a couple years before they need to start making tough decisions before things start really getting expensive and because they have all these valuable players all these draft picks and in my opinion all these realistic opportunities to add All-Star levels All-Star level players to the mix I’m very optimistic that they’re going to be able to build a legitimate contender in the near future

Is it crazy to think that the Rockets are close to being a contender? They made a huge step forward last season after bringing in Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks and hiring Ime Udoka. They also saw breakthrough seasons from players like Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green, both of whom are eligible for contract extensions this summer. But they have the draft equity and young players to make an aggressive offer for an All-Star-level player. And if they can’t get anybody now, they could potentially have max cap space in 2025. They’re well-positioned over the next two years to make a huge addition to their lineup.

0:00 Intro
0:52 Rockets 2024-25 payroll analysis
3:42 Alperen Sengun
5:00 Jalen Green
6:03 Donovan Mitchell scenarios
7:40 How the Rockets could generate max cap space in 2025 while re-signing Sengun
9:06 Mikal Bridges scenarios
10:31 Why the Rockets need to consolidate some of their young players in a trade in the future

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