It took nearly a month of free agency to do it, but the last big free agency name was eventually taken off the board at the end of July. The Houston Rockets finally agreed to re-sign free agent centre Clint Capela to a deal reported to cost them only five years and $90 million, of which only five years and $80 million is guaranteed. My use of the world “only” there was very deliberate. That is not a lot of money for a player of some calibre, and who is a roughly ideal fit for what the Rockets are doing with their team. It is considerably less than the maximum salary of five years and $147,710,050 (or four years and $109,509,175 with another team) that he could have signed for, and it is a lot less than Houston probably expected they could get him for when headed into free agency. In a tough free agency period in which they lost Trevor Ariza to the Phoenix Suns and Luc Richard Mbah A Moute to the L.A. Clippers, and given a maximum contract to Chris Paul that will be of questionable value in the back end, the Rockets needed to win on this one, and they have done. In large part, this was due to their patience. Taking this full month allowed the relative impatience of the competition to take effect, and as the other cap space teams spent their money up, Capela quickly ran out of bidders. The Rockets have been significantly aided in this quest, though, not only by Capela’s restricted free agency, but also by a flat overall market for ‘big men’. Positional distinctions are increasingly hard to do these days. Still, with that disclaimer in mind, here is a list of all the new contracts given out to veteran ‘big men’ in […]
John Hollinger wrote a long old piece two weeks ago in which he opines upon pretty much every transaction made this summer. Well, if he can, I can. From the people you know about, to the insignificant ones you couldn’t give a Keith Closs about. That’s how I want it, so that’s how it’s going to be. If you’re the kind of person who is annoyed by long posts, then the length of this post will annoy you. It is essentially done as a compendium of all the relative NBA parts of the Summer Signings sequence of posts, written so that I don’t have to do it when I do my season previews. This way, I might actually get them all done this year. (Readers note: If the format and opinions contained within this piece are incredibly similar to those of John Hollinger, then that’s because John Hollinger is very good at what he does. And that’s why he did this first. To a much higher standard. (Instead of this, just search for your favourite team’s name for their transactions.) Big old eight figure deals: Philadelphia landed a big name free agent, which hasn’t happened in the entire time that I’ve followed the sport. They did so by signing Elton Brand for five years and $79.8 million, after Brand reneged on a verbal agreement to re-sign with the L.A. Clippers, a deed for which he will join Carlos Boozer and John Salmons in hell or whatever. After this, Philadelphia also re-signed Andre Iguodala to a six-year, $80 million deal – those two now form the Sixers core, along with Louis Williams, Samuel Dalembert, Thaddeus Young and Andre Miller (who is staring down the barrel of an extension.) But none of them can shoot threes. Baron Davis opted out and […]
