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Source: NBADraft

2008/09 Houston Rockets Payroll: $70.3 million
2008/09 Estimated Salary Cap: $58 million
Roughly $12.3 million over cap

Rockets may be over the cap but they are under the luxury tax which helps a lot.

The Good:

When the Rockets stole Luis Scola from the San Antonio Spurs for almost nothing, they knew they were getting a good player. As it turns out, they were right on the money. The Argentinean veteran had plenty of international experience.

He was able to step in and perform right away and he did very well, averaging 10.3 points and 6.4 rebounds on efficient 51.5% shooting. By the end of the season, Scola was a full time starter and he played his best ball of the year in the playoffs, averaging 14 points and 9.3 rebounds against the Jazz. Scola adds toughness and a high basketball IQ for just $3.1 and $3.3 million the next two seasons, making him an incredible value.

On a team full of excellent role players, Shane Battier is the best of the bunch. His stats won't immediately wow you (9.3 points, 5.1 rebounds), but his combination of defense, experience, and solid three point shooting make him indispensible. Battier is surprisingly the third highest paid player on the team, set to make $20.5 million over the next three years. Because of the intangibles he brings to the table, and his amazing health over his career, Battier is worth every penny.

The Bad:
The Rockets' best two players are also their biggest problems. Yao Ming has missed large chunks of three consecutive seasons, which is a disturbing trend. This time, it caused him to miss the playoffs. Yao will be paid $49 million the next three seasons combined and when healthy he is certainly capable of putting up numbers worthy of that price. His 22 points, 10.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 2 blocks per game place him squarely in the conversation for best center in the league. However, he won't do his team any good sitting on the sideline year after year as opportunities are wasted.

Tracy McGrady has done a better job of staying on the court in recent years, yet he still missed 16 games this season. His stats would suggest that McGrady is still a versatile superstar with 21.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 5.9 assists each night, but his shooting percentages say otherwise. McGrady made just 41.9% of his shots, including a horrible 29.2% of his threes, the lowest he has shot from downtown in eight years. He is wasting a lot of good attempts on offense, a good reason why his scoring average is also at an eight-year low. Houston will be paying McGrady $21.1 and $23.2 million the next two seasons, an exorbitant amount for a superstar who is 0-7 in the first round of the playoffs. For that kind of money, McGrady needs to play much, much better.

The Future:
Yao and McGrady have been together in Houston now for four years and we still don’t know how good they can truly be together because neither of them can stay healthy for a full season. In their first year, Ming was just starting to become the player he is today. Without their injury woes, there is no telling what they could have accomplished. First and foremost, Houston needs to pray that they can finally piece together a full season as teammates.

Houston must find a way upgrade their point guard position if they expect to be contenders in the West. With no cap space available, they will have to get crafty with a trade. Or, they can hope that a full season from their two superstars will trump their deficiency at the point.

What do you think about that article?

sounds pretty accurate to me. i do agree we need to upgrade the pg position. had no idea our payroll was approximately 70 mill.

I agree

good article and on point

thanks

Good read. He said that HOU has arguably the best bench in the league, which is a little surprising to hear.

BENCH:

Landry, Greene, Head, Mutombo, Dorsey, Brooks, Barry, Jackson, Francis, Novak.

I don't know, I'm just not very excited about that bench. I think our bench took a hit when we traded Bonzi. Three of those guys won't be on the active roster, and none of them can do a particularly good job filling in at the 1 or 2 for extended minutes.

On the plus side, most of those players are young and / or have tremendous upside. At times (during blowouts) we can roll out a lineup of Brooks, Head, Greene, Landry, Dorsey. That team might be able to win 20 games in the east... which is a good thing.

Pretty unbiased article. Healthy is the number 1 issue. Hopefully Dorsey will take some minutes off Yao could very possibly extend his longevity.

Good article, mostly agreed with it outside of the attribution of our PG deficiency. To date, it hasn't been Rafer that's short-changed the position, it's been his backup.

The Free Throw point made me smile a bit. Teams used to realize that "shorter" (6'5"-6'7") guys could play the PF position just fine, and drafted those guys accordingly (though whether they wanted/planned to or just lucked/were forced into it, I have no idea). The taboo that they have to be over 6'9" is a rather silly notion. Actually, it's altogether possible that teams never forgot that, rather that it just became a stupid media talking point or that certain guys threw it out there to be intentionally misleading, whether to other GMs or scouts.

moofs wrote:Good article, mostly agreed with it outside of the attribution of our PG deficiency. To date, it hasn't been Rafer that's short-changed the position, it's been his backup.

The Free Throw point made me smile a bit. Teams used to realize that "shorter" (6'5"-6'7") guys could play the PF position just fine, and drafted those guys accordingly (though whether they wanted/planned to or just lucked/were forced into it, I have no idea). The taboo that they have to be over 6'9" is a rather silly notion. Actually, it's altogether possible that teams never forgot that, rather that it just became a stupid media talking point or that certain guys threw it out there to be intentionally misleading, whether to other GMs or scouts.

Co-sign the bolded, Chalk that bs up to all these "draft gurus" and gm's. The pre-draft crap is almost becoming like the nfl combine. Well he's 6'6 without shoes but he has the wingspan of a 7 footer but with shoes on hes 6'8, and what does that have to do with anything? Barkley wasn't even 6'6 but he showed rebounding is about effort, positioning, and strength not how long your reach is. Anyway back to the article, good article for the most part. I think our bench might be more of an issue then our starters being healthy. I mean come on, watching the jazz get multiple offensive rebounds on every damn possession was terrible especially when they were simply reaching over our players half the time because we lack size. We have a lot of those "little skill, big heart" type players but we don't need all of them. I love chuck hayes but at the end of the day despite his effort he's not a skilled player, period. We need to improve our free-throw shooting, get healthy, get better play from our bench and have someone besides skip and mac that can hit an open jumper in the playoffs. You look @ teams like L.A.(vujacic, fisher), Boston(posey, house), NO(mo-pete, pargo), San Antonio(barry,finley). They all had people outside of their stars who might not be the best players but they could count on to hit open shots. Who do we have like that for the playoffs, only person I could think of is battier and he's been pretty bad offensively during the playoffs.

I completely agree with you stillmatic. I almost went Oedipus Rex on my eyes when I saw how the Jazz were killin us on the boards. I can certainly appreciate Chuck's effort, but if there's no skill to back it up, then he's just another Ryan Bowen. We needed shooters and rebounders more than playmakers. I would rather have Barry then than another PG. I believe we've efficiently adressed our deficiencies.
What we tend to forget is that Yao was missing against Utah. So our playoffs woes were kinda illegitimate. Honestly, we would've beaten Utah with Yao. I actually think we would've beaten them with a healthy Rafer too. So we're not as far off as people think. I'm not going to go as far as to say we would've beaten LA or BOS, but we could've competed. I honestly think we were one consistent shooter and rebounder away from glory. So the signing of Barry and drafting of Greene and Dorsey pretty much put us where we need to be. All we need now is to stay healthy, and I really don't see us being stopped. You've already seen what we can do when we're confident and healthy. Imagine an entire season like that.