but not in practice.

The whole idea is that the home team can bring back their young players as long as they are willing to pay the highest bid from another team (a second price auction! Look, ma, I’m using economics!). In practice, the highest bid from another team is often muted (Landry) or non-existent (Robinson and Lee) since teams don’t want to tie up their cap space just to see the home team match it. Unless they go the Portland/Millsap route and try to screw the home team, which I think everyone should try to do to the Jazz.

So the result is you get statements like Morey’s designed to scare off potential suitors, and agents getting frustrated because they know it’s costing their client a couple mil. The whole idea of giving the home team an advantage is to build relationships, but the process of doing so seems to break them down.

Remember how pissed Landry was that we played up his bad knees during his free agency? I wonder what his private opinion of the Rockets’s management is now that he doesn’t have to play for them.

The article suggests that Scola and Lowry will get “significant” raises next year……

but from who??

Teams with cap room are going to use all of it to sign the LeBrons, DWades and Boshs of the world (not to mention the Shaqs, the Amares and the Joe Johnsons). Plus, with Camby, Boozer and a lot of other players out there to gobble up potentially available MLE money, who is going to have anything to truly offer Scola or Lowry?

Also consider: a healthy portion of NBA owners/teams are flat broke. Some teams with cap room simply won’t use it because they don’t have the ability to handle a $53M payroll. Luxury tax notwithstanding.

I still think we get Luis for a $10M/2 year deal and Lowry for a $5M/2 year deal. Because there is no reason to bid against ourselves.

Let’s look at the list of [potential] max or near-max contract players:
Joe Johnson, Lebron James, Rudy Gay, Dwyane Wade, David Lee, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, Carlos Boozer.

That’s 7 players. SEVEN. From what i understand, there are 8 teams that are very much in the market for a max-contract, and 2 that can potentially afford 2 max contracts. The implication is that, considering that some will probably stay at home (ie Lebron, barring some playoff meltdown comparable to last year), there are not enough big names to go around. As a result, I think players like Lowry and Scola become very valuable to a lot of teams looking to upgrade either in general or as a complementary piece to the one star they do acquire in free agency – both are starter-quality players in the NBA, have been proven to be solid in the playoffs, and have little to no injury history. Getting these 2 guys, along with a max contract, to surround the pieces some of these teams already have, becomes a great move for any team with the money to spend.

Essentially, a team not gunning for Bosh (and alternatively a swingman or 2 guard) could really use a guy like Scola (effective rebounder ,flurry of post moves, decent defensive player); similarly, a team looking for a big like Boozer or Bosh that is weak at the point (and doesn’t want to wait for 2011) could really get a lot out of Kyle Lowry (great passer, can bail you out of a bad set with drawing fouls, can hit open shots, strong on the defensive end).