Yesterday I wrote:

looking at their salary page we have 33.4 total salary on the books right now not including any of the rookies. I believe our rookie hold will come in at just about 5 mil so 38 approx in salary. add asik and lin at 8 per, you’re looking at 54 in total committed salary. Dropping all the team options and Courtney Lee gets us to 46 total salary. If we trade PPatt’s 2.1, Terrence Jones 1.2; Kmarts 13, and Marcus Morris’ 2; and Forbes’ 1.5 for JRich’s 5.8; Chris Duhon’s 3.7, and Dwight’s 19.3 we’d have 19.8 goes out and 28.8 so we’d be looking at 55 mil, or, what I like to call, the salary cap threshold.

Your lineup and primary backup would look something like this
Lin, Douglas
JRich, Lamb
Parsons, Z. Dragic?
Motie, White
Howard, Asik

Push it forward to next year and it gets really interesting
We’d have Lin’s 8, JRich’s 6.2, (Duhon isn’t guaranteed, we could renounce Douglas) Motie’s 1, White’s 1, Lamb’s 1, Asik’s 8, Howard’s 20, Parsons’ 1. That puts us right at 46ish. Assuming a cap of about 60 mil we could conceivably sign another max guy (or near max).

(edited the cap number for next year)

More after the jump

Assuming a cap of 60 mil is a bit of a stretch and I'd assume Howard would be due a larger raise than I've denoted here so this second part may be relatively useless. But for now we'll assume we'll have about 14 mil in open cap space with a roster of

Lin

JRich/Lamb

Parsons/ White

Motie

Howard/Asik

In positions where we won't have a "core" player (shooting guard and power forward) here are your free agents. Monta Ellis, Iggy, Evans, Harden, Derozan at the 2 and Taj Gibson, David West, Dejuan Blair, Ibaka, Milsap, and Jefferson at the 4.

Assuming either Lin or Asik is matched, adding another max guy is a no brainer. But if not if I'm Houston, I attempt to bundle JRich with a draft pick or 2 and clear out his 6.2 (you could maybe find a taker in Chicago?). You could then make a play for Harden and Blair, offering the max or near the max to Harden (which you could do without moving JRich) and Blair the remainder (5 mil-ish);

The following year we could look like

Lin/min free agent guy

Harden/Lamb

Parsons/White

Motie/Blair

Howard/Asik

I think I'm loving Morey's master plan... If this (or something like this) is his endgame.