Nonetheless, Gay is special player with explosive offensive talent and is highly-underrated for his defense. Lest we not forget that the Rockets did draft Gay in 2006 - one of former GM Carroll Dawson’s last moves - but we traded him away along with Stromile Swift to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for Shane Battier.Īs much as I love Battier as a player and as a person, I’d have to criticize this move considering how successful of a career Gay had in the Music City. Next: THREE Options To Fill Clint Capela's Void Our draft picks are going to be the key to this deal as we don’t have much assets that we can move and I personally wouldn’t want break up our budding nucleus. Should Trevor Ariza ( $7.8M) be considered in place of Brewer in the deal? I’d expect that the salary for our first-rounder this season will be on the lower-end - around $1 million - if the Rockets continue their torrid winning pace.Įven if that’s not enough, I’d also dangle the Rockets’ 2018 second-round pick to get the needle moving as well. McDaniels ( $3.3M) as well as our 2017 first-round pick to make this deal work. Obviously, Corey Brewer would be on the block with his salary of $7.6 million and I’d also include K.J. If the Houston Rockets were to pull off such a trade, it’d be strictly a rental with Daryl Morey’s hopes pinned on re-signing him next season. This season, he will earn $13.3 million and has a $14.3 million player option for 2017-18.īecause of the rising cap as I mentioned earlier, it would extremely beneficial for Gay to opt-out in July to see if he can snag a deal that will pay him more under the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement that was just inked recently.
The advantage to snatching up Gay is that he’s on the second-to-last leg of his three-year, $40 million deal.