then you'd have a starting lineup of lowry, martin, granger, scola, and yao. all of them draw fouls at a decent rate. scola would be the worst of that group at doing so, but if you look at the list of pf's better than him at it, there really aren't any clear upgrades that are available:

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat...

zach randolph? lamarcus aldridge? david west?

If we don't:
1) we don't have a PG in the short-term to fill Lowry's shoes.
2) there's not another comparable PG on the market that would effect the same production for the same price or less except a rookie-scale contract

Given 1 and 2, and management's stated willingness to match any [reasonable] offers, there's no reason not to bring Lowry back. We just want to sit on the Cav's money for the full week for fun.

Signing Lowry has no impact on our cap situation anyway. Even if deals will push us into the tax, so long as Alexander is still willing, there's no functional difference between a capped team and a luxury-taxed team. We can still execute the same trades, and still sign the same players using the same exceptions.

Scola is in the more precarious position if his offer (Nets?) is too high, simply because we have so many guys that can play the 4. We might have too little to discuss with a quiet off-season, but come on. We're not *that* desperate for news… are we?*

Thread hijack:

Over/under on Yao's average minutes before the trade deadline? Doesn't matter what you qualify it with, or what trades/signings you are assuming, just one final figure. How many minutes will Yao Ming be allowed to play?

I'm guessing 28.

* Not pointed at Rahat — just all Rockets fans, not exempting me

Now I can kind of see now… Brooks won the MIP award by having a deadeye 3 point shot and having the ball in his hands all of the time…

I guess lowry's it then.

what are your thoughts on the Blazers offering Wes Mathews that huge contract? And last year they offered Paul Milsap a monster deal as well, you almost get the feeling that Blazers management is trying to get the Jazz to lock up players that are not worth that much money. Any way that the Cavs are trying to pull a fast one on the Rockets? (I personally do not think so but I would not put it past them)

Whether Kyle plays against starters or rotation people, he produces big time. We can all remember how poorly we played near the end of the season when he was injured. You cannot overstate his importance, and even his and AB's salaries combined are less than one elite point guard. I would easily consider the pair of them equal in value to one elite player on the roster.

“Impact has traditionally been only a noun. In recent years, however, it has undergone a semantic shift that has allowed it to act as verb. So uses such as the following have become widespread (also widely condemned by stylists):

'Selig told Bush his ties to the Rangers could create an appearance of conflict of interest if he had to make decision that impacted [read affected] the franchise.'

These uses of the word would be perfectly acceptable if impact were performing any function not as ably performed by affect or influence. If affect as a verb is not sufficiently straightforward in context, then the careful writer might use 'have an impact on' which, though longer, is probably better than the jarring impact of 'impacted.' Reserve impact for noun use and impacted for wisdom teeth.

Interestingly, impact as a verb might have arisen partly in response to widespread diffidence about the spelling of affect.”

That is impressive! I love Lowry but I do not think the Rockets will match the offer. we can not pay our back up PG 6 million a year. Maybe we can pull a sign and trade w Shaq? Either way I can't wait to see what DM does.

while not orthodox, can't think of a better word in that spot. Can our resident linguists please chime in?