We could take both Lin and Asik off their payroll, without sending much money back, so long as we broke the deal up into two trades.
Trade 1: Jeremy Lin (8.3 mill) <--> Pierce Trade Exception
Trade 2: Omer Asik (8.3 mill) <---> Keith Bogans (5 million****), Vitor Faverani (2 million)
****: bogans contract is non-guaranteed, so the rockets can just waive him and his salary is gone.
That would be that basic structure of a Houston salary dump deal, i think. You may see us give up one of our picks that aren't very good (76ers pick, ideally). But we would have to give up LESS for Asik, because we are willing to take on the contract of Jeremy Lin.
Yeah, I think this is more accurate.
I think it's a little unrealistic to expect Asik+Lin and additional compensation for simply taking those two guys.
It's kind of like the situation with the Clippers last year. Except less dire.
The Clippers were desperate. Chris Paul was about to bolt. They had a golden opportunity with us. They had a choice between being relevant or falling back to obscurity.
We had nothing to lose.
Eventually, of course, Ainge got a first round pick out of Doc freaking Rivers.
Once again, we have nothing to lose.
For the Rockets, Dwight's health is a concern. You always want to strike while the iron is hot in the NBA as you never know what's going to happen. There may not be another opportunity like Melo in the Dwight-Harden era Rockets.
At the very least I hope Ainge doesn't give up anything of significance (or better yet, anything at all).