I see people are talking about the Adrian Wojnarowski story that suggests the Rockets are pursuing a sign-and-trade deal with the Sixers to acquire Jimmy Butler.

Here’s what Woj had to say in a story published last night for ESPN:

The Rockets don’t have the salary-cap space to sign Butler, so they’d need the threat of the Sixers losing him for nothing to a team with the available room to motivate Philadelphia into a trade. The Rockets also would potentially need to make this a multiteam deal to satisfy the rules of base year compensation that would cover Butler’s outgoing salary.

The Sixers plan to be aggressive in signing Butler to a new deal, sources said, and they could blunt a Rockets push with a full five-year, $190 million offer at the start of free agency on Sunday night. The Sixers could offer Butler a four-year, $146.5 million deal, too.

Butler would be eligible to sign a four-year, $140 million contract on the way to the Rockets, but Houston likely would need to include two of these players — center Clint Capela, guard Eric Gordon and power forward P.J. Tucker — to make the financial deal work, sources said.

Ok, so let’s process this in the form of bulletpoints, after the jump:

  • Jimmy can make the most money by staying with Philly on that five year, $190 million max. If it’s really about cash for him, he’d re-sign here and run it back, which would take him to age 34.
  • Salaries: Clint Capela is 25 years old and has four more years on his contract in the $14 to $18 million range before becoming a free agent in 2023. Eric Gordon is 30. He has one more year at $14 million on his deal. Tucker is 34 with two more years on his contract at about $8 million per, though his 2020-2021 season is only about 25% guaranteed.
  • Can you afford to pay Capela $14 million a year to be Joel Embiid’s backup? He’d log plenty of minutes in that role, but he’d be a starter anywhere else. He’s too expensive to be a “second stringer.”
  • Gordon is a nice player, a career 37.4% three point shooter coming off a year in which he scored 16 points per game playing next to ball-dominant James Harden.
  • Tucker is a great hybrid glue guy, somebody who does a lot of team-first things really well, I just don’t know how much he’s gonna have left in the tank approaching age 35.

So really it boils down to this:

If Jimmy doesn’t want to sign for the Sixers, do you simply let him walk and go for Plan B? Or do you get something back from the Rockets in a sign and trade and let him go to the Western Conference at the same time? I personally don’t really see how Jimmy fits in a Mike D’Antoni system, but who knows? Jimmy did grow up in the Houston suburb of Tomball, so this move would send him home to close out his NBA career.

Problem is that Plan B is kind of hazy. What is Plan B? Is it Al Horford? Is it Malcolm Brogdon? Brogdon is really tricky because you’d have to renounce cap holds in order to make an offer that the Bucks would have difficulty matching. Horford would probably play as a stretch four in Philly, which is where Tobias Harris played this year, unless Tobias wants to play small forward instead with Horford at power forward. Then you’d get into the issue of whether Tobias can defend capably enough at the three.

Woj mentioned a multi-team deal to make this work, and I think you might be able to grease the wheels by moving Capela to a squad that needs a big while returning a shooter to the Sixers instead.

Something like this? –

Make sense? Maybe.

I’d have to double check the money on a multi-team deal, but the point is that you’re bringing in a team with a different need and adding flex with what Houston is willing to offer. A trade similar to the one above would be a pretty good haul for the Sixers considering they’d be giving up a guy who would be headed for free agency anyway. Of course people will miss the point and argue that Brooklyn doesn’t need Capela when they have Jarrett Allen, like Investor Jeff in Slack chart, but I’m just trying to illustrate what Capela’s inclusion would look like in a three-team deal that gets the Rockets what they want.

Anyway, I think you know I’m in the “run it back” camp, since it makes the most sense in terms of money and continuity. If you can’t run it back, you’re looking at Plan B or C, which is… I don’t know. Are we talking Kemba Walker? Khris Middleton? Danny Green? Terrence Ross? Bojan Bogdanovic? Pat Beverly? Jeremy Lamb? (Actually, I love Patrick Beverly and think he would be a perfect fit here…)

I don’t know where we’re headed if Plan A fails, but it sure would be interesting to find out.