The story of the Golden State Warriors recruiting Kevin Durant during the 2016 offseason is pretty well known. The Warriors fell to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, and almost immediately, players (namely Draymond Green) started doing what they could to convince Durant that he was the missing piece they needed to become champions once again.
Apparently, Chris Paul thought this was an effective way of pitching a franchise, which is why he’s reportedly already doing this with LeBron James. It’s been less than two days since the Warriors bounced the Houston Rockets from the 2018 NBA Playoffs, which means Paul has his sites set on bringing his banana boat buddy to Houston.
According to Marc Stein of the New York Times, Paul has started trying to pitch James on joining the Rockets in the event he opts out of his contract and becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer.
There will still be plenty of talk over the next two weeks about what James will do July 1 and the growing belief that he’ll be leaving his home-state Cavaliers this offseason to join a team better suited to consistently challenge Golden State. Rest assured that the Rockets’ understandably devastated Chris Paul — who made a fast exit from Toyota Center late Monday night after being forced to watch the biggest game of his life from the bench because of his hamstring injury — has already begun his recruitment of James to Houston.
As we’ve laid out in the past, it’s really hard to find a path for the Rockets to free up the necessary cap space to sign James. Paul is an unrestricted free agent, while breakout big man Clint Capela is a restricted free agent this summer, plus James Harden has more than $180 million in guaranteed money on the books. Add in the fact that guys like Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon are both making eight figures through the 2019-20 campaign and it’d take some serious wheeling and dealing to create anywhere close to the cap space necessary to lure LeBron.
But still, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey is a creative guy, and if anyone can find a way to do some unconventional stuff to free up the space to get James, it’s him. Or maybe Paul is able to make such a convincing sales pitch that James takes a major pay cut just to join the Rockets. Odds are that won’t happen, but hey, you never know.
(Via New York Times)
