Report: Rockets Plan To Match Any Offer For K.J. McDaniels
The off season continues to be quite a frenzy for the Houston Rockets as they work to try to retain and put roster together for next season.
They want to make sure that the upcoming season’s roster is just as successful — if not more — than last year’s.
Although we had a bit of buzz with the re-signing of Patrick Beverley and Corey Brewer, there’s a lot of work to be done.
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There’s one guy that needs some attention and I wouldn’t mind seeing him back in a Rockets’ uniform.
Who would that be?
As a matter of fact, the Houston Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen said that’s what the Rockets plan to do:
The plan now (per sources) is to match on KJ McDaniels and look at trade options, opportunities. They'll be patient. https://t.co/HS0RRjcsdX
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) July 4, 2015
McDaniels is a restricted free agent this off season meaning that the Rockets can match any offer a team makes for his services.
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The Rockets extended their qualifying offer ($1.05 million) this past Tuesday to McDaniels as a formality just to set the floor of the bidding while the market will dictate the ceiling.
That’s exactly what the Rockets plan to do — they’re being coy by allowing him to go out to test the market to see what his worth is and will compensate him based off of that.
In other words, the Rockets don’t want to set McDaniels’ value, they want the free agent market to do so.
Is there interest in McDaniels?
But of course!
So far, the New York Knicks are reportedly interested in him as well as his name continuously being connected with the Los Angeles Lakers through idle chit-chat.
As you know, those are two franchise that have wads of cash and don’t mind throwing money at players.
With the Rockets definitely operating over the salary cap of about $67.1 million this season, the only way the team can squeeze him in — they don’t have his Bird rights — is to use their mid-level exception to which they’ve had in their back pocket for quite some time.
Feigen so much as confirmed that as well.
The MLE option for the Rockets is worth about $5.5 million this season which would likely be more than enough than what other teams would offer him.
Having McDaniels on board with the Rockets would be an absolute boon as we’ve seen his potential when he was a regular part of the rotation of the Philadelphia 76ers before we acquired him in a trade before the February deadline this past season.
He’s wasn’t a regular part of the rotation with the Rockets but can be.
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He’s extremely athletic, can score and is a ball-hawk in every sense of the word.
In fact, a few months back I wrote about how important it is to retain McDaniels and I give three reasons as to why.
Take a look at it here.
Hopefully, we will have this important piece of roster settled within a couple of weeks as the Rockets are now taking a wait-and-see approach with him.
McDaniels, 22, averaged 7.9 PPG and 3.2 RPG in 62 games with the 76ers and the Rockets last season.
Go Rockets!