Houston Rockets: Clint Capela can kiss that mega-deal goodbye

The Houston Rockets had hoped to make a splash in this year’s free agency but the Los Angeles Lakers have dominated the headlines. What’s the latest on Clint Capela? Let’s dive into what’s going on.

The Houston Rockets have watched this year’s free agency period from the sidelines as the only big move they made was to sign Chris Paul to a four-year, $160 million max deal. This cripples the team’s cap space at his $40 million per year salary but it wouldn’t been impossible to add another star to this team’s repertoire.

LeBron James? Nope. Paul George? Nope. Kawhi Leonard? Hell no. Did the Houston Rockets even have a shot at Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to replace Trevor Ariza? It sounds like we weren’t even in the running for his services.

So here were are, two days into free agency, with the team still not having a ton of answers at the moment to fill these holes. Last off season, those questions were already addressed. But now, we must play the waiting game and figure out how general manager Daryl Morey is going to assemble this team.

So how is legendary athlete/former Houston Rockets sideline reporter Lisa Malosky doing? Robert Land of Houston Sports Talk, a favorite podcast of mine talks with her in reminiscence:

I give the free agency period an incomplete at the moment because I feel work has yet to be done but all of the good free agents seemed to have found homes and now the pickings are slim. Who’s going to be our starting small forward? I floated the possibility that Gerald Green could be that guy but we’ll see.

But let’s talk about Clint Capela. My colleague Ben Dubose tweeted out something that ESPN’s Brian Windhorst had said about the latest with Capela’s free agency. Apparently it isn’t going as he had hoped:

.@WindhorstESPN on Clint Capela: "Last night, after his meeting with the #Rockets, his agent was aggressively calling 10+ teams."
— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) July 3, 2018

The fact that Windhorst is reporting this is not good for Capela’s hopes of a big payday. If one is

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such a coveted free agent, they’d be calling HIM but instead we’re seeing what’s happening otherwise.

Over the weekend, the Houston Rockets made a qualifying offer of $4.75 million to open up the bidding process for his free agency. Surprisingly, Capela may have to take the offer as a last resort for next season and then either rework another long-term deal with the Houston Rockets next off season or test the market as a unrestricted free agent for the 2019-20 season.

This extremely sucks for Capela, who worked his tail through the season — as well as the playoffs — to help this team get to the Western Conference Finals. But it was unfortunate that his free agency period happened to occur at the same time as the great LeBron and he now has been more of an afterthought.

Had LeBron not opted-out of his deal to stay in Cleveland, there’s no question Capela would be at the top of the list with a plethora of offers to review before making his decision to sign and then take the offer to the Rockets.

Instead, he might have to take the one-year deal that’s still a 49 percent increase in his pay from $2.33 million in 2017-18 but far from what he wanted.

We’ll have to see but I things are looking grim for my boy Capela.

Next: 3 reasons not to worry about the Lakers interest in Clint Capela

Capela, 24, averaged 13.9 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks off 65.2 percent shooting from the field and 56 percent from the charity stripe last season, all career-highs.

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