Houston Rockets: Dwight Howard And The New TV Deal

On Oct. 6, in an unbelievable power move by rookie commissioner Adam Silver, the NBA inked a nine-year,$24 billion TV deal with Disney (ESPN/ABC) and Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting. Forget about Donald Sterling and/or Tim Donaghy, this is, by far, the biggest accomplishment the league has had in the past 20 years.

The deal, by proving NBA’s global game and increasing popularity, strikes every single poverty-related argument used by the owners during the 2011 Lockout.

As a result of the previous deal, each team in the league’s entitled to roughly $90 million per year for nine years, nearly three times the money from the previous $30 million per-year deal. Once the new money starts coming in (after the 2015-16 season) every team in the NBA is in for a huge bump on (1) team’s basketball related income (BRI) and (2) salary cap.

(Note: 2013-14 Salary cap = $63 million.)

With as much as $12 million extra in salary-cap and a luxury-tax threshold that’ll likely run way out of teams’ reach, teams like the Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, and Los Angeles Lakers will be able to bury the hatchet brought by past “mistakes” (i. e. Deron Williams‘, Carmelo Anthony‘s, Amar’e Stoudemire‘s, Andrea Bargnani‘s, and even Kobe Bryant‘s hefty cap-mudering contracts) and lure good or even great players to join their loaded rosters.

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The Houston Rockets, in their desperate look for an NBA championship, are not the exception. Even though the Rockets don’t seem to have as many bad contracts as the Nets, Lakers or Knicks, and their cap is “only” tied up between their self-proclaimed cornerstones Dwight Howard and James Harden, any bum on the Rockets’ salary-cap or tax threshold is bound to have some negative effects.

James Harden’s contract isn’t up until the 2017-18 (last year non-guaranteed) season, moment at which, barring an unexpected/unpredictable issue, he’ll resign at some kind of max-deal, that’s definitely not an issue.

Howard’s deal, on the other hand, runs through the 2015-16 season with a player option for 2016-17 (a.k.a the season in which the money from the new TV deal will start going into the Rockets’ pockets).

As an individual who’s somewhat unwilling to make any sacrifices for his team, Howard

, barring an NBA championship in the next two seasons,

is likely to opt-out of his current contract for the following reason:

MONEY

Howard’s due $23.2 million in the 2016-17 season. He is, under the current CBA salary-cap regulations, maxed-out.

However, once the new money starts coming in, Howard could be earning a lot more, around $30 million (if the Rockets are willing to go that far), if he were to exercise his player option for 2016-17. Also, in case he did exercise said player option and was able to negotiate a new contract prior to that specific season, his contract would be locked in even if the NBPA decides to opt-out of the current CBA come summer 2017 (i. e. Gilbert Arenas‘ 2008 deal).

The Rockets do have a chance at unloading all their current contracts, with the exception of Howard and Harden, and unloading a massive amount of cap space come the 2016 offseason.

Still, if Howard and Harden keep performing at a high-level for the better part of the next couple of seasons, the Rockets might find themselves in a place were satisfying, money-wise, both of their superstars will end up eating up all their new salary-cap and eventually torpedoing their chances at finding quality role-players to surround them and, finally, their title chances.