JULY 23RD: Capela has signed his contract, a source tells Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Houston will have to receive the signed contract before it becomes official.
JULY 14TH: The Rockets have been working with No. 25 pick Clint Capela to secure his buyout from Chalon-Sur-Saone of France and a FIBA letter of clearance, and they intend to sign him to a rookie scale contract this summer, reports Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. The outcome is the result that Capela’s camp had been pushing for after the Rockets apparently asked him to remain overseas for next season. Feigen’s piece doesn’t refer to the request, which Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com had reported over the weekend, but he does cast the Rockets as having been ambivalent about the notion of Capela playing for the team this season. Now, it appears the team and Capela are in lockstep toward a contract.
“We are planning out roster for next season. We expect him to be a part of it,” Rockets executive vice president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas said. “We’re in the process of working toward that.”
Capela is likely to receive a salary worth more than $1.189MM for next season, as our table of salaries for 2014 first-rounders shows. The Rockets had been attempting to preserve cap flexibility as they chased LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh, and Houston shopped the pick before the draft. There was also reportedly interest from other teams in trading for Capela’s rights once the Rockets made the selection, but Houston never showed mutual interest in such a swap. Now that the team’s marquee free agent targets are headed elsewhere and Chandler Parsons is off to Dallas, there’s room for Capela, a raw talent who averaged 9.8 points and 6.9 rebounds in 21.4 minutes per game for his French team this past season.
i like the pick .. he reminds me alot of a young dalembert… i say sign him trade montejunas …