Houston GM Daryl Morey spoke to the media Thursday and said the Rockets will not waste any time -- they are matching the offer that Carl Landry signed with the Bobcats.
"We're going to go ahead and match Carl," said Morey. "We're really excited to have him back."
Landry signed a two-year offer sheet with the Bobcats on Wednesday, which gave the Rockets up to 7 days to match the offer and retain Landry.
The Rockets, however, did not even let 24 hours pass.
"I think we had obviously had a long time to think about what ranges of money we would match and this fell into that," said Morey. "Also, training camp coming Monday we wanted to get him in here, get the physical finished and get him in here starting Monday for camp."
Negotiations with Landry's agent Buddy Baker dragged out all summer, with one key point of contention being that the Rockets wanted to do further medical examinations on Landry's right knee.
"Yeah, well the way it works is we'll get a physical on him -- it's just like any contract where you get a period of a physical," said Morey. "Obviously, having played for us, we got a good sense of the state of the knee, but we feel like we're in a season where we got to take risks and bring in all the best players possible. We feel like this has a chance to be a special season."
The goal all along for the Rockets, said Morey, was to keep Landry in Houston.
"We wanted to sign him long-term out of the draft last year [but] because we didn't have the mid-level we weren't able to get that done," said Morey. "Now, we're excited to have that done. We're going to have a great set of players in for training camp."
