Has ESPN Made It More Difficult For Rockets To Attract Free Agents?

I think it's a mix of everything.

ESPN, TNT, Charles Barkley.
Les Alexander
And the reputation Morey acquired when he dealt like a million players/assets since he's been with the rockets.

 

They need to stop televising our games ASAP

 

Dwight is a flake and mentally weak and ESPN (I assume we're mainly referring to First Take?) was saying it since he was in Orlando. Everything they were saying about him has turned out to be true. Even all the hate from TNT was mostly about Howard. Everyone ignored it in the beginning and thought it would turn out differently because that's what fans do. Now that he's gone, the Rockets are probably just off ESPN's radar and back to being a non-factor.

 

When were they ever?
We won championships that no one gave us any chance of winning
up and until the final shot
Then everyone wants to come out with the ASTERICK SH**

I don't even think the Sport Ill got us on the cover in a timely fashion
if i recall

ESPN is crap and has been for a long time


Even if the Rockets have done badly . .. is it worse than others?
Just because a criticism is correct does not mean there is no bias
When you go out of your way to point out the faults of one team while glorify another team with the same faults or worse. . .that is a problem

ESPN and most sports reporting now is a blog not news

Rocket River
Am I Lying?

 

There was a hard push for DeAndre Jordan to go to Dallas . . . ..

Rocket River

 

What about THE BUCKS? THE PACERS? THE JAZZ?

For the last 20 years the Rockets have been in the Top Half of the NBA
if not the Top 3rd just about every year

Rocket River

 

Seriously we can't be this whiny of a fanbase, can we?

Who cares what others say...just play.

DD

 

Before last year this may have been a legitimate argument. We were good, yet ESPN and TNT/Barkley did not like us. We had a great opportunity to shove it in their faces and become the new Bad Boys in basketball by proxy.

Unfortunately, we shat the bed, were left with egg on our faces, and in doing so confirmed all the criticisms that the naysayers had about us. Now we have no room to cry foul against the media. We've brought this on ourselves.

 

Malakas nailed it on page 1.

Casual fans and beat writers for other teams are definitely influenced by BSPN, but if I'm a player trying to decide which team to play for, my concerns are going to be money and winning.

Not what some schmuck at BSPN is tweeting

 

The media bashing started way before the Howard signing. It actually started during the Yao and Tmac Era. A lot of people in the media didn't like the way the organization handled the Tracy McGrady situation.

 

One thing. There has never been agenda against us. We're not a huge market that warrants some kind of agenda. There is a lot of media hatred towards the Knicks and Lakers, yet they're still in discussions for free agents, most likely due to the lucrative potential endorsement deals. Any team that has Dwight will get the same scrutiny we're getting. We've done this to ourselves by repeatedly trying to shortcut the system and treating our players and coaches (aside from our superstar) like assets and not people and we would still be in the same place regardless of whether the media was paying attention to us or not.

 

Les Alexander has made it more difficult for Rockets to attract free agents. Espn may say alot of slanderous things about us but thanks to Les and his ways it may be very well justified.

 

Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Oh wait you meant Morey? Morey may take to social media to defend himself but its nowhere on the level of Cuban.

The Rockets have always been scrutinized by the media, there are just some teams that they will favor and some teams they think play better villains. They're sole job is to sell their popularity, it's way easier to make fun of Harden versus defending him. Look at LBJ, he's always portrayed as the villain, he's 6'8-6'9 and weighs 240-250. He always gets hit but does not always get fouls. Last I checked a foul is a foul right? It should be called consistently more often than not. So what does LeBron do? He takes it upon himself (as with Chris Paul and James Harden) and sells the foul. That decision right there allows the media to pick on the player.

Even when we had Lowry, Dragic, Scola and company we were a team that was overachieving. Just accept that fact that the Houston Rockets are not the Lakers, Celtics, Heat, Spurs or any other team that the media loves.

 

You guys, nobody is saying IGNORE ALL OTHER FACTORZ!1!! The question is if BSPN *contributes* to the problem of attracting free agents. And yes, compared to other 41-41 playoff teams, we get a lot of extra grief. Players freely acknowledge that most of them watch sports media coverage, a lot, so it stands to reason that potential free agents would be influenced by all the negative stories about a rotten, underachieving, low morale team. In our brief bit of playoffs, the main coverage from our only win was during one play when our bench didn't celebrate enough. Seriously.

None of that absolves the Rockets players, their GM, or their owner. That's not what was asked. All of those factors contribute, and ESPN contributes as well. Pretty simple idea from the OP.

 

This is what interests me the most. I think as long as Harden is wearing the red the coverage the Rockets have will be more negative than positive.

Dwight could be a redemption story in the making depending on where he signs and how much it's for.

 

We were media darlings when we had Yao and T-Mac, and even in the Lowry-Scola era. We're only getting shat on now because we're underachieving relative to our expectations.

 

I don't think ESPN has an agenda really.

I do think that media perception does affect a lot of things in sports though and this is probably one of them, even if only subtly.

 

media's perception of us and the way we are portrayed (Harden) does hurt us, so the answer to the question is yes. That being said, the Rockets' misfortune over the last decade has been largely self inflicted.

 

espn has made it difficult for itself to attract knowledgeable basketball fans