While most of us agree that Tilman is evil, it may be time to blame the real reason we can’t be competitive and that is Covid-19. As per a recent article, Tilman paid 2 billion dollars in debt to acquire the Rockets. The loan was off his existing restaurant and casino businesses and seemed like a safe bet at the time. Due to those businesses struggling to survive during Covid, he is in severe financial trouble in trying to pay off his Rockets loan. He has no incoming fan revenue and must make severe cuts to be able to keep the team. He got rid of Morey’s huge contract, MDA’s contract, and Harden’s huge contract and replaced with minimum (expiring) contracts and future picks that cost him nothing now. Look for Gordon to be gone too, with a first rounder attached, as Tilman has no choice but to continue to make these cuts to survive. From all accounts he bought the team to win, but until his other businesses rebound (and that may be a couple years) we won’t be able to compete with the upper echelon teams. Sadly, Jarrett Allen was the latest cost cutting casualty resulting from Covid-19.
Tilman is the reason this team blows chunks, not Covid. Let's get that straight. He ruined a championship contender team in record time.
Whatever one though about Fertitta before the pandemic, it’s hard to deny that the disruption caused by the pandemic wasn’t a major factor in things blowing up so fast. There’s no way to know how things would have played out otherwise, of course.
He was doing this starting 2 yrs ago. Taiwan morey, trading 1sts for cash, low balling Mike Yea that fat **** can’t blame covid
Hope he’s forced to sell and his businesses go under if only to humble him and for the league to look at minimum requirements of ownership. I still don’t understand why it’s not like in European football where cities own the teams, they have managers in place who oversee operations and money comes in from sponsors as well as the municipality.
i think the point is valid... Tilman was cheap before - but now he's in panic mode... that boat that just got done was commissioned before Covid... was it COD? lol
Holy cow, I was going to make this terrible reference Anyways, deals like Ennis, Carter Williams, Marquise Chriss, Knight, Shumpert, Melo, and the king of all of them, Westbrook, happened pre Covid. The once mighty 2018 team was a distant memory defecated on by Tilman by the time anyone ever heard of Wuhan. This is purely revisionist history. Dare I say - anachronistic? There, I said it
Don't blame Covid. There is no one to blame but Fertitta himself. 2018-2019 off season was a clear sign that this franchise was in trouble. The team was 1.5 games from being in the finals. The Rockets were the scariest team in the West. We may not have wanted to pay Ariza but we literally made no attempt to find a replacement except for James Ennis who is useless and Melo. Unless Fertitta proves to me that there is even hope for this franchise I'm cancelling my league pass. Watching James Harden on the Nets will be like watching a sex tape of your favorite ex girlfriend boning her new dude and being all happy. Watching the Rockets will be like watching a tape of your current obese F'ugly girl lay there like a blow up doll. She doesn't move, she doesn't even get ya off or turned on. It's just there.
LOL @ blaming Covid for this. If Covid 'killed' the Houston Rockets, the other teams in the league should also be just as bad. They're not.
Didn't Tillman just buy a Super Yacht? Bruh Covid may have had an impact on Fertits but whether there was Covid or not he wouldn't have treated Rox any different. Regardless of his financial ruin or w/e if he can afford to buy and more importantly main and keep paying for a super yacht he ain't that broke. That super yacht cost like 150M and probably will cost 30M a year to maintain. Covid has nothing to do with Tilman's cheapness. Now listen, it ain't my money and frankly neither is it yours right so it's great to tell other people what to do with their money. I don't receive a single dollar from FerTits so if he goes broke to improve the team it ain't no skin off my nose. But as a logical individual sometimes the gains far outweigh the improvement to the team. If getting a scrub is the difference between 10M in savings then you know what I'm ok with savings. We have to be realistic in our expectations. You can't expect other people to act like they don't care about their money because if they didn't care about money then they wouldn't be billionaires. Given all those assumptions let's do analysis on Fertita's cheapness. 1. How much is Fertita getitng from Lux Tax? This is the list of all the teams slated to pay lux tax for 2021 NBA season. You can filter the total lux tax being paid by every team then add those up and then divide by all the none paying lux tax teams. https://www.spotrac.com/nba/tax/ TLDR It's around 12M in lux tax payments that Fertita will receive for dodging the lux tax. I believe Fertita dodged it by around 3M so if the Jarret Allen trade didn't pan out he would still be paying the tax. 2. How much did Fertita save by trading Allen? Well first of all I'm totally ignorant about the cap so unfortunately I can't give you breakdown but I can tell you which moves lessened the Rockets luxury tax. From what I can see Jarrett Allen saved Fertita around 32M USD in cold cash. This is because Taurean Prince is due 12M this year and 13M next year for his salary. Add the 12M in lux tax payments and subtract the 5M difference between Exum salary and Allen salary (Allen makes half of Exum salary) and voila you have roughly around 32M in net savings over 2 years. All these are estimates cuz I don't have time to properly calculate ****. I may be off a couple M but it's around that number. From a non monetary perspective I can also see the value of dumping Prince, dude is grossly overpaid and I don't wanna pay him 25M in 2 years. You can argue he is an expiring next year but so is Eric Gordon and we would still have to give up assets to offload him. TLDR the Jarrett Allen trade is Jarrett Allen for Dante Exum, 2021 FRP and roughly 32M USD. Again you can say Fertita should have turned a blind eye to all that money and improved the team at all cost blah blah blah but to that I say it's easy to tell other people to spend their money on **** you want. If you are Rafael Stone and Fertita is your boss you really gonna tell him turn a blind eye to 32M in cash for an expiring prospect like Allen? And you still get 2021 FRP in return? Let's get real ok? That ain't happening. Even if your boss is Cuban he can turn around and say let's just use that money and buy picks for 5 straight years. Cmon guys your imaginary owner who will go broke to improve the team by 1% more doesn't exist. Maybe if you can hypnotize Elon Musk or Bezos to buy the Houston Rockets then that would happen lulz.
