[ESPN/MacMahon] "Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta excited about future of the NBA franchise"

No he's a moron. He was saying the trade should be Harden for Ben Simmons straight up.

No one would give up this amount of draft capital for Ben Simmons unless it was a Jrue Holiday/Paul George type thing where it was also to keep/get another star. Bill also said he wouldn't trade Jaylen Brown for Harden and no one is giving up the draft capital the Nets gave up to get Brown either unless there was some other factor.

Harden and KD are already missing games. It's year one.

 

I'm one of the biggest Tilman haters on here but if I were to believe anything he said, this is exactly what I'd want to hear. I'm lowkey excited about the future too. As long as they don't rush anything, we should keep picking high and eventually we'll get our next superstar. Let's just hope that when that guy does get here, the FO doesn't piss him off enough to leave immediately.

 

Yeah, it’s year one, Harden, KD and Kyrie are missing games. And the Nets are still the second seed.

By “draft capital”, you mean mediocre picks from an Eastern Conference team with three star players including a perennial MVP candidate? Right.

Tilman coincidentally gave up more “draft capital” to downgrade from CP3 to Westbrook.

 

Bill, like the espn/tmz guys should be taken with a grain of salt.

As you said, jrue holiday paul george got that capital, so it happens in this league. there are a lot of variables for trade value in this league.

I like that we have 'hope'. Draft isn't an exact science. The idea that we are punting hoping for 2027 pick to fall, for the draft class to be good, for the nba lotterey which is less predictable to fall in our favor, and then for us to make the right selection is a lot, but its...hope.

Furthermore we have to look at the two abilities to rebuild. Nets have a strong market, a new owner who is handing over a blank check and a sensible front office and branding that players are drawn too which these changes have changed teh fate for a once very lowly franchise. So even if they rebuild, whose to say talent is more likely to not go there?

Furthermore, we look at the case of LEvert and Allen. Allen could've done what we did with oladipo, but better as in he was an expiriing but two months of his play could get us first in return on oppose to what we got. We traded him for a late first rounder guaranteed with milwaulkee..thats a low bar.
Likewise chosing levert over oladipo. Levert has had his injureis, as has oladpio, neither are sure things. LEvert has potential because his two years in the playoffs, which are more scouted and harder defense, he dropped 21-5-6 and did a great job carrying teams. The hope in him increases trade value, hes actually gotten back to that level the last month or two with indiana. Hes younger and has a longer contract, so we don't have our backs against the wall again as we did with oladipo.

There is no idea trade when you lose harden, but its important to get the dtails right. Anthony davis was in a similar situation, a star you can't match in value and demanding to specific teams so thus removing a lot of leverage. They actually got tangible goods in Lonzo, Ingram Hart, and a lottery pick. So a guaranteed lottery pick is far more than we got in any part of the trade, as is there actual young players all who could convert to first picks pretty handidly if you werne't sold on their own potential.

Its a tough hand to have, but not sure we nailed it. The only silver lining is that we absolutely sucked, which the same writer noted we weren't trying to do thinking oladipo was an all star talent and with wood we can get inthe playoffs and they were cheering us on as we went 11-10. The rest is history, hopefully that 52 percent works our way and we can look forward, but we don't exactly have a great culture, if we get talent we can sit talent, retrade talent, so this whole we got our top pick bc of harden trade wasn't exactly an accurate conculsion. Its hopeful and optimistic, thats nice. but not accurate

 

Hopefully we're looking at their injuries and hope it combusts. We're also hoping they can't draw more talent afterward to a great market. But then again, we we're quick to jump off Chris Paul because he was injured too often. MPJ and other guys who have had to sit out years after having issues each year in college/hs....its noteable, but not definitive.

 

Says the brilliant guy who forced through a CP3+4 FRPs for Westbrook trade over the objections of damn near everyone.

 

Should be a pinned post and required reading for CFers.

 

It's amazing how you can say constantly incorrect things and just discard them like they didn't happen. Do you even politics bro?

 

Tillman will sell you whatever you want, bud:
-These are not my analysis, these are direct quotes from the man himself in interviews he volunteered to do or sought out
- I say sought out, bc there are not many if any owners doing this much of press, (https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...amn-turmoil-unsettling-vibe-surrounds-rockets), or plastering their face over the arena to be the Face of the team.



"
“So, we’re going to set ourselves up to make the moves, to be one of the top teams. We’re going to do whatever we have to do to win. I can promise that to my fans and compete for the NBA championship this year.”

Fertitta will do whatever it takes to win. Except pay the luxury tax."

"Last year, Fertitta said, “I can promise you, we’re going to win some championships with James Harden.”

"
If only the Rockets weren’t so good last season, I joke, he could have saved some money on that massive purchase price. Fertitta, true to form,
is up for another quip.

“I wouldn't have paid $2.2 billion (for the team); I would've paid $1.5 (billion),” he says with a laugh. “I would've rather they'd won 15 games last season.”"

""The Rockets would never be sold, unless the whole world came to an end and then it wouldn’t matter, okay? If I ever sell the Rockets, it’s because we don’t exist anymore as a country with the rule of law. We’re having anarchy in the street, and at that point there’s no buyers."

"I don’t need partners, so I don’t have partners. There’s just no interest in having partners. I think all owners would love not to have partners, but not all teams financially can do that. I have the opportunity that me and my family can own this team 100 percent, and there’s no reason to ever change that.""

"“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” He says he regularly turns down offers of $1 billion for 50% of the Rockets"

""His passion for sole ownership of his businesses is a direct contrast to the ownership groups that typically buys pro sports teams now. Fertitta’s authority and wealth are akin to a Steve Ballmer or Mark Cuban, but he is determined to stand apart from those two both in personality and practice.""

"“Why would anyone think that?” he asks. “Why?”" This notion of “budget mode” offends Fertitta as a restaurateur, as a hotelier, "“I would have a problem asking people to watch a purposefully bad team. In a city like Houston, that’s as competitive as it is for the entertainment dollar, you would be shocked at how your fans can leave you so quick. Then you have to spend years trying to get them back.”"
"

"TM: A lot of people are looking at you and saying, this guy is worth $4 billion, whatever it is now. He’s got mansions and yachts and jets. Why can’t he afford to keep everyone on the payroll?


TF: You know the answer to that. It’s kind of insulting, okay? Do you think I wouldn’t go sell that stuff right now if I could?


TM: I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.


TF: First off, I have $2 billion in equity in the Rockets that I can’t touch, because you can only borrow so much on a basketball team. Do you think there’s a buyer for jets or yachts right now? Absolutely not. Do you think there’s a buyer for a mansion right now? There’s nobody that’s not being affected."
TF: If you go find me a buyer for my yachts and my mansions and my jets, I’ll sell them tomorrow."
-https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mega-rich-sail-away-from-the-pandemic-as-superyacht-sales-blow-away-comparisons-529pbqhw2
-https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-08/luxury-jet-market-perks-up-as-new-buyers-turn-to-private-flying


"TM: What would you like to see in it?


TF: I don’t know. I really haven’t counted on the government. I’m not one of the largest companies in America and I’m not one of the smallest. When it’s all over with, you can write an article [saying] that I survived and I didn’t get any help from the government."


"As we walked down one corridor, he stopped to stare at a section of the wall paneling.

“Jeff, I think this is wrong. It’s not like it is downstairs.”


He pulled a rubber-banded roll of cash and credit cards out of his pocket, slid out a black American Express card, and placed it against the panel.

“It looks about a sixteenth of an inch off,” he told Cantwell, who nodded in agreement.

Was this being staged for my benefit? Can the human eye actually detect such a minuscule discrepancy? Whether or not it was a put-on, the message was clear: Fertitta cares about the little things.
"

""After the meeting, Fertitta points to his watch. "We cover more in 17 minutes than most companies do in an hour because I will not have long meetings," he says. His attention span is about as long as this sentence. Besides, the numbers tell him everything."'

"Russell Westbrook, who will serve as an on-court partner for Houston's all-universe guard James Harden. "The basketball people wanted to do it and I approved. Pretty simple," he says. "They know how important it is for me to win."The trade rocked the NBA, but Fertitta says absorbing Westbrook's contract was a smart risk. Because of NBA open-book policies, he knows the player budget of every team and the salary of every player--which makes life easy for a numbers guy like him. "This is what an entrepreneur does," he says. "Every business stands on its own, and you can't get caught up in the noise."
-"
I was in Europe, and so I was six or seven hours ahead of them. So I’m talking at 2, 3, 4 in the morning. And we just decided to do it. They ran different statistics by me.

My basketball ops [operations] got maybe a little weak at the end, and I just said, ‘We’re doing this. We are going to make the change. We’re going to go after it and roll the dice. We’re going to find that 5 percent.’


""I know I’m the owner and there’s only one owner. Not three. One. Nothing happens without me. I don’t have to go show up at a meeting. The buck stops with me.”""
-Also: "-Last year (getting under the luxury tax) was a fluke,” Fertitta said. “We were going to be in the (tax). It was an accident. I’m still trying to figure out how we got under. I was positive we were going to be in it by $11 million. But if I’m in the luxury tax, I expect us to win.""

"“I watched Jim Crane disassemble the Houston Astros for four years. Taking all of these prospects and draft picks, and I just couldn’t believe what he did. He didn’t have a face of the team. I just don’t know if I would’ve made that decision. I don’t know if I could. It took a lot of balls to do that, and I congratulate him for what he accomplished. But to field a team that loses 110 games a year for three years even if I knew I was going to win a World Series. I just don’t know that I could put a product out like that.”"



Anything you want, he'll sell you.

 

I said top 10 players. They are good and could be. Maybe... but they are not right now.

Im hoping the Rockets get a transformational player in the next 5 years. Without an Hakeem/Duncan/Lebron/Curry/Harden/Giannas/Durant type player it’s damn hard to have a realistic shot at winning it all. Brown and Tatum are not that and is not a treadmill I would want to be on as a franchise.

 

Meanwhile, he went and did lots of somethings stupid to prevent us from having the best change to win a championship while we were actually competing for a championship. Why should anyone think that would change now?

 

Brown and Tatum can still absolutely be that. Both young extremely talented stars with high ceilings. Especially as the lebron’s, kd’s, harden’s fade away. They’re absolutely in that next group of young elite players. They’ve already gone deep in the playoffs at a extremely young age. It doesn’t matter who the rockets are getting. They’re much farther behind and in the next 5 years still won’t sniff close to how Boston is

 

Bill Simmons is right. The truth hurts, Rockets fans.

 

You don't have to tell me bro, I think he's a movie villain. I'm just saying at least now he knows what the right thing to lie about is.

 

The pragmatic approach is not looking at our recent history and mourning over what has happened. The pragmatic approach is saying we are what we are which is a team that doesn't win, but we've got some pieces worth watching. It's accepting that which cannot be changed. The pragmatist knows complaints happen, but that they add no value. The pragmatist sees KJ Martin's ability to block 7 footers at the rim and wonders how that might look if we figured out a few other things and started winning. The pragmatist does not dwell in the past so please stop calling it pragmatism unless you're trying to learn a lesson. We don't have some badass team that's about to be broken up so there's no lesson, for Tilman or for any of us, from which we can glean wisdom with our current situation. So pragmatic discussion of how Tilman broke up the team is useless right now. If we build a contender, that's when you should bring it back up. Right now it has no value to complain about what Tilman did to the 2018 team.

We lost our entire 2018 team. The pragmatist is forced to accept that because there is nothing pragmatic about dwelling on what cannot be controlled. What happened has already happened and we can't change it, nor dwell on it in order to move forward. Quit preaching and start living your word. Post like a pragmatist. Currently you're posting a lot of 'what might have been' discussion. That type of posting is useless with the current team we have.

Right now you're in mourning of a lost team and you're anything but practical. I stand by what I say because I did not offer a "binary option", I offered my preference on two opposing ways to view this team.

What is our team right now and what can we do to make it better? That's all that matters to a pragmatist. If the name Harden comes up, it's not pragmatic by definition. That's in the past. The future is here, why not watch a game live instead of glancing at a box score? We all know watching a box score and commenting about the game that already happened lacks a certain je ne sais quoi we desire to follow as fellow fans.

(@HP3 , I tried to keep you in mind while I replied. I didn't want to get too aggressive with my reply. I'm sure I could've done better, but it's better than how I replied to you that one time.)

 

So the guy that claims his basketball people did not want to trade for Westbrook and did so because he forced them to....he is now the same guy staying out of basketball ops.

I knew Tilman was bad when he bought the time. I did *not* think he was comically, laughably bad. Like worst owner in the league bad.

 

Yes. I firmly remember everyone who analyzed the CP3 trade predicting that OKC might get the fifth pick in 2021 when the trade was made.

If you and others want to look at the glass half empty with the Nets picks instead of looking at a core that will have limited flexibility that is showing the age/injury cliff might be coming very soon and has a history of moodiness and unhappiness that's fine, but it's the most draft compensation given up in NBA history under current rules. If you think that Ben Simmons straight up would have been a better trade like Bill Simmons that's fine. But no team would give up 4 unprotected picks and 4 unprotected swaps for Ben Simmons so objectively the market value of our return is better than that.

 

What is he talking about?

None of those guys were in their prime and Harden is still a MVP type of player.

That's why Simmons is laughing

 

Really?

Don't know know what your definition of jumping the shark is but I beg to differ.