Do owners spend money because they have it? Or perhaps...

You know what? Portland had their best chance when Paul Allen actually spent money on that team. They were leading Lakers by around 15 points in 4th quarter before they choked. Had they held up, they would have got the ring.

Allen is not Cuban, he cut spending later on and they were never as close to a championship as that year.

As bad as Isiah managed Knicks, you can't really quesion Dolan's will to win. He gave all the resource to Isiah, the big fail is on Thomas, not Dolan. If it was Morey instead of Isiah, it's hard to imaging Knicks is not a contender by now.

Rockets has been in a "win now" mode for quite some years, yet Les never went over the lux tax before this year for a mere 2 mil despite getting 80% of Yao's 17 mil salary back from insurance.

Just to remind you: NBA luxury tax started at 2001, and it becomes the true measurement of how an owner really wants to win. Les failed to do that even after he made tons of money through Yao and China.


There are not many ways to be a contender consistently. You either get extremely lucky like Spurs or have an owner like Cuban to spend more than other owners, keep an advantage over most of the teams. Les as an owner hasn't be too lucky recently due to injuries, and he hasn't spend enough money recently to offset that. It's not a coincidence that Rockets stuck in the mediocre land at this moment. A good GM can only do that much without a competitive advantage over other GMs.

 

$80 million? His net worth 4 years ago was 1.5 billion according to Forbes. That is one heck of a drop-off if both numbers are accurate.

 

The guy in Memphis will not win a Championship until the day he goes over Lux Tax. And they won't stay there consistently unless he keeps spending.

 

Lots of owners spend the money and have nothing to show for it (see Les Alexander & Jerry Jones). It's not how much you spend but how you spend it (again, see Les Alexander & Jerry Jones). Cuban is known for spending the money while Donald Sterling isn't so there's some truth to be found there when you compare the two organizations. But there's nothing "lucky" about having a #9 pick if you don't use it properly. The Mavericks did just that when they drafted Dirk - a player few had heard of at the time. End of story.

 

Just like the Lakers were lucky with a #13 pick who became a top-two player on five championship teams.

The Celtics got lucky in the same draft as Dallas and took Paul Pierce with the very next pick. He won a Finals MVP for them.

The Spurs got lucky that Robinson was injured during the 1996-97 season instead of the previous or following year, when they probably would have ended up with Iverson or Olowokandi instead of Duncan.

The Rockets got really unlucky and got to spend the top pick of the 2002 draft on a guy with glass feet, instead of sucking the next year and drafting a guy who became a two-time MVP.


Of course luck is part of it. But so were good scouting, good roster moves, and good coaching hires.

 

Les Alexander should not be in the "spending money" category. He is just like most of owners, draw a line at luxury tax.

Spending doesn't guarantee rings, but it gives the team more chance to win the whole thing. It took Cuban 10 years of spending before he got one.

Think about this way: on a scale of 1 to 10 in both talents and salary, and you have two deals on the table: one talent level 4 players is asking for level 3 pay, one talent 5 level is asking for level 6 pay. Which deal are you going to sign?

Most GMs would sign deal number 1, because it's cost effective and there is only so much he is allowed to spend due to lux tax limitation set by owners.

But when you have an owner like Cuban, the GM can do the deal number 2. It's true that the player is overpaid, but for the team, talent level 5 is always better than talent level 4. When you accumulated a lot of those talents, the team will be better than most of other teams in general.

An owner who is willing to pay a lot extra money to improve the team is a good owner. Cuban belongs to that category, Les doesn't.

 

Money talks, bs runs the marathon. Go back and look at the money spent during the yao/mcgrady era. Yao and tracy were max guys and everyone else were mle guys for the most part. They spent the full mle 2 times the entire time. How many time did they take the 25% plus the 100k to get a player? None. When u look at the entire yao-mcgrady era, look at the quality veteran depth. It was clear after the 1st utah series that the rockets needed more guys who can get their own shot. Instead,we still had luther head,rafer alston,shane battiers as those guys. I can fast forward to thi season past. Let me say I have no problem with morey taking gambles on guys like thabeet and hill. The could've had gerald wallace for the price of shane battier. They didn't pull the trigger because they were going to have to pay the lux tax in the difference between salaries. They had to pay the small amount because of jeffries, but don't think they weren't trying to get under big time. As a result,the rockets missed the playoffs and I don't have a problem with. I have a problem when the pr machine starts spinning like they were really trying. If morey really feel like les prohibits him from doing what he really wants to do, maybe he should quit.

There are way more made up stories that I know of that are spun like the truth. From chandler to amare to whomever. Bottomline is actions speaks louder than words. When ur best bench player makes minimum and another teams have 2 bench guys making 10m,8m,and 5m, more than likely,their bench is going to be better than yours.

 

This would be a great post if it wasn't so terrible. The ones that do get the rings? I'm sorry, I didn't get the memo where Paul Allen got his championship ring after spending more than a billion dollars from the Jail Blazer era to now. How about the billions Media corp has spent since the JVG era, how many rings did they get out of that?

Correlation does not equal causation. The only team which won consistently while paying lux tax every year is the Lakers. Your line about NY being better than non-spenders doesn't make sense at all. Which is in a better position, OKC/Chicago/Memphis/Denver or NY? I'll let you figure that one out

 

A good owner spends money.

A greta owner spends his money wisely. Abe Pollin spent a fortune on a trio that obvioouy wasn't going anywhere.

 

The problem here is most posters here on Clutchfans don't see things long term. Yes, in a short-sighted way overspending on a player gives you more talent. In reality though, that scenario wouldn't happen because players don't have values attached to them.

A great example would be Brendan Haywood. He isn't worth 10M a year, but the Mavs thought "hey what the hell, we need a C!" and signed him anyway. But then CHandler becomes available for the same amount, so the Mavs have money to burn and get him as well. Just like that they're paying a backup who only plays 10 mins a game 10M a year. If you're rich you wouldn't mind paying 20M for your 10 minute backup (10M salary+10M lux tax), but what the trade does is it hampers your flexibility. Now, all the trades the Mavs do have to match more or less the same amount. If some other team gets a firesale and trades CP3 for expirings, they wouldn't be able to join the action. Its ok if you're the Mavs and you have Dirk, but we don't have Dirk. Why should we sacrifice our flexibility for some role player?

Les Alexander is a smart man and understands all that. He also doesn't fall into the Lux tax trap and start paying his opponents cash from his own pocket for free. I don't approve of the lux tax not because I sympathize with the owner and hate to see him spend more on the team, maybe if the dollars go into my own pocket lol. Rather, I want the owner to spend on stuff which don't have a cap, stuff like buying picks, hiring top of the line coaches, and of course having a crack FO with an amazing GM. You simply get more bang for your buck that way.

 

Leeb do you even understand what being maxed out means? The Rox can't sign anyone else because they were already capped out. All they could depend on was the MLE, and I don't know if you could keep getting MLEs every year. Its not like the Rox were being cheapskates, they spent their MLE money on Slowmile Swift and Mike James and never really recovered. By the time DM arrived to right the ship Yao Mac era was breaking down.

 

What "flexibility" are you talking about? Most teams who are not in a rebuilding mode are under lux tax and over/close to salary cap already. They don't have "flexibility" anyway. They best thing they can do is still trade talent/picks for talent/picks.

So it makes no difference on "flexibility" whether you are already over salary cap or you are over lux tax line under the rule. The owner who doesn't care about lux tax actually have more "flexibility" because they can take 25% more salary from teams who is trying to stay under lux tax for better talent.

And those "bad contracts" becomes trade baits when they are about to expire. The blue chip from Dampier contract enabled Mavs to get chandler.

Now that's flexibility.

 

and I don't see how Haywood signing made Dallas a worse team. Instead they got another serviceable backup for Chandler, which is a good thing. Yes It is a lot money, but that is what makes Cuban so much better than most owners. He doesn't care about his pocket, his goal is to make Mavs a better team.

And you are still thinking under the idea of lux tax. Lux tax is a trap, but not the trap you think it is. Lux tax is made to reduce advantage for big market teams. In other words: If you don't care about lux tax, you'll have an advantage over those teams who care.

"more bang for your buck" is one of the reasons why Rockets stuck in the middle now. That's the strategy of making money for owner, not the strategy for winning at any cost.

The strategy for best owners is: More bang, at any cost.