well...houston isn't exactly a small market team, but when it has to do battle with the likes of an NYC or an LA...they are just leaps an bounds ahead of us when it comes to marketability from the perspective of players. like you had also mentioned, the nice weather, the bright lights, and a great party scene is just icing on the cake. i have to think that for some of these players, succeeding at the game of basketball isn't their only goal in life. if you are looking to "build you brand" as a player, there really isn't a more attractive location than a place like NYC or LA.
we arent even a small market but it seems Houston has a bad rep with players and agents for some reason. Every time a star becomes avaialble and we have excellent chance of getting him, he goes elsewhere. Somethings definatelly wrong with the league
T-mac decided to come here. The big time stars don't want to play in Houston thing is overblown. There are only a select few superstars in this league and they rarely change team. Houston isn't the only NBA team missing out on these guys. At the end of the day Houston landed one it just didn't work out. Don't know why people act like there are 10 superstars on the free agent list and we are missing out on them each year. At most there are 2 to 3 each year if that.
We traded for t-mac and with the trade came his Bird rights. Not only could we offer him the most money of any team when he decided to re-up, we also had Yao Ming at the time. We were a team on the cusp of championship contention and with Yao Ming, T-Mac was able to globalize his brand. I think that the situation has changed a bit in Houston. The Rockets have been chasing superstars for the last 3 seasons and have struck out in not only trades but free agency. While i don't think houston is the east attractive place to be for a free agent...there just happen to be more attractive places out there and teams that are further along in their own rebuild processes.
All the guys people keep whining about us not getting are guys we couldn't trade for because they said they didn't want to come here. T-mac wanted to come here because Yao Ming was a star and he would still be here if T-mac was traded there. Problem these days are to trade for these star players we would have to give up half of our assets because we don't have guys like Steve Francis and Mobley to trade while also getting to keep a star player like Ming.
Do we KNOW what orlando actually turned down in terms of offers from Hou, NJ, & others for this, or just reports, sources close to the situation and the like? I've heard, but wouldn't think GM's are making public what they offered.
http://homes.yahoo.com/news/america-s-10-hippest-cities.html Along with the iPads, maybe Morey should show the free agents this article when he does his pitch to them.
Exactly and just like some stars demanding where they wanted to go in recent years, T-Mac virtually demanded to come here because of Yao. I didn't hear many complaints about this issue from our fans back then.
