Who cares. A small mistake. If the Rockets are reasonable, then the editor won't get in trouble for it hopefully. A shame that we're put in the same category as Atlanta though. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the conspiracy theories, but after the Gasol trade fiasco I think maybe there is some kind of active will to keep the big teams big.
You would think that someone in the Rockets organization (assuming they hire a lawyer to specifically be in charge of things like this) would have alerted Jason F. after the first article was written, much less the first 4 articles. So Im assuming that Jason wont get in trouble or fired from the Rockets for this, and they will have his back. Or at least I hope so. You wont find a better beat writer/fan media outlet than Jason. What would be terrible is for the amount of media coverage the Rockets give from Jason to cut back dramatically. Thats one of the best things about rooting for the Rockets is the large amount of fan accessibility. I hope Stern realizes this and that Les Alexander gives the league office an earful about it. This is counterproductive to driving fan interest, and very unwarranted given the fact that this piece was simply talking about the market for ALL FREE AGENTS at all five positions. If they want to throw out ridiculous fines like this just cause, they need to be much, much more clear about what they are considering "Tampering".
The Rockets should be fined for not playing fair. You didn't see Pat Riley tampering when the big 3 were formed 2 years ago. He did it the right way, and waited until July 1st before he put out any feelers to LeBron or Bosh.
but, he Gasol trade fiasco prevented the Laker's from getting Chris Paul, so I'd say the complete opposite. It hurt the big team.
yeah because nobody watches baseball except for a bunch of republicans. they have to openly talk about free agents just for people to care.
Wow! To my knowledge the Rockets fund the website and obvuously use it to sell yheir product, but Jason is not a representation of what the Rockets are planning on doing and his opinions are just that opinions that do not necessarily reflect the teams position or thinking. While he is hired to cover the Rockets, the team has essentially let him act as an independent reporter. I wonder how this will effect all the hard work that Jason has done over the course the season, especially with Rockets Cast live. I think this is a bad move by the NBA and can only hurt the product that the NBA offers the public when it starts limiting what team journalists can report and starts regulating the types of stories they can write. I know I visit Rockets.com regularly because of Jason and I'm sure others do as well.
For what it's worth, Feigen said almost exactly this in his 6:00 p.m. interview on CSN. League looked around after the Atlanta issue, wanted to call things out. Feigen was openly mocking it, as he and all of us should.
We all know what this is really about. The rockets using players (harden and parsons) to communicate with dwight howard. But they cant prove that they used their players to recruit him, so they fined the rockets for a piece they do every year. The lakers were coming off 2 championships and they were already making tom of money. They wanted to sell the hornets with the number one pick. They didnt want them to compete.
But we all know that there was an under the table deal where Stern would secretly help the Lakers get D12 instead of CP3.... Right?
Stern is a ****. They are obviously following the Dwight thing closely (this didn't happen to the same articles posted last year). He just wanted to put us up on the same level as Atlanta after their public screw up. Of course the league prefers Dwight stays in LA because if he doesn't, Lakers are gonna be crappy for the foreseeable future. The league needs the Lakers to be successful because it is a major market. On the other hand, if Friedman wants to write real journalistic stories and opinions like that, he shouldn't be on the Rocket's payroll. It will be interesting if the Rockets make any changes to their marketing department. Don't the Lalers have a cable channel? I've been watching something called Lakersnation on YouTube and that female reporter seems to have access to all the players and coaches... etc. they did a few stories on Dwight going to Houston and Golden State. I wonder if she's on the Lakers payroll? I wonder if the Lakers instigated all this by complaining to the league? The whole thing sucks. It not tampering in the true spirit of the regulation.
Heard Johnathan Feigen weigh in on this a little earlier today. His take was basically that the fine was partly due to the Atlanta thing — other teams just getting caught in the wake. From the perspective of the Rockets, it looks like total BS on the part of the NBA. No mention whatsoever was made relating any free agents to Houston. The article in question was simply an analysis of the free agent market, not focusing on DH or CP3, but simply using the names of the players and offering an analysis of their games. The Rockets are probably appealing it. This is not so much about the money (then again, I'm not paying the fine) as it is about the NBA placing extreme restrictions on what teams are allowed to publish on their sites. Based on what teams have been allowed to say in the past, I don't see any way the organization could have foreseen any problem with their actions.
