Paging Tinman about Leslie Alexander

I seperated your arguments into two claims and will attack each one. The first claim of yours that I am arguing against is your claim that Jeanie Buss is a better owner than Les Alexander. The second claim that I will argue against is your claim that Leslie Alexander is inherently a bad owner.


Kind of like an athletic director in college, the primary job of an owner is to hire the right people. This will be the foundation of my argument of Les over Jeanie. All of my points attached to this claim will argue that Les uses logic in these types of decisions where Jeanie Buss uses emotion.


Les hiring Daryl Morey shows that he possesses a much higher degree of foresight than Jeanie Buss. Les hired someone based on merit and qualifications. At the time of this hire it was not an obvious decision. Analytics were still relatively controversial and questioned but Les Alexander took a calculated gamble that seems to be paying off.


Jeanie Buss hired Magic because he is a friend that she trusts. I believe that Jeanie Buss based this hire on eminence, cachet, and emotion. We all know that the job title “president of basketball operations” requires a combination of great attention to detail and a great amount of patience. Magic Johnson exhibited neither of those qualities in his short stint as a head coach.


Reports* claim that the process of hiring Magic Johnson began happening when Magic was there for her after she broke up with Phil Jackson in December. She was most likely in a vulnerable and emotional state of mind. She was probably looking for someone to trust.


Some reports** claim that the last straw for Jeanie Buss was that Kupchak didn't trade for demarcus cousins. Once again this shows her lack of patience and trust towards a plan. She displayed an impulsive tendency towards going for home run hits instead of hitting singles consistently. I believe that it is smarter to develop recent no.2 picks rather than build around a hot-head immediately.


Overall the process that Les Alexander went through when he replaced Carroll Dawson with Daryl Morey seems a lot less emotional and a lot more committed to business, logic, and reason. Les Alexander wins in this comparison.


Now I will begin my argument against your second claim that Les Alexander is inherently a bad owner. The first point I will bring up is a very recent point and also contributes to my argument about Les over Jeanie. Les hires the right people. This offseason he took control and hired Mike D'antoni which was not an obvious move at the time. In fact, reports*** claim that he blocked daryl morey’s decision making in this process and hired Mike D'antoni instead of JVG. I won’t spend a long time on this point because I believe it is self evident given the recent success of this season.



My next point is about winning. Leslie Alexander has the 2nd most winning seasons (18) out of all teams in the NBA since he took over the job. He also has the 6th highest winning percentage overall in the NBA****. Admittedly, I am not sure about the date on that resource but I’m sure the numbers are near correct on that one.



He has also shown that he is willing to pay the luxury tax when he believes that we are a contender. Leslie Alexander paid the luxury tax last year in the 2015-16 season. Luxury tax does not always equate to winning as we saw. It is a futile argument to say Le$ is too cheap for us to win. It is clear that Les Alexander is not an inherently bad owner.


Now that I argued against 2 broad claims that I picked up from your posts I will attack certain comments that you made directly. First is your point about the louisville stadium. My response to this is a very basic and direct WHO CARES. I guarantee you every single owner in professional sports threatens to leave their cities if the arenas aren’t working out. He got an arena so he is happy and he won’t leave Houston. He is on record as loving the city of Houston. If you are an adult who even slightly dabbles in business than you understand what it means to make threats in order to get leverage. He was trying to complete a deal at that point. LA didn’t have NFL in their city for years because of arena issues. Arena issues happen.


Your point about the Toyota Center being built for hockey but the Staples center being built for Basketball is incorrect. The construction plans for the Staples Center always had the LA Lakers, LA Clippers, and LA Kings (hockey) in mind.


Your point about the rockets not paying Hakeem at the end is also ridiculous. I won’t waste time on this argument. See @Granville posts in the les alexander thread about Les Alexander guessing right on that decision. No harm done. We all see how former players love Leslie Alexander. Most of them seem to have a great relationship with him.


Your point about the corporate seats is overplayed. I never have problems getting nice tickets to rockets games when I want to. According to bizjournal***** in october of this year the rockets were right about average with the 14th most affordable average ticket price in the NBA.


I won’t even respond to your point about Leslie Alexander changing the Rockets uniforms because that is just ridiculous honestly. Some posters here will miss what they used to have if Les ever sells the team to a guy like Vivek Ranadive or Jim Dolan.


Now will you attack my arguments directly in a sophisticated manner instead of getting hostile and attacking my credibility. Show some courage and don’t try to pull rank on me by flagging your dogmatic superiority complex about being an untouchable “99er”. Step up to the plate and argue against my points directly instead of enlisting a hivemind of “99ers.” It really shows a lot about your commitment to argumentation when you disqualify your opposition as “inferior” to you because they are not “99ers”

 

*http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2017/2/21/14691916/magic-johnson-jeanie-buss-phil-jackson-breakup


**http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/i...ins-reportedly-helped-lead-to-lakers-firings/



***http://www.thedreamshake.com/2016/5/23/11741676/les-alexander-is-the-rockets-head-coaching-problem


****http://www.nba.com/rockets/leslie-alexander/


*****http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...s-tickets-stack-up-compared-to-other-nba.html

 

sjw alert.

in before I get called misogynist for that one.

It has nothing to do with her being a woman. It has everything to do with her hiring a friend in the midst of a breakup but I'll leave the assumptions about my character to you

 

go to the D and D with that nonsense. You are clearly accusing me of disrespecting Jeanie Buss based on the fact that she's a woman.

I have been through breakups in the past too and have been emotional and not made clear decisions in the aftermath.

I am a male. It can happen to male or female. Males are not exempt from that being a factor. Females are also not exempt from that being a factor just because it is less politically correct to point that out.

You don't think its irresponsible to hire a trusted friend who's there for you in the middle of a breakup rather than going through the process of interviewing and hiring the most qualified candidate?

I bet you wouldn't have called me out if I said that about a man making poor decisions.

enough with the SJW talk though. This is nonsense.

 

I respect that opinion but you cross the line when you accuse me of basing my opinion of her decision on her gender (which you clearly did. you'd be a fool to deny that at this point.)

Only time will tell which one of our opinions is correct. Give it 3 years and we will have a clearer idea. I tend to be very skeptical of Magic Johnson as President of basketball operations but we will see