How is Tilman Fertitta ownership different than Les Alexander ownership?

If this means getting in the way of the specialists doing their jobs, this is a patently untrue statement. The Westbrook trade already punted this idea into the sun. I can't tell if this is supposed to be parody. Haha

Furthermore, his external financial situation is EXTREMELY precarious; don't think that has 0 impact on his focus and priorities. Nobody owns a $2B asset in a vaccum.

 

I wish Tillman were Mark Cuban.

DD

 

An actual liquid billionaire and not just a super leveraged balance sheet baller?

 

Morey was the basketball version of moneyball. The motivation for moneyball in baseball was to use smaller financial resources to compete with the big money spenders. Morey was great at finding undervalued players with analytics tools.

Unlike baseball where you simply assemble the highest probabilities and the law of average will take care of the results long term. Basketball is a much more complex sport where players on both sides interact with each other in infinite number of ways. Moneyball does not work as well.

 

I never said he was a bad person I just think as far as success on the court he's been overrated.

 

I think you have the misconception that success is only the end result.

BTW the end result also favors him.

But it's mainly about giving resources to be able to compete on the highest levels and go from there.

People say someone is a good owner not only because of success, therein lies another one of your misconceptions.

Integrity, vision and empathy all are part of it while maintaining a level of spending.

Knowledge of bball is also a big plus.

Did Ballmer had success? nope, but he is regarded as a top owner here.

Interpersonal success, success with people is also success.

Your problem with him is he tried to retool and he didn't succeed there, what you called breaking up the team, guess what, it only happened once, he only won once.

Many championship teams retool, that is what teams do.

It was a lockout season, some players retired, some went for the bigger money. JJ Barea would never have gone to Minny, a very cold place, if it wasn't for the lockout. Cuban gave him the promise of bringing him back eventually.

Do not know where that pettiness comes from.

And Tilman drove Harden away before he could have any real success too.

 

Lol 99ers see through the hoopla and understand the game and business better than anybody on this planet

99

 

The Mavericks were dirt before Cuban. He fixed that franchise, never sold out for foreign money or flipped players just for stars.
They kept Dirk til he retired. I wish Dream never left. I would have given whatever money he wanted because he gave us the standard for which every star will be measured for the Rockets from now til the end of the world.
Yao never left the Rockets cause Les used him as a cash cow. Cuban never sold his team and I’m sure he never will.

 

Excellent Lars... think about all the unused trade exceptions too

I’m trying to find as much positives as I can for our future Rockets.

 

The Texans ownership is so much worse and its not even close

 

Les wasn’t all that either as a owner to be honest. He didn’t spend money. Les was always about the money. Hence why he never had a appetite to do a proper rebuild. Les believed in Moreyball and MDA because he believed it what will create excitement and make him more money... Les was never about paying the TAX. So I don’t get the rage on this board about Tillman not wanting to spend money..... LES wouldn’t spend the money either if y’all really knew the mans history.

 

Would we have lost two frp in 19/20 along with D Milton under Les is a question I have. I will say this, Les also operates on trimming the margins. But him not having to leverage his wealth to own the team means he'd probably be more able to while we were contending.

 

I like that Fertitta is willing to gamble. I'm willing to go along with that, within reason, and suffer when the gambles don't pay off.

He seems to have recognized, correctly, that Harden was more valuable than our coaches, GM, etc. But he doesn't seem to have appreciated the consequences, for our team and organizational culture, of coddling Harden to the extent he did.

I also don't think Fertitta recognized the full consequences of trading away so many future assets in the Westbrook deal. That loss of assets made the franchise less valuable to everyone involved, and thereby increased the incentive that those who could leave — i.e., everyone but the owner — would do so. Morey, D'Antoni, and Harden instantly erased their Rockets pick debts by changing teams (though Harden created more debts for the Nets).

Separately: It worries me that Fertitta seems to admire Trump. Setting aside the politics: Trump is a terrible businessman. He made less money over the long term than if he had invested in the S&P. His understanding of trade economics is essentially illiterate, and his trade wars were self-destructive. The kindest explanation I can come up with is that Fertitta needed COVID bailout money from Trump and was sucking up ruthlessly to get it.

 

"See, they're already looking at your work more favorably..."

 

OK it's time to put the "Cheap Tilman" ignorance to bed, especially those spewing utter nonsense and saying Les wouldn't have traded away players/picks to get under the tax threshold. You want to know why? Because he was never in danger of hitting it as he NEVER planned on hitting it.

Morey = Billy Beane...his job was to find players that could save Les $$$ while also keeping us good enough that we didn't have to tank, like every other sensible team eventually has to do in the NBA, and if those players helped bring in more China $$$, then Morey earned even a bigger bonus those years.

Below is a chart showing the luxury tax paid by teams since the implementation of the tax (sources are shown below). The table I used was from 2016 so I had to manually complete the years thereafter using Hoopsrumors, which didn't have a nicely formatted table, so I only inputted the total number of teams above the tax and any team that was below the Rox in terms of total spend prior to updating for recent years (Wizards are the only one that meets the criteria).

In conclusion, the Rockets have historically been one of the CHEAPEST teams coming in at #6...but if you take into consideration market size, CHEAP LES takes the cake...so the answer to your question is at worst, if everyone is correct on this board, then nothing changes! If I'm correct in that I truly believe Tilman wants to win, he will end up spending way more money than Les ever did. It's amazing people think so highly of a guy who never spent even though he was raking in all that money from Yao AND clearly he didn't care about winning as he sold the team at a time when he knew it was at the highest value...what a surprise, just like every other move he made for us, it was all about the $$$.


Sources for those who don't believe the FACTS, even though you still will refuse to accept them as it would mean your made up narratives aren't correct:
http://www.shamsports.com/2015/07/complete-history-of-nba-luxury-tax.html
https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2019/04/recent-history-of-nba-taxpaying-teams.html

 

Great. You have proven that Les was the fifth cheapest owner in paying the tax. Where is your proof that Tilman Fertitta is not cheaper than that?

 

I'm glad Tilman isn't Cuban. After winning one championship, he blew up his roster. Dallas fans hated that costly move.

 

I'm glad that Fertitta changed the uniforms
I was tired of Les pandering to China way past Yao's tenure.

H-Town is what Houstonians call Houston and the Luv Ya Blue uniforms are much better than the Luv Ya Yen uniforms.
We need the identity of the Houston Rockets to be the Houston Rockets again.

One thing Tilman loves to promote is Houston, so promote the city again.

 

Against my will, Les forced me and my team to join CCP!!!