Les the poorest boss in NBA -- is that the important reason our role players suck?

t-mac has his own JET??!! he's THAT rich??!! how much is a jet, say a small one? about $20 million maybe?!

 

You haven't seen his house in Orlando, have you? It's like a castle.

I haven't even seen his house in Sugarland.

Oh and I think $20 million is a little much for a small private jet.

EDIT: JK... maybe $20 million is reasonable for a small jet. Damn.

 

well he has:
max contract
shoes
jersey sales
other endorsements

so him having a personal jet isn't surprising

 

He does have a LIFETIME contract with Adidas. Not sure how it works but thats what it is. 25Mill is about one years salary for him...he most likely makes even more.

I am sure that everyone here who owns a house has one thats worth more than their salary or more than double their salary. If you can finance it, you can have it.

 

Having a personal jet wouldn't be a stretch at all for TMac, especially if he has one at the lower end ($5 million or so) - and/or is leasing it out, as suggested by a poster.

He may also be a "fractional" owner - ie, owns a piece of a jet along with other owners.

 

ok so i only just skimmed over this thread, but let me get this straight....

You are suggesting that because les is supposedly one of the poorer owners in the league, that he can not afford the better players to surround Ming?


Are we forgetting a little thing called the salary cap here??

It doesnt matter how 'rich' the owner is....

 

Do you understand NBA labor negotiations AT ALL?

No, it has NOTHING to do with Les being cheap. Les is willing to spend $ and has proven it.

Our current role players are GREAT considering what we traded to get them. We spent a crap load on guys like Maurice Taylor, Kelvin Cato, Bryce Drew, Moochie Norris, etc etc. Because you can't just cut players once signed, you have to make trades.

Besides these expensive "bad" contracts, other big acquisitions Les approved would be Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, Scotty Quitten, Steve Francis, Eddie Griffin, Stromile Swift plus others.

A recent trade that DIDN'T happen is for Ron Artest which clearly would have put us into luxery tax land. IMO, he'd be worth the risk going into luxery tax.

Derek Fisher and James Posey are both good players but they were seeking big contracts. IMO, they aren't worth paying double.

The spurs are great because they have done well in the draft.

The Mavs are great once they STOPPED signing every big name player they could find. Now they are finally legit contenders. But their owner doens't mind play luxery tax WHICH IS RARE. I don't expect Les to keep up with a nut job like Cuban.

 

am i not reading this right?

Peter Holt San Antonio $80 million

does anyone think san antonio's role players suck?? have u looked at their roster. their 3rd level bench player is better than our starters.

blame the idiots who go scouting. we could have turned this season around if we worked a lil bit better for some trades.

instead of bringing more defensive guys ilke bogan, we should have picked up a guy who could actually make shots. i mean that is our problem from day 1. but instead we pick up "mr. 1/25" and susbitute hustle players. go figure

 

Who has the link from he Chron that talked about how Les has told CD he has NO PROBLEM spending money and going OVER the cap if he can land a great player?? (this was around the Artest thing) Les is one of the better owners in the NBA IMO.. I hate to say it, but I don’t think you quite understand the complexity of how this role player situation works..

 

First of All there are quite a few teams that you will be surprised are in the luxury tax ( including Philly)- and being in Luxury tax region does not mean they pay "double the salary"- yes they do pay dollar for dollar over 69 million. We are now at 64 million Payroll.

Whatever big contracts you are talking about go way into the past. Paying steve did not land us in Luxury tax.

When you own a business any loss is a future write off- unline when you are salaried- Les Alexander has been Cheap ( all the BS about we tried to get Artest is just for Public Consumption? What did you expect him to say?)

If we went say 5 Million into Luxury tax range- that would be a payrol of 74 Million- our payroll next year is about 54 Million. I would prefer to take a solid player with a contract that seems unreasonable than take a "deal" ( as In DA, Stro etc)- that is why I say les Cheap! No one is expecting Les to run a 100 Million Payroll!

Troy Murphy + Pietrus would be the kind of deal I would be willing to take on ( throw in Draft picks). That would take Stro and Rafer - In my opinion Rafer had done decently, but if I can address the PF position- I am confident we can find a good PG for the MLE and sign a veteran Like Sam Casell. After this season, we have learnt one thing- we need a third scoring option ( not named Juwan Howard!)


To me no one other than Tmac and Yao are untouchable, I will even trade Juwan and offer a unprotected first round pick for 2007! ( for a team looking for "veteran Help") or let us just call Isiah!

 

What is spending more money going to do bulk? It's already been pointed out our payroll is higher than better teams and we all know the highest payroll belongs to the Knicks who are the worst team in the NBA. It's not about money.

 

IT is NOT ONLY about money, it is definitely money related.

Talking about Knicks is just evading a real debate.

Detroit is awfully lucky how those things came together ( BTW Rasheed could have come our way, and we wanted "character"). As Soon as Big Ben get's his contract they will lose their flexibility.

San Antonio- was lucky to hang on to Manu for a lot less. They lucked out with Tony Parker( or to be blunt, they do a lot better job with scouting and have the balls to start a 19 year old as their starting PG)
And Because people actually believe they can win- they get Michael Finley for a Song!

DA, Stro and Rafer were all approached with money in Mind- if you really want to argue otherwise it is like burying your head in the sand.
We lost a whole season because of this ( and of course injuries- which still affected onLy 20 + games)- how many years do you think Tmac actually has? And what kind of a price would we have paid for that!

 

So what? money in mind?

insofar as we didn't overpay for players that would be serious albatrosses in the long term, I guess.

Rafer Alston made more money than the player he replaced, and is signed over a longer term.

As for Anderson & Swift - who were the players who we didn't sign that would have fit under the cap last off-season? Not too many. Anderson the Rockets tried to trade for in the past anyway.

They were personnel moves that didn't work out - but they were very much basketball moves, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

 

So? Are you arguing that Philly is a good example of why les should pay luxery taxes?

Since we are virtually AT the threshold now, bringing in extra players w/ big contracts would mean we essentially pay them double.

Never said that. I'm simply illustrating that Les is willing to pay big dollars for players.

Stro didn't come here as a "deal." Many thought, and STILL THINK, that he should be our starter.

DA was a deal. Does that mean would shouln't have signed him? I didn't hear ONE SINGLE complaint about signing DA at the time. It was a "why not?" kinda deal. It just didn't work out but I don't blame anybody for the DA signing. Kelvin Cato and Bryce Drew, that's a different story.

There are lots of deals to be made out there. ...and there are 10x as many reasons why those deals cannot get done.

That is a lot of IFs. I'm not so sure I'm willing to sell off our PG, who has been very productive in his SHORT tennure, for a PF. Our PF rotation is currently averaging nearly 20/12. Everybody here thinks we are in such bad shape at PF but with a wrong move, we could EASILY get worse at PF.

Agreed. But I don't think that necessarily needs to come by pilfering off the only legit point guard we've had in years unless it is a no-brainer trade.

Agreed...but only if it is an OBVIOUS upgrade. A paralell trade probably does more harm than good. I'd even trade TMac ...for the right deal. I'd definately trade Juwan for an upgrade ...but I'd be disappointed if we traded Juwan simply for some bench fodder. We could EASILY do worse then Juwan Howard...despite what most people feel around here.

 

Rafer was getting more at the time of the trade- but Mike James would have been owed more to retain him? Am I correct?

Talk about Albatrosses- I will name one for sure, J HO. And Because JVG is a huge fan of his contribution ( which to me is not that straight forward to discern)- we are now screwing around with Stro ( and going the DA route?). IF a player does not work out- you dont tell the world he is no good before you trade him? DO you?

We only Know the Players we signed? We will never know who we did not sign and were available. And for the masses the BS that Les is willing to spend will be good enough.

We have not done a single thing since Yao and Tmac that even hints a little at Les's intention to spend for talent- to me actions speak louder than all the interviews you dole out to Chronicle ( and you expect them to be tough on Les?)

 

True being profligate doesn't guarantee you a winning team, your Knicks example being a perfect case but it helps. Miami is a team that is willing to spend and they may have an NBA finals team this year. The Rox are among the top 5 teams with the highest ticket prices so Les should dig a little deeper and get us some players to surrond Yao and T-Mac. He has a window of opportunity here to win something while Yao and T-Mac are in their prime but it isn't going to happen with this current team.

 

What's the confused about?

I'm simply providing names of players the Rockets went out to go get. Interestingly, these same list of names illustrates how spending money doesn't automatically translate into wins.

 

or simply owed nothing and let him walk - considering we gave up nothing to get him.

Either way, trading 1 year, 3m obligation for a 3 year, 15 m obligation is not a 'financial move' on anybody's part.

We took howard on to get T-mac, if you recall - and Stromile sucking speaks for itself. Regardless he (because we didn't sign him to a ridiculous contract) is now one of our few tradeable assets, which can be used to improve the team. I don't know why you people think "oh, jeez, the Rox could really move this guy for a superstar, but we let the cat out of the bag by letting people realize they're not that good". The rest of the league is not as delusional about that sort of thing as you might suspect.

I know exactly who was available. Shareef Abdur Raheem, Antoine Walker - aren't you b****ing about playing one-dimensional overpriced veterans like Howard? But now you want more? You're all over the map.

....except for sign and trade for players that management felt can improve the team with varying results, such as: Sura, Wesley, Barry, Mutumbo, James, Swift, Alston, Anderson, Bogans. They also tried but failed to get Ron Artest, and to move up into the late lottery range of last year's draft, among other attempts.

Oh, and finally, the nail in the coffin is that we have the 7th highest payroll in the NBA.

http://www.nationwide.net/~patricia/misc/salaries06.txt

Note, the richest owner in the NBA, i believe, is Paul Allen (5th richest man in the world, 3rd in the US behind Gates & Buffer, net worth around 20b) of the Trailblazers - who have a lower payroll than the Rockets.

Your post is a laugher.