hampered? they were one game from the World Series! if you tuned out during 2004, you missed one of the best regular season runs in baseball history, and the best playoff run in franchise history...and you missed Bagwell and Biggio come through in the playoffs.
Les's already a Millionaire, isn't he? and how old is he? Forget about the revenue. If I were him and dislike Yao as much as some of people here do, I wouldn't give him the Max. Get some better pieces to surround TMac to winj!
Sure... Yao will definitely be offered a max contract by management, but do you think there's a slight chance that Yao may reconsider this and sign for a lesser offer? If Yao's goal is to win a championship, he might consider taking less money so the team can sign a max-type spot up shooter for close to max money - ala - ray allen, rashard lewis, or even peja. sure it's highly unlikely but judging by situations which have happened to Yao in the past, he is not a money person. Case example was when he sued Coke for 1 cent when they used his picture on their merchandise OR when he took less money to be with Reebok when Nike allegedly tried to screw Yao with some tricky contract clauses. Anyway..we can all hope
Maybe not. Signing a max type shooter means role player type money for Yao. In that case, the best chance for Yao to get a Championship is to go somewhere else.
well, i sorta meant yao taking less money to stay in Houston. that way, the rox can sign better players to surround him since their not capped out with 2 max players. sorta like what malone & payton did..u know sacrifice for the greater good? although, they ended up with nothing..
This is simple economics: Yao draws international fans. Fans spend dollars on team merchandise. Yao also brought in a lot of fans from China. If you are Les, and you look around at how much more money the franchise brings in with Yao than it would without Yao, this is a no-brainer. Max contracts have little to do with talent. They have more to do with butts-in-seats and merchandising. That what Yao brings Therefore, even if he starts to suck, he IS a max contract player. Anyone who doesn't realize that has not yet figured out that the NBA is about making money, not about playing great basketball.
Only ones who get to vote on this are Les Alexander Carrol Dawson Jeff Van Gundy Les' vote is unanimous also. the answer is YES
Dude...I can't even respond to how irrelevant the off the court stuff matters to basketball fans. Who the hell here is getting a dividend check from Rockets Inc.?
Max contracts are pretty funny to me. Yao Ming will likely bring hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions, worth of revenue to the Rockets over his career -- an essentially limitless river of money flowing into Alexander's and Stern's pockets. However, despite being a walking 7'6" money mint, his value isn't determined by any "free market" -- it's set by the very people who keep every dollar Yao doesn't get. Yao Ming is beyond "max contract." To the Rockets and to the league, he could sign two or three max contracts at the same time and still not approach the money he's making for the NBA. He made basketball interesting to *literally* a billion new customers -- giving the league an audience that Michael Jordan couldn't even dream about. It's a legacy that will make the NBA billions of dollars for the foreseeable future. As a player, Yao Ming isn't in the same class as Duncan, Garnett, etc. But in a business sense, Yao Ming is more of a max player than either could ever be.
