Please move to the 'Dish if necessary, thanks. [rquoter] As ESPN's Marc Stein has written, perhaps the most important person in a free agent supertar's future is their next owner. Coaches have an average tenure of a few years. Teammates change year in and year out. But if you're LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh or another top free agent, whoever owns your next team is going to make hundreds of decisions, year after year, with the potential to affect whether or not you win a title. Hiring a coach, getting a new point guard, changing the defense ... almost everything on an NBA team is malleable. But when under contract, even the most powerful superstars in the league have little-to-no influence over ownership. Which means as they shop for new teams, at the top of the list is finding the right owner. Based on conversations with people familiar with the thinking of top free agents, including team personnel, agents, and insiders, here's a list of owners who are best positioned to appeal to free agent superstars: 1. Jerry Buss -- Los Angeles Lakers 2. Mark Cuban -- Dallas Mavericks 3. Mikhail Prokhorov -- New Jersey Nets 4. Micky Arison -- Miami Heat 5. Wyc Grousbeck -- Boston Celtics 6. Leslie Alexander -- Houston Rockets The Rockets' owner largely keeps out of the public eye, but that doesn't mean he's not a valued feature. When the Rockets have ascertained things that would help their team -- from a team of analysts in the front office, to a new stadium -- Alexander has been aggressive in getting them. For a business-minded free agent, Alexander also offers Houston's huge, Yao Ming-induced Chinese audiences. One of the most important markets in the world is laser-focused on this team, to the point that many regular-season Rockets games draw more viewers in China than the Super Bowl draws in the United States. If you want to make money as an NBA celebrity, you could do far worse than to partner with Alexander. 7. Jerry Reinsdorf -- Chicago Bulls 8. Paul Allen -- Portland Trail Blazers 9. Ted Leonsis -- Washington Wizards 10. Dan Gilbert -- Cleveland Cavaliers Lurking in the wings: David Geffen -- Los Angeles Clippers Larry Ellison -- Golden State Warriors [/rquoter] http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/16694/the-owners-a-free-agency-scorecard Agree? Disagree? Too high? Too low? Just right?
I don't agree with this because rockets usually treat players like assets and makng it hard for FAs to stay loyal to the rockets. See francis, mcgrady, landry. The chinese endorsements is a plus tho.
Oh I'm sorry, Francis got fat and wasn't NBA ready. McGrady didn't rehab and got fat and wasn't NBA ready. Landry got traded to bring in KEVIN MARTIN. You have to pull the gun when you get A-grade talent for an undersized role player. Despite that basketball is business and business is cold as ice when it comes to loyalty, Les has been very fair to his players so far.
All the owners do that, that's the business. The exceptions are your true franchise players, like Kobe. Do you also blame the Lakers, Heat, and Suns for trading Shaq? Would you blame LeBron for leaving the Cavs, who have been so loyal to him?
NBA Players understand that this is a business. We have given the key to the city to someone who wants to win here. - look at hard working chuck hayes, we all love him. - T-mac could have been our MJ but he wimped out, and we payed big bucks for him. - Look at Yao, we will never give up on him. - Some ppl bring up Hakeem, HE WANTED TO END HIS CAREER THERE. besides we built a freaking memorial for him right in front of the Toyota Center.
This has to be one of the dumbest posts of the year... You should STFU about things that you can't comprehend. Let me spell this out for you: 1. Francis was traded because, while he had heart and played hard, he was an idiot with limited skills and was going to take the Rockets no where. When he came back, he rode the pine because he was unable to learn how to do anything aside from dribbling the shot clock away and then trying to make something happen. There is a real good reason why his biggest success was with the ROCKETS and he sucked it up on EVERY team he went to afterwards; Magic, Knicks, and later on Rockets again. You can tell from his latest interview that at the end of the day, he is simply another broken down diva who thinks that despite his lack of skills, the world should continue spoon feed him. 2. T-Mac burned bridges with EVERY TEAM that he has been with. He burned bridges with Raptors, Magic, Rockets, and Knicks. T-Mac is just another diva that teams attempt to put up with while he still offers enough talent to make him tolerable. It is funny how you mentioned that we treated him like crap as that was not the case until last year and it was definitely well deserved. Did you only jump on board last season of this glorified p***y's tenure with the Rockets? We treated him like the spoiled prince he was before that. Hell, we stood behind him through his pouting and injuries and even let him take the 2nd half of the back to backs. Try searching for Clutch's article about the Toronto game. 3. We never treated Landry badly. We wanted him to take a standard precautionary medical exam on a knee that he had a history of injuring before we committed our team to any long term contract with him. We also made him an offer that was more than fair for a 2nd year player and when another team made an offer he accepted, we simply matched it. Later on, we traded Landry for Kevin Martin, a much needed wing scorer. This is the NBA and you cannot trade for talent with a bag of beans. You have to give up something good to get something good. Please learn what you are talking about before you attempt to talk **** about the Rockets again.
Les is a great owner that genuinely wants to win, unlike fellow city sports owner Drayton. Anytime he was needed to shell out big cash, he has. The only problem was that he often shelled out big cash for misguide reasons that never pan out. Now with a super smart guy like DM at the helm, Les can rest easy knowing that when he does need to shell out cash, it will be used with near maximum efficiency. I would put Les and our franchise behind Jerry Buss/Lakers, Mark Cuban/Mavericks, and Sam Budford/Spurs.
Les is great except he ****s on high quality athletes and fail to consider players as human beings rather than numbers spreadsheets.
I rate Cuban over Les because with proper guidance from a GM like DM, his teams would be crazy scary. He is owner who does have any business on his mind when it comes to the Mavs; it is simply winning, winning, and more winning, money be damned. Les is still a businessman (nothing wrong there) and DM is slightly constrained to try to stay under the LT the best he can. I do agree with you that Cuban will tie up the team financially, but that is due in part mostly to bad player investments. A smart GM would definitely take care of that aspect for him. Maybe he should hire Prichard?
he offered coach K 10-15m to coach the nets. if anything that can improve his team with money. i'm pretty sure he will.
When I think this is a good list for the top NBA owners, I am also surprised that the Spurs's owner is not on the top of the list, Spurs won four NBA titles, you think their owner has nothing to do with them? I do not think so.
