How is Tilman Fertitta ownership different than Les Alexander ownership?

Do you think Les would have brought in Russell Westbrook?

 

I think it’s entirely possible. Why wouldn’t he? Do you think les was some basketball genius?

 

No, I think Les is just not stupid. Les understood what Morey & MDA were trying to build and actually knew when to shut up & listen. The three of them would have convinced Harden that WB was a bad fit. Instead, Tilman indulged his star player and empowered him over Morey to a catastrophic degree.

 

You have every right to not be happy w the trade and even tilmans part. It’s just ludicrous to lay the blame solely at his feet and just give harden and morey a pass as they didn’t have anything to do with it

Everyone in national media seems to think we got quite a deal for harden. Combining it w another trade is irrelevant.

 

Tried to become the FACE of the franchise despite having no handle or jumpshot.

 

I’m glad you acknowledge that his main fault was empowering Harden. He shut up and listened to the wrong guy. The hate for the man is absurd and evident of something far more sinister in our culture today. Okay I’m stepping away. Doctor is about to jab some needles in me.

 

Not combining it with everything else is irrelevant when it comes to judging Tilman's impact. Ultimately Tilman called the shots that's why he deserves the blame. You can blame Morey for this - he should have resigned before executing that WB trade. That's where his blame lies as that was his only option. You can blame Harden for not understanding what WB would do to this team - but it isn't Harden's responsibility to make those decisions.

That bad decision was made ultimately by Tilman forcing the trade at all costs.

 

Dude, what's ridiculous is that you can't see that we went from a 65 win team to a near lottery team under his watch.

 

Absolutely. It was either that or Harden pulls his BS a year sooner and the same people are upset that Harden's demands were ignored.

Morey would have still bailed, and who knows where we'd be today.

Is the arguement really that Les would have told Harden to "shut up and dribble"? We're talking about someone who pacified Ron Artest....

 

What's ridiculous is that you can't see that was entirely Harden's fault.... and it was inevitable due to Harden's lack of character.

 

Not many people remember the early years of Les except us old people.
Les wanted a new arena and was seriously considering moving the team to Louisville.

One thing nobody can knock Tilman for is that he’s a huge Houston homer.

I will never forgive Les the Florida New Yorker for that threat.

 

If Les had a choice to dump Harden or dump Yao if they played in the same era
You bet your life Harden would have been gone if Yao told Les to drop that fatso

 

That 65 win team was not sustainable. We had maybe a 2-3 year window when we traded for Chris Paul, and I think most people recognized that. This idea that we’d keep trotting out contending teams indefinitely under Les Alexander while Harden is around is a fantasy.

 

We'll learn a lot about TF over the next couple of years. My gut says he is hurting financially so he might stress building through the draft rather than paying/trading for established players to keep payroll down, especially until the pandemic issues subside. I don't think you'll see us handing out any questionable contracts, it will have a to be a really good deal like with Wood.

I feel that Les had the resources to withstand more financially, though he was still very conscious of spending.

 

And you can bet he'd have outright fired Morey on the spot when China got mad at him.

Les was always about profit first. It seems some have forgotten that.... or are too young and uninformed to have ever known it.

 

I thought Les was cheap too because he wanted us on the forever .500 treadmill instead of actually rebuilding. But he wasn't all that much in the spotlight and didn't promise the world.

From all accounts, Fertitta seems like a loud mouth know it all that nobody likes to be around. I don't know how he managed to piss off every single person from front office to coaching staff to our star players in 2 years.

All that LTS aside, he just didn't seem like he's very respected because he's an a-hole. That's not great for rebuilding purposes and hiring good staff in the future.

 

That's the problem with your statement. You're playing politics here to try to put ALL the blame on Harden. Entirely? Really? You lose credibility right there. Stick to the D&D kido.

 

CP3 is still playing at a much higher level than WB right now, and the Suns are doing very well. So it certainly was more sustainable than the mess we have right now.

And if we had kept CP3 - are you telling me we couldn't have done the same deals to find Wood, Tate, Brown, and other guys? Fact is, you have a team of Harden, CP3, and those new guys who all came on the cheap, and this year might have been better than that 65 win club. So I completely disagree with you.

Instead of trading CP3, we should have built around them.

 

Chris Paul is great, but he’s not the number 2 player Harden would have been satisfied continuing to play with heading into year 4. We know there was a lot of friction between them, even in Year 2. You don’t think Harden would have demanded a trade if we kept Paul? It’s entirely possible that the trade demand could have occurred a year earlier, actually.

 

I suppose tilman is responsible for chris Paul’s hammy? It’s ridiculous to view seasons as if they can just be built upon — we won 65 so we should obliviously win 66 next season or it’s a failure? Injuries happen man. Chris Paul was injured. Westbrook got injured and Covid. Who’s to say we had any other deals available for chris Paul? Harden may have told mgmt trade Paul or Ill push my way out (like he is doing now just a year earlier). Be mad at tilman for listening to harden but don’t pretend it’s all on him. That’s just silly.

and people have said that tilman is not that involved in the basketball decisions. I think Ben Debose or one of the other team media guys said their sources say that’s not how he has operated w the Rockets

90% of this board is pure conjecture and randomness. People just decide they don’t like someone and then spin every instance to fit their narrative. They don’t have sources to confirm anything. Nobody has sources saying tilman is being cheap. Everyone here is making those assumptions, some of it rightfully so as WE ARE IN A GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS! And people are here whining about reusing cups.