If Les Alexander and Mark Cuban switched teams, would the Rockets be better?

Lol, I enjoy T2 as well. But I liked T1 Sarah Connor much better.

 

Donald Sterling found out how to be dumb enough to get the government (or in this case the NBA commissioner) to shut him down.

The owner of a McDonald's franchise owns licensed property, but they don't own an organization from the top.

 

A) Dawson picked Morey, not Les. Les doesn't know jack about basketball
B) You're basically saying that Les is better at building a champion then Morey because he hired Morey???? WTF?

That's like saying I am better at building a car than Toyota because I was smart enough to hire Toyota to build the car.

I don't get why you love Les so much. He's just an old rich guy who bought a basketball team.

 

Bc I understand how to run a business. Dawson suggesting Morey for GM doesn't mean it happens with certainty. Companies hire from the outside all the time. Les understanding DMs skillset and choosing to put him in the personnel driver's seat is the point here.

I don't love him. I'm just defending my position. Btw, your example actually proves my point. If the goal is to get you to a job you can be successful at, you choose to let someone build you the tools do so. They DO know how to build a better car than you. It's not because you wanted to build a car but that you wanted to succeed.

Don't WTF me. If you don't get the argument, maybe you should clarify first before you start making knee jerk reactions.

Someone challenged my position with arguments that had nothing to do with the original Q nor understood my position, and I responded. Simple. I appreciate Les because he's willing to spend that rich money.

Why don't you go out and make your own and maybe that won't be such a negative of him anymore? I bet if you were in his shoes, you'd be exactly zero different.

 

So you are saying because you run a business you are qualified to build a championship sports team? And that since I apparently don't, I should go out and do that on my own?

Ok buddy, whatever. Good luck.

 

Lol, typical hyperbole argument In the attempt to negate a perfectly good argument.

No, I know how to run a biz so therefore I know which decisions have the largest cascading effects. I made no comment about your ability to do so, so step down.

You fundamentally misinterpreted my argument and then took it personally. Don't be so sensitive, man. Then you diverted because you likely can't counter. Keep your luck. You need it more than I do.

 

Maybe you should stick to your day job of running a business. Basketball talk ain't your forte buddy. No offense.

 

Yawn, and you hardly worth that.

 

the Golden Arches

 

LOL at the logo looking like the quake arena symbol. Not sure that many here will get that reference but solid work there.

 

Blah blah blah all I see is nobodies throwing shade at a billionaire, if you guys were such big shots how come you don't buy your own basketball team? Alexander is a great owner, just look at his actions and compare them to people like Sarver or the Bulls owner who clearly just sees their team as a cash cow.

This thread is ridiculous, who wanted the Rox to adopt the PHX Suns style play? Who wanted to hire MDA when everyone was laughing at how "out of date" the Rox were? That was all Le$. OTH who decided to break up his championship core just because he wanted to purse his DDD in Dallas dream? And then decided to pay guys like Wes Matthews the max?

Gimme a break

 

cuban could out wrestle le$

 

I don't agree with tinman that Les is a bad owner or that he's worse than Cuban in terms of how much they care about winning. But, I do think that our uniforms are ugly (except for the alternates which are what you see more fans wearing at the games) and that Toyota center was built primarily to service corporate needs, both in terms of how it was designed and where it is located as well as the price of concessions being a bit ridiculous. Some of this can be fixed if Les wanted to but some of it can't. Such as the fact that many people who have money to attend games regularly, live in the suburbs of Houston so getting to the game after work can be a hassle and many are looking at a good 35-45 minute drive home as well. If a game lasts around 3 hours it means that some of us will have to dedicate nearly 4 1/2 to 5 hours of our day to attend a game, which for a week day just isn't possible for most people who have the means to afford it.

Oh, and Les did threaten to move the team to Louisville and for some of us that will be hard to forget.

 

What I'm not getting is that the most substantive argument here has been our decades worth of bball purgatory vs Dallas' as though Cubano (whom I respect highly as an investor) had the biggest role in that. But their best players were already on the team by the time he bought them. Same as Les. And both Kidd and Nash managed to leave under his ownership with no rings to account for. At least when Les blew up our chamionship team, our outgoing players already helped us get rings. Even then, the guy learned to leave player evaluation to Dawson/Morey after those experiments didn't pan out. And i bet he'll overpay to have DM stay in town.

If they really wanna nut ride Cuban, then we need to see how the next decade or so goes for the Mavs under Cuban for an apples to apples comparison.

 

I don't think Les is a terrible owner. I think he's a decent owner. I think he does a lot of good for the city of Houston and makes the players do a lot of volunteer work which is great. I think he donates a lot of money compared to other owners. And I think he genuinely wants to win and spend money.

But to say he is somehow a better basketball mind than Cuban is silly. morey is the one making the decisions as it should be. I think most people are reacting to the thread title.

Others have legit gripes about ticket prices and such. But as a New Yorker, it's not that big of a deal to me. Still, games on MSG are all free.

 

Cuban can out talk someone like Skip Bayless and Stephen A and I doubt Les could. PR and speaking are not his forte.

He is not your prototypical owner. He knows a lot about the industry, about the game, talks to his coach regularly. He knows more about technology and what market is hip at the moment.

Hence ppl think he interferes alot. He does to an extent because he is so passionate. (Obnoxious Tony Stark)

Rich old owner vs the aggro nerdish tech billionaire owner

 

Redemption time. Other than Carlisle (which is arguable given that he couldn't win until he had a transcendent player), what sports decisions has he made that supports your Les < Cuban in bball knowledge?

I know we got off to a bad start, but I'm genuinely interested. And honestly, when solid support is provided, I've been known to change my mind. But up until now all I know of his bball history is that he has not made very good acquisitions, in regards to cost-to-benefit.

I'm guessing at least one argument is that he bought the Mavs for pennies and turned them into a billion dollar franchise. Ok, I get that, but it wasn't through player acquisition. He may have brought value via the marketing chain, which is an area of expertise for him. But again, the product already included multiple future hall-of-famers, two of which were either jettisoned or just plain walked. Even Finley left and finally won.

If you look at what he's meant for revenue, it's not much. The link below discloses the annual revenue for Cuban's Mavs since 2001. The guy is only growing revenues, at best, 4.2% annually. Tickets may be cheaper, but AA Arena has roughly 3k more seats than Toyota so volume made up some of the cheaper tickets. You'd be right in that our average ticket prices are higher, but we have vastly different outlooks for each team. I'm willing to bet most of increase in ticket pricing is because we have an arguably championship team/Harden.

On the flip side since 2001, Les has grown revenues at a 7.1% rate...again, with fewer house seats. Most of it has been due to the Harden effect,. But that's what happens. Before then, revenues were weak, but to compare those same periods is not a legitimate base for argumentation. We now need to see how our revenues grow during our superstar campaign. Sure, he may have prices comparatively higher than the Mavs, but that income also is huge for the city of Houston in terms of tax revenues.

And all of this shows. We have more income, better valuation, more revenues, better recent growth (by 2.5x) and higher attendance. Sure, prices are higher, but Houston has also seen a massive growth period in the last decade that has included great gains in average income per person by nearly $5000. That's nearly a half set of season tix last time I checked in 2013. Here's the real interesting part. You cannot argue that the ticket prices are driving the value. As of 2/2017, Forbes is actually applying an operating multiple of 26x. Mavs are a shade under 36x. That means Forbes thinks Mavs have a better future outlook (somehow). If you match the two multiples, Mavs are only worth $1.06B (a ~$400m diff). If Rox were to have the same multiple, we'd be #5 on that list. We're even more efficient in our cost structure. Mavs only keep 21% of their revenues; the rockets. 26%.

It's the next almost decade that we need to compare to Cuban's stint since taking over for a true litmus test IF Cuban really is the benchmark for comparison. And if we end up squandering Harden and pulling a Clippers, then I'll be the first to admit that Les has not met his owner's obligation.

Sources:
Mavs https://www.statista.com/statistics/196710/revenue-of-the-dallas-mavericks-since-2006/
Rox https://www.statista.com/statistics/196717/revenue-of-the-houston-rockets-since-2006/
NBA Valuations https://www.forbes.com/nba-valuations/list/#tab:overall