Lin's impact on Rocket's financial is minimum, the league signs TV contract as a whole and its a league-wide share of the revenue.
Jeremy Lin sets the top twitter trend in sports personnel 2012 Twitter has its "2012 year in review". According to it, "Jeremy Lin" is the 2012 top trend in twitted sports personnel, and no. 6 in sports terms. The top 10 sports terms trends are: #1, nfl; #2, nascar; #3, mlb; #4, olympics; #5, sfgiants; #6, Jeremy Lin; #7, super bowl; #8, dwight howard; #9, kobe; #10, yankees. Link is http://2012.twitter.com/en/trends.html, scroll down for sports.
That only applies for national or international tv deals like ESPN, NBATV, or overseas broadcast rights. Local TV deals like the CSN thing that Les is trying to launch are not treated the same way. This is how the big city franchises are able to make most of their profit. Lakers, Knicks, etc., own their own cable channels or have key local joint ventures where they can charge whatever advertising rates they want.
Basketball is show business. Clubs need to create buzz to draw eyeballs, to sell tickets, viewership, ads, etc. Winning is one way to do it. But when you have a golden goose like Lin, and he shows that he has the ability (38 points vs Spurs), it does not make sense to bury/waste it. It's not just for the benefits of Rockets but for the league as well.
I'm not comparing Lin to Jordan or Kobe in terms of global exposure, but it's not always what a player can bring to the organization but to the League as a whole. An additional 1,000 or so coming to each game just to see him does put $$$ to every owner's pocket book.
