10 yr gap due to inflation vs what 2 yr difference? How are those the same? In Joe's case a dollar 10 yrs ago is worth less now so he is spending the same. The dollar in 2 yrs hasnt inflated dramatically to offset Tillman's increased payroll. You can argue he is spending as much relative to the cap as mandated by the NBA but in real world terms he is literally spending more than the old owner to mantain the status quo. If he wanted to cut costs he can still spend less as the NBA min salary threshold is really far from what the Rox are paying now. For example if he gives like 3 of those picks from Brklyn he can prob get rid of EG's salary or something. If I was a super cheap owner thats what I do, Tillman hasnt even done that but somehow he is the cheapest owner in history according to CF. You realize Clippers gave up a 4rth pick to get rid of Baron Davis salary? Sarver sold like 5 straight picks for cash. People here have no clue how cheap owners can really be.
The fact that he has to spend more due to cap restrictions means he still spending more than the old owner. If Tillman REALLY wanted to cut cost he can still decrease the salary because Rox are really far from the minimum salary threshold mandated from the NBA. Either way you slice it Tillman isnt being super cheap and doesnt deserve the slander cuz if he really wanted to be cheap there lots of room to go under the cap.
2018 performed well because of Harden and Cp3 and not Ariza. Even with hindsight its dumb to claim not overpaying for Ariza means you dont deserve to be an NBA owner. Have you seen what Ariza did since he signed that 15M deal? I like how you pretend he hasnt been playing like crap and would have somehow offset Cp3 and Melo sucking. 2019 nba draft all saw KPJ, Bolbol, Talen Horton Tucker and Nic Claxton fall to the bottom of the 2nd round (good god 2019 prob the most stacked draft in history). With the power of hindsight 20-20 rather than paying Ariza 15M a year to suck and be overpaid just buy and trade for 5 2nd rounders and snap all those guys up. That would extend the run more than retaining Ariza for 15M a year. At the end of the day everyone is just salty because its not your money. You dont see a cent of Tillman's wealth so if he doesnt spend to upgrade the team then he is the cheapest owner in history and doesnt deserve to own an NBA team. But you do right? If it was your money you'd def go broke spending on the Rockets. Gimme a break. I dont think Tillman is a great owner, and he isnt a generous owner at all. He is a mediocre owner, but he doesnt deserve to be called the cheapest owner when the facts and reality is he hasnt been drastically cutting costs. Just because the new guy isnt willing to spend more than the old guy doesnt mean he is cheap if you dont think the old guy was cheap to begin with. You can argue Alexander is cheaper than Tillman cuz he SOLD a once a decade team and generational talent in Harden. He didnt even value winning, directly cashed in and left the industry.
No one complains about Ariza the player. This has been hashed out many times. All we wanted was that 15 million dollar expiring contract to trade and match. Not to mention all the other cost cutting moves that cost us first round picks. Anderson and Ariza expiring woulda been enough to match any contract in the league and got us back our so called third star. Especially if we had kept all those first round picks we gifted away. Or just kept those picks to make the team better... Maybe one of those guys turns into Ariza replacement. Worst case scenario we trade him for Oubre just like Washington did and get back a player 10x better than anything we tried to replace him with. With those salaries and picks last year let's say we struck out on every star and we traded Capela for Covington, we could have traded for Drummond.. Our entire team changes and we have ability to play big or small. The complaint is Tillman came in and turned Morey from an Asset Collector to a salary dumper. We have no idea how it plays out if we kept all our assets. The team would be vastly different. At least we would still have Harden today... instead of this trash team we have to watch every other night....
When Les sold the team the salary cap was at 94 million. Last year the minimum salary floor was at 98. The cap at 109. So yea the nba money moves fast and the new tv deal should only accelerate it. Also in nba economics, this is a partnership. Players are due 50 percent approx of revenue generated. This isn’t a situation for job creators or any of that, nba owners are arguably the most replaceable part of this puzzle and so long as you just don’t cheap out during contention, you should see great growth let alone this is a game of appreciation...its not a restaurant where you’re worried about margins. That’s just the market now as everyone who buys in is in the billions on oppose to the 90s you could buy in with less then 100 million and now thats a year year operational cost. So Tillman did buy at the absolute top of the market and by reports he is one of the most leveraged owners in the league. For example, by net worth(which only means so much) we are far richer than warriors, but we’ve seen how much they are willing to spend so much that our owner retweeted their luxury tax bill. They are running it like a new age tech company that focuses on long term brand and appreciation(Tesla, Amazon, uber all took a while to make profits), and tillman is running it more like his restaurant business which seems to be watering down some drinks, paying for good enough entertainment draw(stars bring back a lot of money) and cheating out on the margins/quality. Winning nba culture doesn’t work like that. And the owners you cited, Sterling and Sarver, are those who bought it in a cheaper time and also have ruined cultures or cheaper out and are among the bottom of the league in ownership reputation. If your only defense of tillman is he isn’t the absolute worst in his few short years, then thats not a great defense. Tillman has a huge ego, likes to volunteer to be on media to where we have a fair amount of quotes of him just with plain bs. I don’t even mind him buying the rockets so leveraged. I would’ve done the same if I could muster up 2 billion in credit for my local team, and it would be a private business but the nba is not a typical market. People have emotional and geographical allegiance and emotional connection to this thing. Just like Knicks fans hate Dolan but can’t quit the Knicks. So I would also accept being boo’d if I took that mantle and then the trajectory of the franchise changed to cost cutting mode and we took a starting project of a team on the cusp of the finals in 2018 and watered it down each year to now we’ve punted to some sort of multi year rebuild. I can only hope he learns from this and is in a better financial place and also perspective when when and if we get the talent and situation to compete again. Here’s a quote from the man himself,” All my haters love to say, ‘Oh, his food sucks’ or whatever. But we’re consistent. The hot food’s hot, the cold food’s cold, the music’s right, the property’s clean.“
No one is arguing that you simply had to sign ariza or you’re cheap, but in the nba cap when you are over you only have your bird rights for trade assets, so you have to have a plan when you’re competing. Not demand a better result with a worst product to your employees like he did in true ‘shut up and listen’ fashion. Let alone Take to the mike as for some reason he always does and say it will be him who instills a killer culture/mentality. I wonder how seriously inspired the noted feisty competitor Chris Paul felt. As far as ariza, let chris paul tell it himself “People don’t realize, that’s the biggest thing that we missed. That was tough when we lost [Ariza] because he sorta was like the glue. He was that glue for our team.” ariza was also the ear for the rockets who respected him as he won a title with Kobe while James grew up in LA. Culture matters, thats why Heat pay Haslem when he doesn’t even play. Those are hard things to measure in stats, but that it itself is important for the team being cohesive. Go back to many championships, Kerr, PAxon, fisher, Horry multiple times, each year role players who may not be worth their contracts hit big shots or big plays. Winning a title takes all hands on deck to win that marathon and there are no guarantees. Raptors traded for an aging, overpaid Marc Gasol at 50 million guaranteed. The Leonard shot bounces in, people step up, and now they have a ring and all of it was worth it. Every owner will spend the tax for Butler or the stars, but you need depth as even someone playing just 12-15 minutes has an entire quarter of plus/minus. That said, ariza was a one year deal. No future ramifications for us, no issues with future cap flexibility, and he becomes a trade chip that deadline which he was flipped for Kelly Oubre. Instead, we signed James Ennius at the minimum. He was in MDA’s famously short rotation, and then he was traded for at top 55 protected pick. That’s right, Ariza into a minimum ennis into a protected 55 2nd round pick...coincidentally we also got under the tax each year, we lost picks to do that and other assets. So that offseason we also had over 10 million in Trade exceptions, many picks, MLE....guess how many things we used to get talent and guess how many our moves all were to save tax. And thats a savings that we as fans don’t see, the GM never sees it bc it doesn’t give him roster flexibility, likewise with coaches and players...it goes to one mans pockets mean while we still pay more for tickets, tv, merchandise and thats when the trade off just isn’t right and deserves to be called out. Remember this ins’t a binary choice between Alexander and tillman, I could care less about the owners. Your job is to stay out of the way and if you’re going to talk loud, back it up. I still want him to succeed bc my rooting for the rockets isn’t about him, but I’m still objective to say the trajectory of our franchise changed with him and its been a wildly disappointing last 3 years not even going to get into our negotiations with Jeff Bzdelik or MDA(which he publicly volunteered again to the media and lied about it)- the nba is a small world, the agents talk, this just doesn’t reflect well on us to attract 1A talent. I also don’t believe he’ll go anywhere, so I hope he learns, listens and now we aren’t exactly in terrible shape with some good young pieces and if we can ever dump Wall’s contract some money. This isn’t CCP/Saudi where we can’t be objective with our leadership while still wanting the rockets to fair well. Go rockets
First of all it isMorey's fault for not getting a sign and trade lol why are you blaming Tillman for that though? All Tillman said is he wouldnt pay the luxury tax wuthout a Finals appearance the specific of how that cap got managed is Morey's job. It is Morey's job to find a sign and trade so Ariza wouldnt leave for free that's not on Tillman. It has indeed been rehashed multiple times basically you want Fertita to go into luxury tax and overpay Ariza to a terrible deal so he can be traded 3 years down the line as an expiring. The only reason that makes sense is because its not your money that you want to be spending, very few owners want to pay luxury tax even Heat owner who went to the Finals just last year didnt pay luxury tax. Rox hasnt even reached the Finals why is Fertita obligated to pay lux tax? He said he would pay if Rox made the Finals. Its not his fault if Rox didnt do so and I dont think not paying Ariza a massive amount of money he doesnt deserve makes him cheap. You are also joking if you think overpaid Ariza wouldve made Harden stay he wanted to go Brooklyn to play with KD he said that all along. Oubre isnt gonna make him stay Boogie and Wall were former max player signing for vet min and he didnt want no part of that. And yeah both arent good now but remember Harden brushed them off BEFORE they started playing together that means unless you got a couple of superstars he going to Brooklyn.
He did stay out of the way though. The only requirement Tillman said is he will only pay luxury tax if Rox makes the finals. Thats the core of the agreement. Everyone talks about the cost cutting and salary dumping moves but they always skirt about this limitation. If those moves didnt happen then the Rox would pay tax and again thats not happening without a finals appearance. Again very few owners want to pay lux tax you can count on 1 hand the no of owners willing to pay lux tax esp those that havent reached the finals yet. Its not your money so you cant dictate why Tillman wont go broke spending on his team. It isnt him who hasnt backed it up, its the Rox and Morey for not reachijg the Finals and making him pay or shut up.
You are basically the same thing as the other dude dont confuse the dollar inflation with NBA salary inflation. The NBA salary inflation means you need to pay more dollars (ie SPEND MORE) to maintain the same % of cap as the year before. Only if the dollar inflation outpaces the nba inflation do you spend the same as the previous year. So calling him cheap when he is spending more than the previous owner is just fsctually incorrect. Its only correct if you consider the old owner cheap as well and I dont recall massive amounts of posters calling Les cheap. You are right I'm not saying Fertita is a great owner, but on the scale of owners from Cuban to Sterling he is on the average level. He doesnr deserve adulation but also doesnt deserve to get treated as the worst owner in sports. Just one poster here said he doesnt deseve to own a team I mean thats just an extreme and disproportional hatred for an average owner. If Tillman needs to get removed what about the Pacers owner? That dude turned down AD. OKC owner? That dude turned down James Harden. Sarver in PHX? But look their teams are doing ok despite having worse owners than Rockets. It all boils down to the GM and it shows why although Morey is a top GM he isnt among the best GMs. Im not blaming anybody for the Rox not winning a ring thats what happens when KD joins the best team in NBA history. But if you do wanna assign blame Morey and Dumbtoni should head the list rather than Fertita. Dumbtoni is just dumb and Morey's history of trading assets to go all in every year just caught up to the Rockets. If the Rox had a 1st round pick in the last 5 yrs for example theyd have Ariza replacement in house. Everybody just focuses on the net result of cost cutting forgetting why you need to cost cut in the first place. Cp3 gonna be a free agent in 1 year still needed to trade a mountain of assets and multi frp for him etc. Guys like Joe Chee and Hartenstein never did anything while talents like RoCo, C. Wood and Moses Brown were signed and then let go too early etc.
In this case, the chances of making the finals are unpredictable entirely. Basically you fight to be at that high level upper echelon of the team, then you go all in and hope the ball bounces your way. Remember each playoffs, there are buzzer beaters, ball bouncing the wrong way, so on that can change the trajectory. This is why depth matters and every little piece and a decision. Playoffs are paid differently. Under your judgement, raptors and a few other teams that didn’t have the best chances just wouldn’t have gone all the way. Home runs are few and far in this league, it takes chances and you have to swing on it. So the rockets in 2017-18, one game from the finals was our window to swing on it. Like I said, you seem to be comparing tillman to the bottom of the barrel with owners. He is a newer owner, he bought it in the billions, and I agree no one can tell him how to go broke. But this is not a restaurant or some company he took over, basketball is a different market. Everyone of us houstonians have emotional investment and allegiance to this city and the team and its history. It’s beyond tillman, beyond morey, harden, so on. So at this level if you are going to take something that is apart of Houston and then cheap out you really should hear it. And once again, morey’s cycle of trading if you see the assets he paired up before that year and then all of a sudden with tillman he began to use those assets to get under the tax or just letting them slide is like a new boss coming and giving you a new budget. You are constained and maybe thats why we saw the incredibly rare move(name me another exec) that left 3 years and 24 million on the table to...leave. Likewise with MDA, left possibility as a head coach here just not to deal with another year of Tillman’s bad faith negotiatiton(he went public and lied the summer before), likewise with Jeff Bzdelik, likewise with our players. Once again, this isn’t some tillman is some conniving evil human who sought to dismantle our beloved rockets. It’s an objective disappointment where he could’ve been the hometown hero, but instead be it his finances weren’t suitable for this level(which I understand, but not ok for us as fans because we still get charged premium to come to a game, tv, etc) and the trajectory and mindset changed with him. I hope he gets it together, we’re in a new era and to be honest until that lottery ticket comes I think people will have a lot of time to complain and wonder how this house got burn down. Afterwards then its time to move on and I’m always rooting for the rockets(therefore tillman and I hope he matures and has his stuff down next time we need him to spend right, not just for a mediocre entertaining product)
Im comparing him to bottom barrel owners cuz thats how the board treats him. He destroyed the Rox with his cheapness, brought in toxic culture etc. Even you are telling him to mature up like bro he is a self made billionaire he prob not taking advice from a noname internet poster. What new budget? Tillmans budget is the same as Alexander dont pay tax. Alexander never paid tax either, and unlike Tillman he had Yao and China backing him so he was better off on top of paying less. The prob is like I told you Morey kept going all in, that is paying more "in the future" for a chance to win now. Well the bill is due now, therefore the one at fault is the dude who took in massive loans for no gain in the past rather than blaming the people now.
Look lets take a real world example. Everybody is up in arms about ******* Ariza's bloated 15M deal, Tillman should have paid 45M (15 for 3 yrs) + lux tax + miss out on lux tax payments for freaking Trevor Ariza. I guess all in that total comes to around 50M for 2 years of Ariza and then you try to trade him the last year for an asset. But what about RoCo? He is basically the Ariza replacement and Morey got first dibs on him and let him go for nothing. He blew up and years later we lost Capela getting him back. Capela makes 16M and unlike Ariza is actually worth a great deal on the market, forget second rounders he easily worth a lotto pick. But because we let RoCo go in order to go All In, then we lost a much bigger asset years later just go all in again. If we kept Roco nobody would be crying about Ariza because Roco is better and wed still have Capela to trade. Thats a much bigger loss than freaking overpaying Ariza a bloated contract. And then the Cp3 trade. Everybody fixates on WB to Cp3 trade and conveniently forget Morey traded 3 frps, Harrell, Sweet Lue and Bev for Cp3 a year before. Cp3 gonna be an expiring why not just wait 1 year to get him? Nope gonna go all in and trade a kings ransom for an expiring player. To add insult to injury didnt even get a discount still maxxed him for 4 years I mean wtf dude. If you gonna pay full price why not wait 1 year for him?
Ok, I have no problem with that, Les Was cheap. Happy? I have no allegiance to any of these suits who sit and hardly do anything. Like I said, the owners are the most replaceable part bc there is a lot of demand and the key to the NBA business is being able to delegate and select good leadership. So where was Les good? He was groundbreaking in bringing Morey to a leadership position. Once gain, Morey is far far from perfect, but he brought a unique approach and he definitely raised the bar of the NBA and how we evaluate things, there is a reason the second he walked out he had offers for someone else to run the franchise. Les was quiet otherwise, paid tax a couple times, but all in ball I’d consider him neutral to negative and I wouldn’t give a damn either way. Like I said, when we got a local season ticket holder,I was escatic. BUt tillman changed the trajectory. The moves made didn’t help morey, logically they didn’t help him in any single case. He built up trade exceptions for years, all of a sudden didn’t use them, mid level, even draft picks that he speaks are so valuable he used to dump salary to..coincidentally get under the cap each year. So, you seem like a smart dude, who are those moves helping? What are they incentivizing? they aren’t go all in for Harden, they aren’t morey get any hands on deck we can. Remember we replaced Ariza for who? James ennis...he actually played...We traded him for a top 55 protected pick mid season, while he was in MDA’s short rotation. We also traded firsts to get shumpert, didn’t use his contract for trade flexibility. Included 2nds and first elsewhere all to get under the cap. Remember the Carmelo experiment? He stayed on our active roster just so we didn’t cut him salary wise before we dumped him later, but during this time we also sent Daniel house back home while he was a big piece of our rotation too just so we didn’t hurt our flexibility in getting under the tax. Remember, I’m not saying keep one player, but don’t get worse and take the mike like tillman did after 2019 “we need a killer mentality that I’ll instill” when you brought a worse product back. I can’t imagine stars took kindle to that. I’m fine with MDA’s flaws. If you recall our success was with Jeff Bzdelik as the Associate head coach running the defense. He left because negotiations curiously fell through until we started bad and tillman claimed ‘he convinced him to come back’...he left that offseaso just like MDA, not to be with his family, but to New Orleans for a job he didn’t have to haggle with. Find my other owners who goto espn and talk about a coaches contract like he did with MDA and lie about it openly? Agents talk in this league, all this does is hurt our future prospects, our reputation as a franchise because this guy is in over his head. I sympathize with anyone in this country working and making money, but the rockets are not your standard business affair, if he can’t handle the heat he should’ve gotten out of the kitchen in my opinion. He seems to have a nice situation with debt and finances, I’m happy for him. Rockets are a different economic system and the way he started he was in over his head. I hope he can learn and sadly if he had heeded his own advice, shut up and listen, We’d be better off than dealing with some sort of Dollar Value Dolan. The silver lining, recently he did say this is a “partnership” with him and his players and I’m hoping he can figure it out because we wont have to pay anyone large for a while, but now we got some good bones and things to build off and as fans we have no choice but to look forward, doesn’t mean we should be ignorant of the past. so to answer you, yes the Pacers owner suck, paul George left and admitted they are fine with mediocrity...we don’t want that. They got some heavy paid players now, I hope we don’t go that route just to compete because that is probably the most profitable model. Okc owner made the grave mistake for the tax years before, he seemed to have learned later with Russ though, so thats a case maybe we’ll learn. Sarver has generally been terrible. But the GM works under the constrains of the owner and budget. It’s like any manager in any job, if the owner says we can’t spend here or afford it, you adjust, you’re an employee and thats why morey has changed his tune bc he was very public about MDA, about keeping cp3 and building on that, on trade assets in picks and exceptions and swinging at all fences when you are in your window. Then tillman comes and all those assets were ignored or used to save money. You can’t demand a title, or a finals appearance, but when you have special talent and forces you go all in and try to build the best cohesive team. No doubt MDA had flaws, and us losing our successful Jeff bzdelik Associate head coach partnership is understated, no doubt morey did too. But tillman is where the trajectory changed and our culture was not win at all cost despite what he says in public(tillman does have a tendency to what pr and then blow smoke and eat his own wonders, I don’t mind it if you don’t back it up). Tillman bought in an age that Steve Balmer and The nets guy bought in, act like it. He acts more like he got in during the Donald Sterling/ Sarver era sadly.
Lol you dont tell owners how to act though who are you again? You and me, we are just nobodies this is their team and they run it the way they want to. You cant sit on your high horse and tell all the owners they should be like the best owners in the league and go broke spending their money. Thats not how life works. Sure Fertita lied but Morey has been lying since he took the job so thats not anything new right? I dont se you hating on morey for lying so its not a big deal.
It’s not about ariza, its about replacing ariza or running it back. Ariza is not mr perfect, but what he did serve was one of our most versatile defenders when our entire defensive scheme was switch everything. He created spacing, albeit an inconsistent shooter, but it was just to get respect of spacing. And also as Chris Paul mentioned that people underestimated his impact, he was the glue guy, the locker room vet that harnessed both paul and harden. It’s hard to put a quantity on what that means, culture matters. (“People don’t realize, that’s the biggest thing that we missed. That was tough when we lost [Ariza] because he sorta was like the glue. He was that glue for our team.”) Then, Ariza was a 1 year deal. Not 3. It’s a one time issue that also becomes an expiring contract which are tradeable easily. he was traded for Kelly oubre jr that year. Remember you can keep citing is this contract worth it, and thats fine. That’s why its a billionaires game with the amount of money there. Because the competition for winning a title isn’t thinking like that. You keep bringing up Sarver, pacers, and if thats your priority to compare rockets with them to make ‘smart’ decisions and make this a yearly profitable business for tillman although its not his main cash flow, as it shouldn’t be for any owner, and despite him raising prices on any of us who want to come see a game uptil the market will let him, yet we’re supposed to be benevolent with him when he is the one who overly leveraged himself for this buy? Cmon, this isn’t the Fertitta Rockets we love...this is the Houston Rockets, Les, fertitta, or any owner can kick rocks. Shut up and listen and lets build a winner to bring Clutch City back.
So now your argument is well call morey and a les a liar at least too? I’m fine with criticizing either of them, none were perfect, but like I said Morey had painstakingly lined up assets, trade exceptions, picks, mle ways to add talent...instead almost our moves were to cut cost and all those trade exceptions...literally just expired, mle...not used, picks often used to get under cap... so in that case thats an owner, he’s the only one who benefits ..the only one. I get what your saying, but then what’s the point of having a message board. To not criticize, or should this be like some sort of MBS Kim Jon Eun type where we just tell fertitta he’s the most beautiful man on the planet and kiss someone’s butt? Nah, this is texas bud. Just like the people chanting sell the team in the Garden or even protesting out in the cold know they are the loyal viewers, supporters, and sometimes ticket holders. But the truth is this is a billionaires mom and pop shop type of operation that is updating and growing as we speak. The franchises are at the whim and mercy of these billionaire owners. Blake mentioned when Balmer came the first thing he noticed was. Some expensive recovery machine in the training room that Donald sterling scoffed at purchasing for his team. Remember the nets as a laughing stock? The Russian and furthermore the new owner have piled money into their branding, their facilities, and now they are taking the next step. Building a culture where your teams, staff, all take care of the details so the players lock in is the new streamlined way. That’s what the next sustainable great franchises will do. ..is their ring guaranteed for either of those teams..no, not even a finals, but they are all contenders and you can bet they won’t be making moves to get under the tax. That’s the difference, thats why hardens there and not here.
