Have not heard from him or seen him in any of the owners meetings or CBA discussions. Heck, we have heard from or of Portland's owner having a huge impact in negotiations. Where's Les? He hasn't been heard of or heard for, etc. Makes Houston even more irrelevant....
You dont have enough information to know what Alexander is doing or saying at the meetings so your conclusion that he is making the rockets more irrelevant is frankly not smart. To be honest I would rather have an owner that doesnt get into confrontations with the players which would make Houston a more favorable place to play then say Portland now? Im sure we would get the nod over them by free agents based on Paul Allen's behavior.
Remember how Les deftly handled getting the new arena? He was very smooth about letting the drama play out, and his patience paid off. Plus, Stern is paid to be the bad guy, why should Les get his hands dirty?
Arison gets fined 500K for tweeting up; Allen looks like the Dark Cloud. What role shall Owner Alexander play in your drama? Let's just get a settlement and either (a) make some great and inspired moves or (b) suck enough to luck into PingPongBall heaven.
Jimmy is getting impatient. Jimmy doesn't like lack of information from Les Alexander. Jimmy is getting mad.
FWIW, Les doesn't really have a lot of personal interest either way. Sure, he's more likely to side with the hardliners given his personal lack-of-wealth. But he also has a sweet stadium/tv deal with solid revenue stream. On the flip side, the Rockets suck so Les isn't exactly dying for the season to star like the Bostons, LAs, Miamis, etc. Really, Les is in a comfortable position that no matter how things unfold, he'll be fine. Les is just like his team. Stuck in the middle.
There's that and the potential $500,000 fine for saying anything in public about the labor situation.
Arison getting fined 1/2 a mil for Tweeting "lol" is reason enough to stay quiet. Plus, Les is not on the board so there is no reason for him to be at the meetings other than to complicate things even more. Even if Les had constructive ideas like Mark Cuban's "no salary cap" exploration, it would be shot down by the narrow minded owners that wanted to wait till November to even start negotiating on the same old deal as before just with a better chunk of cash at the end(BRI). The deal is 95% done, and there is nothing he can do to help it along because I believe it takes 60% vote to change the owners stance on any negotiating issues. Owners like him and Cuban know that they are in the minority of forward thinking owners that have correctly managed their teams finances under the previous CBA. Until the NBA opens up to contraction the minority owners that manage their businesses correctly have little power to stand up vs. the rank and file. *I do believe that Les, Cuban, Arison, etc. should have stood up to the other owners this summer to come up with a better solution long term rather than the ridiculous plan that was set in motion by owners like Sarver and Gilbert that was to sacrifice the season and the overall branding of the NBA to get an NHL type of deal. This has been one of the worst business decisions I have seen a multi billion dollar business make in awhile. Never piss off your customers(fans) in a bad economic client. The NBA might never recover from this completely.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rs7RPjsFRNM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
From what I am reading around the web, it seems there will be a lot of resentment coming out of this process. I would rather Les not be a figure who is associated with any negativity.
The more I don't hear about our owner at these meeting the better. The owners you do hear about are ****ing it all up.
