Fertitta doesn't get bashed enough. Neither does Les Alexander. I never liked Alexander, and while it's tempting to say that he was a better owner than Tilman (and he was - the bar is that low), the truth is that my dislike of Les has grown to something more. He gave us Fertitta. He even loaned a substantial amount, in the tens of millions, to Fertitta so the egomaniac (who really couldn't afford to buy the team) could pay what Alexander felt was a fair price for the Rockets. The result? Fertitta destroys a contending team. He destroys a terrific organization. He destroys our relationship with the best player the Rockets have had since Hakeem. Tilman ended our best chance at a title for the foreseeable future. I'm someone who has followed the Rockets since they took Elvin Hayes with the first pick of the 1968 draft, and then looked on with astonishment as they were moved to Houston, already possessing the perfect name for a Houston NBA franchise. I've seen decades of the Rockets wandering through the NBA wilderness, interspersed with too brief periods of brilliance that shook the league. We've just ended a stretch with James Harden that can only be compared to the brilliance Hakeem gave us for so many years. So much of it frustrating as hell as the franchise was spinning it's wheels, doomed to 1st and 2nd round exits that drove us all crazy, no one more frustrated than Olajuwon. The way Harden left had me royally pissed off, but Tilman was an owner he had to leave to have any hope of getting what every NBA player dreams of, a championship. He still may not get a ring, there are Hall of Famers who don't have one and it burns. Ask Charles Barkley. At least James has a good chance of winning one. He had an excellent chance with the Rockets before Chris Paul's hamstring and the destruction of that team by Tilman Fertitta. I'll never forgive Fertitta for what he did to my team, and what Alexander did that made it possible. The one saving grace for Les is that he owned the Rockets when we won our two championships. He didn't **** it up and dealing for Clyde took courage. He should never have done a deal with Tilman. I'll add that the OP is a chump. Jeremy Lin? Who cares?
Well, sports fandom is about loving your team and hating other teams. No? "Fan" is the short form for "fanatic." You don't expect too much rationality from fanatics. And it should not be like the real world. That said, I agree that fans of the same team should be nice to each other, not fighting each other. The reality is, CF is in a way a microcosm of the real world. The citizens of the same country should stand with each other. But you know the reality. The thing about "-only fans" is that extreme worship (or hatred for that matter) of a single person over the whole is usually not good for the whole. We see that in the real world too.
I am 100% behind anyone that will bash any team owner at any given time, unless its totally nonsense, otherwise I will always give the critics the benefit of the doubts. Players are different, to some extend, yes they do have some responsibilities to the fans because the merchandises you bought will directly benefit them, but other than that, they are employees of the team and they can be treated as a commodity by their owners so they definitely do have their own rights. But owners, whose directly benefiting from the fans, even we are not buying the tickets to the stadium to watch the game, every second we are talking about this franchise, we are still their potential customer whose generating revenue to them. So they deserve every critics all the time.
The thing is I have yet to actually see a Harden only fan, Lins fan were actually rooting for other players on the team to do bad to ellevate Lin I have seen nobody doing that. I have also yet to see anybody actively rooting for the Rockets to do bad so Harden will shine, they want the Rockets to do bad to accelerate the rebuilding process. People rooting for Harden to do well has nothing to do with the Rockets point blank. This entire HOF thing is being driven by people that have wanted Harden gone for years.
Tanking is one thing. Actively hating the current players and wishing them bad is to me as bad as those who hated Harden when he was here. (I can understand hating on guys like Oladipo because he is playing to the detriment of the team. But I see fans here cheering in the name of tanking when the young players are messing up.) But I digress. To me, it is so obvious that rooting for the Nets because of Harden is against the interest of the Rockets. You can rationalize that this year's pick from the Nets is not realistically going to be very good anyway. But it also didn't look very realistic for the Rockets to be this bad when we were winning right after the Harden trade. And that didn't stop people from wishing the team to be bad at that time. And yes, the "I told you so" crowd is annoying. There are clearly Harden fans that want to see the Rockets bad in order to glorify Harden's exit so that they can totally blame the team rather than the player for his behavior.
I would also add that the “I told you so” posters that are being complained about, in my eyes, didn’t arise at the moment Harden was traded. These posters aren’t taking victory laps that they knew the team would suck because Harden left. The victory lap is based on the group of posters, that there was no shortage of, who saw the most minuscule amount of “success” the team had post Harden trade and were talking loud about it. The amount of “who needs you!” “We are a playoff team without him!” “Wood for MVP!” was rampant and was generally spouted off by the established anti Harden crowd and directed at the pro Harden crowd. It was dumb. Anyone with a brain should have been able to look at the collection of talent we had post trade and their history as players to know that this could get REALLY ugly. Little winning streak be damned. Not to mention the highly delusional anti Harden crowd who saw that little bit of success post Harden and were spouting off nonsense that wasn’t even happening. “Yay player and ball movement!” “yay no more iso!” “We’re free from the shackles of the evil iso monster!”
Who is doing that? Show an example of anybody rooting against a young player on this team? Yes rooting for Harden on the Nets is technically rooting against the interest of the Rockets but we are talking about draft spots and its frankly silly to think that way. People where only wishing for the team to be bad because they wanted a possible high draft position and realized non of these guys were most likely long for the team anyway. No the I told you crowd do not want to see the Rockets bad in order to glorify Harden they are just saying they knew the winning streak was fools gold and that this much vaunted culture shift was a mirage. I can also say that the only reason people were happy about the winning streak was because they hated Harden and wanted to think the Team was better without him, I would be wrong but I could use the same logic you are. I have yet to see any poster totally absolve Harden from his behavior so please show me an example of that and what does it matter anyway in the grand scheme of things? What would change if everybody 100% blamed Harden for everything?
I guess I have not seen a lot of positivity here to notice a Harden fan being a downer in that situation, but I will take your word for it. I do empathize with them since this is the first time in many people's lifetime that we have been on the selling end of a player like Harden, we typically are getting the better player in a trade and trading four quarters for a dollar, so it is a new feeling to many I am sure. I can see this being annoying once we do have true rising stars and see light at the end of the tunnel and for people to continue to bring his name up. I think many are not past the acceptance phase, and there will probably be those people that lurk for years, especially if Harden wins elsewhere. I personally would be at peace with it since he would have had to go to the East and use KD to get him a chance at a ring, not much that we could have done in that regard. I don't like Tilman, but the biggest error was getting Westbrook and that was a request by Harden. The guy who ultimately made us competitive caused the downfall of the franchise as well. At least that is what I will be telling myself
You made a good point that for some young fans, all they have seen is the past 10 years or so and I can understand that Harden was the only thing that made them proud as Rockets fans. To me, there were many other proud times as a fan. The Harden-led team doesn't even make my top 5 list.
No, it doesn't change anything. This thread is silly. But the context that led up to this thread is even sillier. I have learned long ago that on every issue, there are always extremists on both sides. These are the minority but usually the loudest. BTW, I have no intention to dig up past posts just to prove my point. There are more important things to do in life. I don't really care whether anyone agrees with me. What annoys me is that every thread seems to lead to talks about Harden.
That question, in its various forms, is like a tradition by now. May it never get old. Unless it is a PTSD. lol Both Lin and Harden were not great for team chemistry. One kept on talking about "pieces" and "cornerstones" and the other kept on hogging the limelight while being a support player. Team chemistry seems important for small markets. Wonder if money-ball Morey had data on that..
That says something, that talking about Harden causes you irritation and no every thread does not lead to that I can point out 5 at the top of the page that do not talk about him.
I had a significant attachment to the Harden era vs prior eras mainly because technology made it easier to access the games and watch them. I was ten years old in the 95 championship, we didn't have access to the games unless they were national tv games. I spent many evenings listening to jim and gene on the radio while I did my homework. The Harden era had NBA tv that I could play from my gaming console, as well as many other online streams, so no matter where I was I could catch the game and see his brutal step-backs, I would often leave work early and work from home just to catch the game ( I probably watched over 95% of regular season games and all playoff games). I was more in control of my schedule as an adult so I could watch these games vs the championship era where as the youngest I would not dictate what we watched. Hearing dream's moves were still fun when Jim and Gene were calling the games, but I did not have that level of commitment to those teams due to access.
