I suppose it isn't even ironic that someone else would assume the same thing. I tend to steer clear of the GARM because of the speed of the disappearing threads, bad threads and bad posts. It could be that my thread is all three. But I digress- Hakeem, while the greatest Rocket ever, was no where NEAR the money generator that Yao is.
the whole point to the thread that was started for whatever-that-rookie's-nick is(I forget and I aint gonna go back and check) is that while lots of people throw around the phrase "cash cow", we don't normally see anyone say just what aspect of having Yao DIRECTLY sends all this money to Les. Do you mean merchandise? wrong....it goes into a pool called BRI that is split amongst the teams. TV contracts?? Also goes to BRI iirc. random business deals that Les does in China? Well, we just dont know any cold hard facts about that do we? Until we do, they should not be brought into the conversation as all any of us can do is speculate. Attendance at the Toybox? nonsense....as long as the team is winning, the fans will come, regardless of who the star player is. The only thing I have seen mentioned up to now that counts would be the adspace bought by the Chinese companies actually at the Toybox. Tho, thats a strawman since the ads would be bought regardless of who the star player is. Its not like we had blank adspace before Yao. Soooo, give me some details, just what aspect of having Yao brings in more money than a Rockets team that had someone like Durant(Doesn't matter who the star is, insert any name you want) as a star player. If it is so obvious, this should be an easy question to answer...no?
