[ESPN Magazine] Can Rockets owner Leslie Alexander land Dwight Howard?

Commodore · Jun 15, 2013

great profile of Les

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...-rockets-owner-leslie-alexander-espn-magazine

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's June 24 Money issue. Subscribe today!

ON A SUNNY DAY in late May, Leslie Alexander, the Rockets' billionaire owner, sits in the living room of his towering wheel-and-spoke-shaped $18.3 million mansion in Southampton, N.Y. The sweeping space overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, but it is spare, with just a couple of idiosyncratic touches: a large photo of Marilyn Monroe ("I dated her," he jokes) and a small sculpture of a cat, fashioned out of auto parts, that he found in a French village.

Alexander looks out at the waves crashing against the sand, just beyond his capacious deck and inground pool. What more could a man want? A month shy of his 70th birthday, Alexander, who was last estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.2 billion in 2006, doesn't need much. But for Houston, the team he's owned for 20 years and that hasn't won a title since the back-to-backs when he bought the franchise in July 1993, there is at least one person he covets. Neither Alexander nor anyone on his basketball staff would dare say the name for fear of a tampering fine from the league, but his first name rhymes with "might," and his last name starts with H, ends with D and includes "war" in the middle. (Despite their apparent carefulness, the Rockets did end up receiving a small fine for what the Houston Chronicle reported was a series of stories produced by the team's website that mentioned certain free agents.)

That is why on June 30, the day the billionaire hits his next decade, he doesn't have a lavish event planned at his tony estate. Instead, he'll be having dinner with his Rockets management team. Conveniently, they'll be in Los Angeles, and when the clock strikes midnight on the East Coast, unrestricted free agents across the NBA will be allowed to start negotiating with clubs. If any maximum-contract free agents happen to be cruising through Hollywood at 9 p.m. Pacific time, Alexander won't mind if they stop by for some cake.

It's no secret that the Rockets, along with the Mavs, are the whisper-circuit front-runners for the privilege of paying Dwight Howard the maximum of $87.6 million over the next four years. In Houston, the team has been carefully planning for this moment since at least last season: remaking the roster, plotting payroll cuts, letting players plant seeds this offseason. But the one thing the normally reclusive owner has rarely done is put himself out there. Most players, and most of his fellow owners, simply know him as well as he'll let them. Through two championships and four Hall of Famers (Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen), he's never had to sell himself. Ultimately, though, he understands that contracts like the megadeal Howard is seeking are between an owner and a player, which means he will personally have to close anything the Rockets proffer.

"I don't remember the last free agent we had who was a megastar," Alexander says. His cadence is quick and his accent -- "better" shades toward "bettuh" -- remains rooted in West Orange, N.J., where he was raised the son of an insurance broker and a housewife, and NYU, where he graduated in 1965. He points out that in his early days as owner, sought-after stars recruited themselves: "We just got them."

That's because he hit the ground running as few team buyers ever have. By age 50, Alexander had built a fortune managing money -- from Wall Street trader to investment company owner, picking up a law degree at Western State (now Thomas Jefferson) through night classes along the way -- and when he decided he wanted to own a team, David Stern pointed him toward Houston.

The Rockets had gone 55-27 in 1992-93, and their franchise player, Olajuwon, was only 30. But the region was suffering from a severe oil and gas bust, and Charlie Thomas, who owned a string of Houston car dealerships, sold the club to Alexander for a bottom-of-recession price of $85 million, with just $20 million cash up front. In Alexander's first year, the Rockets beat the Knicks, his favorite team when he was young, in the NBA Finals. The following season, they repeated against the Magic, giving Alexander rings in his first two seasons.

Houston's success made the Rockets a go-to destination for All-Star veterans trying to win in the shadow of Michael Jordan. Alexander swung trades for Drexler in '95 and Barkley in '96, and acquired Pippen as part of a sign and trade in '99. "They were trying to come to us," he says. "They wanted to play together. There was no courtship, really."

When that edition ran out of gas, Alexander targeted younger stars, trading for Steve Francis nearly two months after Francis had gone to Vancouver in the 1999 draft. Three years later, he selected Yao Ming, making Yao the first overall pick and putting Houston far ahead of the curve in tapping vast markets of Asian fans. In 2004 he dealt Francis for Tracy McGrady, who wanted out of Orlando. He got lucky with Yao, but as Alexander puts it, "Once they don't want to play where they are, we really target them."

Initially, he enjoyed the camaraderie he had with a roster of mature, thoughtful players and liked hanging with Rudy Tomjanovich, who coached the Rockets from '91 to 2003. But with an influx of early entrants and high school phenoms over the past decade, Alexander has faded from the locker room. "With younger players, it's a much more difficult process," he says. "I tried making a locker room speech once, and when I was done, Stevie Francis said, 'Can I borrow your plane?' and cracked up."

Still, the Rockets have had just three losing seasons since Alexander bought them, and after half a dozen years of haggling with the local American Hockey League team, the city and voters, a new arena, the Toyota Center, opened in 2003. The team generated $26.6 million in profits last year, making it worth $568 million (nearly seven times what Alexander paid), according to Forbes. Together with the Astros and Comcast, the Rockets launched their own regional sports network, which promises to be even more lucrative than the 10-year, $600 million cable deal it had with Fox.

That is to say, Alexander pursues his goals with a passion and finds straightforward ways to achieve them. For instance, he cares about animals -- his yellow Lab, Joy, is a rescue dog -- so he called around, asking where the biggest need was and built a sanctuary in Middleburg, Va., for older and abused horses. He wanted to make wine -- "great wine, not just wine" -- so he bought 22 acres on Long Island, hired David Abreu, one of the country's top viticulturists, and started producing chardonnays and cabernets in 2001. A friend in real estate told Alexander that a Gramercy Park penthouse coming on the market would be a great value, so last year he bought it for $42 million, a record for a downtown New York residence.

What Alexander has yet to do is bring another NBA title to Houston. In 2006 he hired stats wunderkind Daryl Morey away from the Celtics, naming him GM a year later. It's true that for a few seasons after the peak of the Yao-McGrady era, Morey proved more adept at assembling spare parts and clearing cap space than developing or acquiring stars. Houston missed the playoffs three straight years as well.

But Alexander remained patient while fans and local media grew restless. He has the practical confidence of a man whose life experiments have worked out; he forms a long-term plan and doesn't waver.

"My memory of Les will forever be seeing him in his office, overlooking the practice court, watching the financial markets move on multiple computer screens," says Shane Battier, a Rocket from 2006 to 2011. "He obviously understands the value of data and information."

In the NBA, that means understanding the value of stars. Last July Alexander and Morey made a bold move by signing point guard Jeremy Lin away from the Knicks. Four days before the start of the 2012-13 season, the Rockets brokered a deal with the Thunder for shooting guard James Harden, picking the pocket of a team in a difficult situation, similar to the acquisitions of Francis and McGrady.

"I went to Harden on the team plane and said, 'I know there's a lot of pressure on you,'" says Alexander, who admits to having the kind of affection for Harden that he held for his first group of stars. "He's 23 years old. I told him when I was 23, I was making $80 a week. He was shocked."

Alexander has rarely let emotions get in the way of smart business moves, and Houston is fully prepared to discard a batch of contracts to fit a prime free agent like Howard under next season's $58.5 million salary cap.

The catch is that the man who can buy just about anything will need more than money to seal the deal that could make the Rockets champions again.

Asked specifically what he'll do differently this summer to recruit the free agents he wants, Alexander replies, "I think there's enough of a story here, you know what I mean?"

Will Dwight?
Click to expand...

OTMax · Jun 15, 2013

Already posted, come on guys, search first.

jocar · Jun 15, 2013

Dang, he was only making $80 a week when he was Harden's age? Investment banking ftw

Commodore · Jun 15, 2013

OTMax said: ↑

Already posted, come on guys, search first.
Click to expand...

unless it's inside another thread, I don't see where it has been posted

jbasket · Jun 15, 2013

Commodore said: ↑

unless it's inside another thread, I don't see where it has been posted
Click to expand...

It was in another thread, but got buried under junk. It is a good read, and deserves to be separated since it is from another POV.

kjayp · Jun 15, 2013

Commodore said: ↑

unless it's inside another thread, I don't see where it has been posted
Click to expand...

I didn't see it either...enjoyed the read...thanks for posting!

TheresTheDagger · Jun 15, 2013

Any chance someone with insider could post the article here? Thank you in advance!

ivenovember · Jun 15, 2013

TheresTheDagger said: ↑

Any chance someone with insider could post the article here? Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...

Or you could click "show spoiler" in the OPs post.

REEKO_HTOWN · Jun 15, 2013

Les will teach him the art of no socks.

Forums

[ESPN Magazine] Can Rockets owner Leslie Alexander land Dwight Howard?

Commodore Member

OTMax Member

jocar Member

Commodore Member

jbasket Member

kjayp Member

TheresTheDagger Member

ivenovember Member

REEKO_HTOWN I'm Rich Biiiiaaatch!

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!