Woj: Current Era Of Rockets 'At Stake With This Season'

OK, where for whom(s)/what(s)? You're talking a super-challenging situation that includes respect for the player relating to his new destination. Thunder couldna just dropped Westbrook off in Minnie, for example.

Knicks might be doable yet if they get Masai where might his mindset be? Would they wait for MU? If they really wanted him as Pres/GM then he would insist on making the call.

 

Harden is too important to Tilman's wallet. He ain't going anywhere, regardless how the team performs.

 

imagine paying $2+ billion dollars for a team only to make it less valuable

 

that is kind of Tilman's MO.

If I had to guess : He will either get the team back to it's value by cutting costs and hoping he can get lucky here and there while spending less or he will sell the team before the value drops too low.

 

Even while they're here, they should be shamed for pissing away the career of a top 3 scorer of all time. Hope Harden is noticing this.

 

imagining giving a $2 billion asset to your unproven kid and let him make the decisions to not only keep your investment's value but increase it. jesus.

 

Bound to happen, he overpaid from the start. Les sold way high imo. NBA as a whole was overvalued then and we're now seeing it with dropped viewership and cord cutters impacting ratings in this way. Losing China revenue was a huge nail in the coffin.

 

THIS.

 

The Rockets have the 2nd/3rd highest payroll in the league and 2 of the 4 highest paid players. Would it be nice if he would just let DM and staff spend whatever they want every year? Sure. Would it be nice if it was Steve Ballmer that bought the Rockets instead of Fertitta? Sure.

But whomever bought them, I don't think they'd give free salary spending to management, and in all cases it'd be a SERIOUS problem that the GM royally screwed a large revenue generating scheme.

IF... and a BIG IF... DM is let go from his position this offseason, his relative failure (and to be clear he's a great GM, just relative to the goal of winning a championship), won't be because he was handicapped by management, but rather because there's not a lot of room for missteps in the NBA if you want to compete for championships, and while DM has done a crapton of good roster management, he always has a couple of scratch your head decisions as well, within the confines of the $$ he is allocated.

 

Accurate.

 

Harden will not stick around for a rebuild. He wants a ring and deserves a ring. If they fire Morey and blow it up I will not say anything bad about James if he asks for a trade. We were nothing prior to him. He gave us a great run.

 

Let me get this straight: this era of Rockets basketball is coming to an end, even though James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Clint Capela, and Eric Gordon are all locked in for a MINIMUM of 4 more years?? Yes, our COACH might change.....but this era of Rockets basketball has at least half a decade left just based on James Harden alone. And you have posters in here acting like Harden is going to demand a trade in 6 months even though that guy has shown NOTHING but loyalty to the city of Houston.....FOH with this Chicken Little nonsense. Yes, Tilman has ****ed us for the short-term with his penny-pinching, but we will always be relevant as long as Harden is here. I'm not counting the era as dead unless Harden puts on another team's colors.

Also, if Morey leaves, Tilman can go **** himself.

 

I think WOJ meant the end of Moreyball with MDA at the helm.

 

This is likely what WOJ meant.

In terms of the future of the team, I am not going to put the cart before the horse. I am not going to get ahead of myself. We'll see.

 

Which is why its not an enormous deal. That era hasn't won a ring. It should end if it doesn't.

 

I think this is what Woj is referring too more so than the core of the roster. MDA is already a lock to be gone.

 

Unless I'm missing something, the Rockets were 9th and 13th in previous two years in spending. Teams that paid luxury tax these years include Warriors, Wizards, Cavs, Raptors, Thunder, Blazers, and Grizzlies. None of them owned by Steve Ballmer.

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/cap/2018/

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/cap/2017/

 

Daryl Morey has the most wins/$ spent of any GM currently in the league, and is very likely one the best ever in this regard. He’s both absolutely and relatively better than literally any other choice, regardless of narratives to the contrary.

If revenue isn’t being converted from wins/$ at a proportionate level, the fault lies within other segments of basketball operations.

The commoditization of the Lexus lounge for instance. With Les, it was fairly easy to get extra passes for people who had friends with general tickets. This increased the value of the franchise, because the big ticket spenders were more likely to go if they didn’t have problems bringing their friends into their suites.

Now, passes are sold before the game for an extremely high price to people that don’t have suites. This is good for his bottom line, but extremely bad for his business valuation. Now you get people in the lounge who like looking rich, but don’t actually have deep pockets when it counts.

Hopefully Tilman figures out that an NBA team isn’t a restaurant before he runs the valuation into the dirt, all while sacrificing the on court product to maintain margin.

 

It's not only the luxury tax.
Ferttita asked Westbrook to change the details of his contract so he can pay him.

Hollinger the inventor of PER, who was for ages in a FO in Memphis until this year, pretty much said that this never happens in other teams. EVER.
Our owner, didn't have the ability to pay the superstar on time so he had to put forth a different installment plan to pay off the salary of his employee.
Do you understand now how dire the situation is?

How can you be optimistic that MDA will be replaced with a decent coach?
Great coaches want high salaries.
Great GMs demand high salaries.

Unless you think our future GM will be able to find some undiscovered Brad Stevens from the scrap heap.

 

That is why installing his son as a GM becomes a valid option for him.