The NBA headquarters has cut a number of jobs, as has at least one team I am aware of (Bobcats). People are generally expecting lower revenues-- which results in a lower tax threshold and salary cap. Of course, the economic impact differs from city to city. Will the Rockets be hit badly? I know Artest sold some tickets, but will the fans who come to games still buy the beer and food and merchandize? What about the corporate cats in the lower bowl? People complain about them, but without their dollars the team could be more stingy about salaries, no? How do you think these factors will hit the Rockets? Does it, for example, make it less likely for Ron Artest to re-sign? (Assuming, that is, the economy doesn't show some signs of growth by next offseason). Or... will more stingy teams in general allow Morey to exploit the market and get someone on the cheap? My sense is that Morey is a step ahead of most of the league, and any kind of chaos benefits him because he can exploit these things better. BTW, Les Alexander owns 15 million shares of First Marblehead (as of September 20, 2008). Here's the stock price of First Marblehead over the last year: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FMD The worth of 15 million shares of FMD has come down from $600 million to about $25 million (a few millions more than Tracy's annual salary?).
I think it would make Les less willing to pay Luxury Tax, and that could definitely impact our roster. Not sure how much he has been affected by crisis, but it might also make him less willing to bribe Mutombo in rejoining the team again.
les' personal money should have little effect on the rockets. rockets are run like a business... self sustaining. depends on how much revenue the rockets generate whether artest is resigned or not. but then again if les lost a ton of money then he will want to keep the max profit to help recover what he lost.
The nice thing about a potential Artest resigning is that McGrady and Battier come off the books the year after. So we would be about 6-7 million deep in lux tax but then after next season we could be a few million under again.
