You don’t need to understand basketball to own an NBA team.
You need to understand money. How it talks and walks. The mechanisms it uses to make the world go around. Basketball is merely a conduit.
For a while, it was unclear whether Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta understood his function. It’s somewhat understandable. When you own something, there’s an understandable instinct to take ownership.
(I assume).
But Fertitta does not know basketball. He said Chris Paul had the worst contract in the NBA,
and traded him for a player with a worse contract, along with draft capital that the Rockets just stopped paying out this summer. It was the worst trade in Rockets history that didn’t involve Moses Malone.
It’s not a mistake he’s set to make again.
Rockets owner vows to take hands-off approach
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon says that Fertitta is done “meddling” with the Rockets.
Thank God.
If you Google Fertitta, you won’t see “Houston Rockets owner” autopopulate your search first. You’ll see “U.S. Ambassador to Italy”. If you didn’t know, he’s a big old Trumper.
Perhaps you’re reading this, and you’re a MAGA guy too. Let’s not digress too far down this rabbit hole. I’m not.
But as long as Fertitta knows what he has to do to Make The Rockets Great Again (MRAGA, patent pending), he’s OK with me.
After all, there’s a whole other can of worms to open here. Is Rafael Stone a good General Manager? Is Fertitta even doing the right thing by delegating the work to him?
I’ve been quite clear on my take: Yes. Yet, even if you disagree, Fertitta’s thought process is fundamentally sound. Leave the basketball decisions to the basketball decision guy. He’s responsible for the financial decisions.
There is, of course, crossover there. The Rockets traded Dorian Finney-Smith this summer. It was initially confusing. It was a salary dump, and the Rockets could have signed Marcus Smart without dumping the salary, so why not just stash Finney-Smith at the end of the bench instead of hastily moving him?
Oh…money.
The Rockets were seemingly ducking the second apron of the salary cap. Fertitta was likely thinking about his pockets. It’s hard to blame him if he’s looking to cut costs on a team that won’t win the NBA championship this year anyway. Even then, there are basketball reasons to avoid the second apron. The Rockets don’t want to have their draft picks frozen via the repeater tax.
It could be said that it’s easy enough for Fertitta to say this now. When the rubber hits the road, and Rafael Stone wants to make a future-focused trade that could hurt the short-term bottom line, Fertitta could step in.
For now, let’s just be encouraged that he won’t be trading Chris Paul and picks for Russell Westbrook again.
