To do that they would have to sign him to the Houston contract, which may make him valuable only to Houston, who as cs says, has an Asian fanbase. The contract makes him pretty useless to most teams.
And teams now know that with NY already having 2 point guards, they have leverage. Why trade an additional player when you can just offer him a contract because it seems apparent the Knicks won't match any relatively high offer.
What the hell was Houston thinking? Wow, damn near a max contract for a mediocre guard? Wow!! Good luck with that Houston but you now have a big problem.
i guess it is like CS said, houston has asian fans because of yao and and they want to bring back the money from those fans with lin. might work for them, hard to say. defintiely think lin is not as good as advertised.
I've heard in the past that Yao had a huge impact on the bottom line of the Rockets (i.e. off the court stuff - merchandising or whatever) although don't think I've ever seen actual numbers or estimates. I'm curious how significant they were and the projections for Lin. The Rockets have been desparately trying to get a super star for the past couple of years without success. Since there are only a handful of them in the league that are not likely to move (or don't want to play in Houston like Dwight Howard), the Lin experiement seems worth trying. The "casual" Rockets fan simply didn't care about the team last year (even though they were a 6 seed most of the year). At least this would give them a little buzz while selling the youth movement project and hopeful 7 footer Dirk clone.
its fascinating because i think the league realizes that lin is probably a slightly above average point guard. its like tebow,(except tebow is one of the worst players of the last decade) because the question is whether you want to make money by selling tickets and jerseys in china (or in tebows case, to christian rednecks), or do you want to win. you cant win as easily if you are paying luxury taxes and cant sign player you want because some players are overpaid (i am assuming that the knicks budget is not unlimited like the yankees).i dont think the knicks are a worse team for losing lin, his replacement is about the same and much cheaper. losing lin is probably a bad move PR wise but a good move basketball wise. i guess the question is which of those options makes you more money, or do you just inherently care about winning. the cubs clearly dont give a damn about winning, and the rays definitely do. both are profitable. the rays would not be profitable if they lost like the cubs. the cubs would probably be margincally more profitable if they won, but they are already selling out everything and i even i want to go see them because of their history. so, is the goal of the franchise to be profitable, or is to win? you can take advantage of unsophisticated fans that like certain players because of race or religion or whatever or you can try to win. i know some guys buy teams because they want money, other guys buy them to win.
I think the Rockets goal is to win, which they feel would then create a profitable franchise. In the NBA, you have to get a superstar or two to win. Lowry and Dragic were both pretty good at PG last year but Lowry complained publicly about the coaching staff so they decided to trade him. Dragic was a free agent and decided to return to the Suns. Lin appears to be a similar talent as those guys and signed for similar money. "Good" (but not great) players like Lin are getting a little more than they should because the superstars are limited in how much they can earn. It's not like the Rockets really broke the bank to get him. He's only 24 yrs old and should continue to improve. I think it's more likely than not that he lives up to this contract.
