It might be a good time for Rockets fans without a horse in the NBA Playoffs (I have several, but if you need one, I’d go Boston because you can pretend you’re watching the 2001 Eastern Conference All-Stars every night!) to focus on the upcoming offseason, what with the deep free agent class (or not), the draft stuffed with impact (or role; I always get those two mixed up) players and the… lockout? Seriously, world?
So maybe this summer won’t bring relief for the ketchup & mustard faithful, but at least, thanks to the lockout, we can all indulge in something almost as American as greed, overpaid athletes and professional sports: attack ads.
Yes, these could be the last three games of Rockets basketball for a while, yet lockout paranoia has not particularly permeated the Houston fanbase. Could Rockets fans possibly eye an advantage for their team in all of the brouhaha ensuing from an extended battle over a new CBA? Revenue sharing seems like it would directly counteract with the interests of Houston, a highly profitable franchise; however, Commissioner David Stern has talked far more frequently about hard salary caps and contract scale decreases than greater reforms in the league’s current revenue sharing model. A hard cap also does not seem particularly friendly to a Rockets franchise that has found its owner’s large and open pocketbooks a great boon as most franchises cower away from the guillotine that is the luxury tax. In fact, a massive salary cap overhaul might hurt the Rockets more than most franchise given Houston’s obvious knack for acquiring talent and assets at lower values than when inevitably shipped for even better parts; for those teams that have assiduously studied and mastered the current cap system, the dismantling of all of that expertise seems devastating.
Do the Rockets want a quick resolution to the potential lockout more than most teams? Maybe, but the real work that needs to be done with this team definitely cannot start until it is.
