With today's news that the Houston Rockets are making a contract offer to Jeremy Lin I think it's time to step back, take a breath, and say something that needs to be said:
The Rocket's off-season is starting to look like a slow-motion car crash.
If you think you've seen this movie before, you're probably correct. At the beginning of the off-season it was obvious that the Rockets had developed a plan "A". Make small trades for draft position and picks, and then bundle up Kyle Lowery and a bunch of other stuff in a trade for Dwight Howard. What they got stuck with (after everything fell through) was Omar Asik and another Darell Morey inspired beg-a-thon to Jeremy Lin. What's worse, the guy who they thought was going to be their starting point guard, Goran Dragic has said "thanks but no thanks" to what is rumored to be a low-ball offer and is now certainly going to sign elsewhere.
This leaves the Rockets with...well....not much really, again.
As I said previously, you've seen this before from Morey and co. Remember "plan A" Chris Bosh?
The problem for the Rockets is that there is never a plan B. And there should be, because Houston is, despite locals protests to the contrary, not a destination city for most athletes. Because of this luring "A-list" free agents is never a done deal. There are many reasons for this, the least of which is the Summer heat, since most sports (excepting baseball) are off for the Summer so athletes can live wherever they want, I'll just touch on a couple here.
1. Houston is a bad, bad sports town. - I'm sorry, but it just is.Yes the Texans have a broad fan base, but it's not very deep. And they're the best positioned team in the City. Remember 1/2 full Reliant Stadium when the Texans were missing the playoffs? How about having to change tailgating policies because people would rather stay outside than go into the stadium? There's no driving passion for sports in Houston, not as a whole. Yes, you have a few Texans fans who paint their faces and compete every year for some mythical "Superfan" prize but they are the exception rather than the rule. Houston will turn out to see a winner, but that's about it, and they're very, very quick to turn on a player if they feel somehow "dissed".
2. Houston has a terrible sports media. - Even worse, it's a sports media that the National media all but ignores. What this means is that what happens in Houston, from a sports perspective, usually stays in Houston. Even Yao, who was a marketing success, didn't have near the options that other national athletes have. While salaries are equal, endorsements in the "destination cities" are certainly going to be much, much higher.
3. Houston's just not that good of a market. - This follows up on the point I made above, the endorsements just aren't going to be there. A lot of (rightfully) proud Houstonians like to point out that they live in the "4th largest city in the USA" (some would argue 3rd largest right now) which is true, but it's also the 10th largest media market. In the world of sports and sports money, that's pretty small change.
The thing is, there's not much that Houston can "do" to change any of this. Most of the population is imported and has long-standing ties with other teams (I fall in that catagory growing up rooting for Michigan & Oklahoma State in college sports, the 49ers in football -although I did grow up an Astros fan and I'm not a fan of the NBA so there's that- the Red Wings in Hockey the Irish in rugby and the Scots in footy) they may pull for the local teams but they have no real connection to them. The media is falling all around the country and, for some odd reason, local sports talk really doesn't take off in Houston, especially if the teams are bad. In comparison, you should hear the talk shows when teams in New York, Philly or Chicago are bad. Do you think the Cubs are not a hot topic on Chicago radio right now? Meanwhile the Astros are almost a non-entity, treated as a joke when mentioned, almost with a wink and a "yeah, we get it, you don't want to talk about them" nod.
It's bad enough that most of Houston's sports news coverage is of the Rah! Rah! variety, which refuses to address the real problems facing teams, because that leads to fan apathy. Even though they're not passionate, Houston sports fans (except for most UH & UT-Austin fans that is) are fairly educated and fairly honest with themselves about the states of their programs. When what's written in ChronBlog doesn't sync up with what fans are seeing on the field, they just tune out. The resulting silence can be devastating for a team. Especially a team that's doing poorly. One can only wonder how long it will be before you can hear a baby cry in Toyota Center during game action?
If next season is as bad as this off-season portends, it could be a very short time until Houston tunes out on the Rockets liked they've tuned out on the Astros.
