In his weekly Tuesday afternoon appearance on CNBC, Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta said his team remains fully focused on contending for a championship in the 2020-21 NBA season.
When asked about suggestions that Houston should consider “blowing it up” after bowing out in the second round of the playoffs for two straight years, Fertitta pushed back strongly on that notion.
Here’s what Fertitta told CNBC’s Power Lunch about his roster:
You have James Harden and Russell Westbrook. You have almost 90% of your salaries tied up in them, and Eric Gordon. Any time you have players like that — Eric, P.J. [Tucker], James, and Russell, there’s no reason to blow up your roster.
This is still our window, the next couple years. James and Russell are in their early 30s. We’re not blowing up anything. We plan on contending. I’ve always said that you want to set yourself up to be one of the top four teams in your conference, and then it takes a little bit of luck to win. We’re going to set ourselves up again to make a move to be one of the top four teams. We’re going to do whatever we have to do to win, I can promise that to my fans, and compete for the NBA championship this year.
The likely course appears to be trying to build on Houston’s No. 4 finish in the Western Conference during the 2019-20 season, and perhaps seeing further growth in the second year of the Harden-Westbrook partnership and the first year of a new coaching regime. Any talks about more drastic changes will likely be tabled until at least the 2021 offseason.
.@TilmanJFertitta on @CNBC:”You have James Harden & Russell Westbrook..any time u have players like that,Eric,PJ,there’s no reason to blow up your roster.This is still our window,the next couple of years.We’re not blowing up anything..We’re gonna do whatever we have to do to win” pic.twitter.com/X3AvFzX6z9
— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) October 20, 2020
