While NBA franchises jump through hoops to create more salary cap room for this year’s crop of elite free agents, the Houston Rockets are incorporating the iPad as part of the team’s full court press of forward Chris Bosh.
On Thursday, the first day NBA teams can officially recruit players, the Rockets tech-savvy general manager Daryl Morey used a personalized iPad to showcase video testimonials to the Texas native. To Rockets fans, heartfelt pitches from the likes of Yao Ming, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler made to Bosh represent slam dunk programming compared to anything that can be downloaded on the new Hulu Plus iPad app.
Bosh, who could easily palm Apple’s 9.7-inch tablet computer, is certainly no rookie when it comes to the iTunes App Store. A year ago, the Chris Bosh iPhone app debuted to give fans of the soon-to-be former Toronto Raptor daily updates and statistics as well as access to his active Twitter feed where he has more than 133,000 followers.
In this year’s jump ball of twenty-something free agents – the crop also includes LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Amar’e Stoudemire – state-of-the-art salesmanship deployed by Morey could distinguish the Rockets from other teams that can offer more attractive multimillion dollar maximum contracts. By not relying on the iPhone, Morey doesn’t have to worry about any dropped call air balls associated with AT&T’s beleaguered cellular network.
So as player agents and team general managers jam the phone lines over the next few days negotiating who ends up where, the Rockets will be working on a new sort of app that could return the team to the NBA Finals.
If it works, maybe the Chicago Bulls can use a Google Android device to seal the deal with LeBron James?
