President-elect Donald Trump is once against tapping the world of professional sports to bolster his second administration, naming billionaire Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta as his nominee for U.S. ambassador to Italy.
In a post Saturday night on Truth Social, Trump touted Fertitta as “an accomplished businessman, who has founded and built one of our Country’s premier entertainment and real estate companies, employing approximately 50,000 Americans.”
Fertitta is a major Republican donor who shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP candidates and causes during the 2024 cycle. In addition to his NBA ties, Fertitta serves on the board of regents for the University of Houston and has been the Cougars’ most prominent athletic booster and namesake of its basketball arena.
Pending confirmation by the Senate, Fertitta would follow in the footsteps of New York Jets co-owner Woody Johnson—who served as U.S. ambassador to England in Trump’s first term—and Dan Rooney, the former owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Ireland. Earlier this month, Trump selected former NFL star–and failed 2022 Senate candidate–Herschel Walker to be his ambassador to the Bahamas, and last month he named Linda McMahon, the former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to preside over the Department of Education.
Fertitta, for his part, is a cousin to brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, the one-time owners of the UFC—among the most pro-Trump pro sports leagues in America.
The same cannot be said of the NBA, which has frequently found itself in Trump’s rhetorical crosshairs. In August 2020, Trump went after NBA players protesting the police killing of George Floyd by kneeling during the national anthem, calling them “very nasty” and “very dumb.”
“The NBA is in trouble, bigger trouble than they understand,” Trump told Outkick at the time.
NBA coaches Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Doc Rivers have been vociferous Trump critics over the last eight years. The league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum, each made five-figure contributions to Kamala Harris’ campaign, according to FEC disclosures.
Fertitta’s foreign service appointment comes five years after he became involuntarily caught up in a sticky episode of international affairs. In October 2019, Daryl Morey, the Rockets’ then-general manager, touched off a geopolitical firestorm when he expressed support on social media for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong—an anathema to the Chinese Community Party.
Morey’s “stand with Hong Kong” tweet bedeviled the NBA and begot a proxy fight between the United States and China. Fertitta was found to have initially “liked” at least two Instagram comments that called for the GM’s firing, although it was unclear whether he meant this as an endorsement of those views.
Although known for his outspokenness, Fertitta quickly distanced himself and his NBA franchise from Morey’s comments—“we are NOT a political organization,” he tweeted—and largely remained silent on the larger debate, even as the Trump administration sought to turn Morey’s words into a rallying point for its hardline stance on U.S.-China relations.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly called on the NBA to not bend to China’s will, despite the league’s strong commercial ties to China, while vice president Mike Pence criticized NBA players like LeBron James for siding with the communist government over Morey. Quote-tweeting an article in The Ringer about the brewing tensions between Morey and the Rockets, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, tweeted: “Moment of truth for NBA. Will they bow to pressure from repressive, authoritarian govt?”
Fertitta later called Morey the “best general manager in the league.”
At a White House roundtable meeting of restaurant executives in May 2020, Fertitta, who owns the Landry’s hospitality chain, tried to make light of the dilemma.
“I should have realized that it was going to be a bad year for China when my general manager tweeted out, ‘Freedom for Hong Kong,’” Fertitta half-joked. “I’m still trying to work that out.”
Trump, sitting across the table, explained to the others assembled that Fertitta owned the Houston Rockets, but added that he was a “great guy, [with] a great family–great everything.”
In September 2020, after head coach Mike D’Antoni announced that he would not be signing an extension with the Rockets, Fertitta insisted Morey’s job was “safe” and that he would be the one entrusted with hiring D’Antoni’s successor. But a month later—and almost exactly one year to the date of his offending tweet—Morey announced his resignation from the Rockets, kicking off a raft of defections.
Fertitta was primarily a Democratic donor in the 1990s and has continued making contributions to certain Democrats throughout the 2000s—including Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2007 and presidential run in 2016—while his overall giving moved sharply rightward over time.
In the waning weeks of this election, the billionaire hosted a private fundraiser for Trump at Fertitta’s Post Oak Hotel in Houston, after co-hosting a Trump fundraiser earlier in the year.
Presumably, Italy is a far less tendentious post than that of other global hotspots or American adversaries, but that hardly means it will be trouble-free, as Woody Johnson can attest to from his diplomatic days.
According to a report in The New York Times, the Jets owner informed colleagues that during his time as ambassador, Trump had asked him to assist in redirecting the British Open golf tournament to his Turnberry resort in Scotland. (That ultimately did not come to pass and Trump later denied making such a request.)
Through November’s election, Trump campaigned on tariffs against European Union countries, which could have a particularly profound effect on Italy, given its concentration of exports.
