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Houston Rockets CEO Tad Brown ruled out Thursday the possible purchase of the Rockets by he or any other member of the team's front office:

Brown announced Monday that team owner Leslie Alexander plans to put the Rockets up for sale. Alexander has owned the team since July 1993.

Alexander's decision came as a major surprise:

Hall of Fame center Dikembe Mutombo, who was a member of the Rockets for his final five years in the NBA, told Mark Berman of Fox 26 in Houston that he's interested in buying the team.

"I'm working on it," he said. "I'm talking to a lot of people already since [Monday]. We'll see. I'm just talking to the people who can cut the check and they can make me be part of it. I'm working on that."

Whoever buys the Rockets will likely wind up spending the highest fee ever to purchase an NBA team, eclipsing the $2 billion Steve Ballmer paid for the Los Angeles Clippers in August 2014.

In February, Forbes ranked the Rockets as the eighth-most valuable NBA team ($1.65 billion).

Working in Alexander's favor is the fact Houston is the eighth-largest television market in the country, according to Nielsen data. ESPN.com's Darren Rovell noted the Rockets have a very large international following as well:

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Prospective buyers will also likely be enticed by the fact the franchise has a level of organizational stability. General manager Daryl Morey agreed to a four-year contract extension in June that keeps him with the team through the 2021-22 season, and James Harden signed the "supermax" extension that keeps him under contract through 2022-23.

All of those factors should help drive the Rockets' price tag to a record level.