Daryl Morey - this is your mess - get to work fixing it!

That's bull.

I complained about it all summer and through camp. Some of the threads are closed where I complained about this team taking a step backwards unless they fixed their big man rotation. And I made it real clear we were skeleton thin and were relying on a player who played 90 regular season minutes to be the backup defensive anchor and part time starting defensive anchor for us.

I could see this coming and I talked about it all summer, Batman.

 

I thought this was a top 3 roster, and I'm not ashamed of that. But now I'm just sad.

 

Batman alluded to this point...NOT one person on this board (maybe a couple) thought that this team lacked the pieces it needed for a title. Sure we were a bit bummed out about JSmoove leaving, but this team retained key pieces from last season...ADDED Ty for nothing, AND a big FA pick up in Marcus Thornton.

Josh Smith would not have helped the team avoid such a poor shooting start. The dude was amnestied because he couldnt shoot

 

Some revisionist history here

 

On this board, there is always a contingent holding a specific opinion. It is just a matter of what are the most popular ideas at a given time.

 

You just don't get it. Josh Smith would have made our starting unit defensively dominant and he would have anchored the middle for our backups when we went small and ran. That was the whole formula to our success late in the season and in the playoffs. Gets stops and runouts. It wasn't about his shooting. It was all about his D, and his ability to make a play for us. That WAS NOT replaced. Hence, now we've sprung leaks all over on D and we're getting outrebounded over half the time now.

We got worse when Smoove signed with the Clippers. We slipped straight down the slippery Western slope.

I stated on multiple occasions that this team did not have the big man rotation to win a championship and if we didn't make some moves we were worse than last year's team.

 

Hindsight is 20/20. Morey may have believed DMo was going to be back sooner, after all it was reported he had setbacks.

I certainly agree, JSmith would have been a nice guy to have on the roster considering the circumstances.

 

Rockets do need a real coach. If players don't conform, off them.

 

no need to fix anything
crash and burn baby
simmons!!!

 

I find it hard to blame the General Manager for the poor performance of this team. This is a very talented team on paper. That makes the lack of effort we see on the court worse than a team that is simply bad. OP was right when he refers to a lack of leadership, both from the coaching staff and from veteran players. We know the names of the few quality coaches that are out there....but they aren't coming to save the Rockets mid-season. What the GM can do is shake up the roster by shipping out players that aren't giving full effort and bringing in quality (demanding) veterans. OP mentioned Kevin Garnett. there are others who are languishing on poor teams, or not being used on good teams. what about a guy like Paul Pierce?

The real problem with this team is that our franchise player is not a leader, and does not set a great standard for the rest of the cast. The only way to wire around that (short of trading Harden) is to bring in a hard nosed vet, respected by Harden that can change the work ethic of this team.

 

and by the way, if you think we have chemistry problems, guys like Markieff Morris and Josh Smith part II are not the answer.

 

I guess if you believe the yarn that was spun here about Harden coming onto Josh's wife (which I do not).

 

Good Thread. The thing is that because Rockets will most likely get into the playoffs due to the western conference not being up to par record wise, the "upside" for the Rockets to get their BS together is rather high. The way this team might look come playoff time might be far different from how we're seeing them play right now. They'll either be "helter skelter" like now or clicking on all cylinders....just no shade of grey with this CHAOTIC bunch....as we know they'll either explode or implode...remains to be seen

 

I am a huge Morey fan.

That said, Bickerstaff is not going to get it done. The key thing to turning everything around is changing Harden's attitude, and Bickerstaff does not hold the key to that, after having been part of the coaching team that enabled Harden to act the way he has been acting over 2 years in the first place. Get Thibodeau or someone who will not be afraid to yank Harden when he ignores any game plan and doesn't play defense.

Morey should lobby Les to let him hire a new coach already.

 

Can't rep you or I would.

This is dead on.

 

All of THIS!!!!

T_Man

 

DD, you and I are on the same page regarding our frustration and in most instances where the blame lies... but there are a couple points that we may differ on...

First, our KG or Kidd... I think that's Jason Terry's role... championship, 6th man of the year, 3rd most 3pt in history... I assume that's why he was brought in...

As far as this mess being Morey's fault... I don't think it is - but it is his job to fix it...

How could he have known harden would go from MVP caliber to dgaf attitude in one offseason? I didn't see it coming, although the record turnovers to end last season wasn't a good omen...

I think Morey built this team to run (Brewer, Lawson, even our bigs - DMo, Harrell...) - and they aren't... that's on James. His meandering 8-10 seconds to bring the ball up... again, who saw that coming...

Coaching? Yeh, that's on DM... Mchale and JB don't/didn't command the respect and neither had/has the balls to hold Harden accountable...

So while I do believe Morey has some blame to shoulder... I know we agree on where the majority of the blame sits...

 

I dont understand people thinking a new coach is going to want this job. Youre looking at, at least, one month to get everyone on the same page. Where are we going to be then? Struggling to find chemistry, again, right out of the playoff picture? You'd be funneling the coach right into a first round match up with GS or SA. What's Les going to do, after a first round loss? Fire him. So what's the point?

Les wants the team to show it's a contender, so he expecting them to get their groove back and make a playoff run. As long as they can get to thw WC finals again or have a hard fought 2nd round series, he can make fans believe in this team again. At that point, he can let JB walk anyway, citing inexperience and bring in Thibs or whoever he has in mind.

Meanwhile, the fact that JB is out partying with them doesn't necessarily mean they're not going to listen to him..in fact, it may just mean the opposite. Some players prefer the father figure, but some prefer the older brother.

 

I just want to see some accountability... put Harden on the bench if he's not giving effort, pull Brewer if he's missing layups and screwing up on defense, and anybody else that's not putting in the effort that you should expect of a professional athlete that's cashing fat paychecks... is that too much to ask?

 

I think most people around here know Morey's personality, if you see how he acts during games he isn't the type of guy who "sits back", considering the way he keeps banging his seat and how he angry he sends out his texts, I'm pretty sure he's doing everything he can at the moment. So to be honest I find threads that talk about Morey having to do something or asking him to fix his mess etc pointless, what do you think he's doing? Sitting around having a cigar as the team gets beat by 20 pts, then reading posts on CF and saying "OMG poster X is angry, well I better fix my mess".

There several issues with "fixing the mess":
1) We are still paying Mchale even if we fired him. This cuts into the budget for hiring a big name coach. Not only that biting the bullet and hiring a new coach during the year has zero value add for the season, how will the new coach have time to implement his schemes, plans etc? Hiring a new coach means giving up the season, and in that case you may as well Laker it up and lose every game to get a high pick.
2) The Rox went ALL IN this season and became hard capped. I'm not a salary cap guru but from what I understand from Bima's posts this makes making trades really hard, hence the reason why I didn't like the Rox hard capping themselves.

If you combine 1 and 2 there's not really a whole lot anyone can do, Morey doesn't have a trade override button he can't force other teams to give him Durant for KJ Mcdaniels. At the same time though, let's be real the major problem isn't the coaching or the players, rather it's Harden's poor attitude on D and hustle. Just like how Brewer and Bev's energy infected the team last year, having poor energy and hustle can also spread and bring the entire team down, why will TJones or Dwight work hard on the boards when Harden just keeps jacking shots up? This is really all mental and to be honest should be out of Morey's hands by now, all he can really do is buy the ingredients Harden has to be one cooking the dish.

But at the same time, the fact that it is internal means there's a lot of hope for the year, HnH just needs to get their **** together and start leading the team by example. The Rox weren't exactly delusionists, prior to the season a lot of media analysts were saying they were the 3rd best team ON PAPER after GSW and Cleveland. This is a contender team on paper, it's up to HnH to make that paper prediction reality.