you know... think about it. lillard outplayed bev/lin by a huge margin. LA outplayed Tjones/Asik by a historic margin. chandler got outplayed by batum. harden got outplayed by mathews. Dwight Howard dominated. Dwight Howard is the only reason we didn't get absolutely annihilated.
And why is that? Bullying your way to the FT line and chucking 3s....sound familiar? Remember the point about how the style of play forced down the throat of our players doesn't translate to success in the postseason?
what's the other plan though? i'm sure we could use any future capspace we have to sign somebody decent. but then that pretty much locks you in at the current team + decent player. and then you roll with that for 3 or 4 years. is that a championship team? maybe, if it's the perfect player who gels perfectly and everything breaks right. but is it as likely to be a championship team as current team + superstar? not imo. moves should be made to maximize future championship odds, not just to improve the current team. if avoiding an improvement next season substantially increase the championship odds for the 3 seasons after that, i think you avoid the move. it may not be great to know you could have been better in 2014-2015 but it won't be any fun to know you could have had kevin love (hypothetically) for his prime with dwight howard and james harden but you can't because you locked in a decent power forward and all future flexibility and now you keep losing in rounds 2 or 3 (again hypothetically) to deeper and better teams. it might seem like "wasting seasons" to stockpile and wait for stars, but the alternative is usually locking in a mediocre team for a few years, realizing it's mediocre, then blowing it up and tanking for a few more years. at least staying flexible means that when the james harden and dwight howard opportunities show up (which they do in the nba), you have the ability to take advantage of it. and adding those players is the only real route to a championship so you should pretty much always be trying to leave that route open. especially if the owner doesn't want to tank. right now i think we basically have this offseason and next to add a superstar. if we add one, we have a chance to be a truly dominant team. maybe even adding a superstar won't work, but it's certainly the best chance we have to win a chamionship. and if we can get one now, we might have 3 or 4 years with dwight still in his prime to really contend. we can't limit that chance by using capspace on role players who may or may not turn us into contenders.
Yet this was one of the best lineups in the league during the regular season. If the point doesn't ring loud enough already, I don't know what else will.
Absolutely. If our mistakes aren't corrected, it won't make much of a difference. Wade was the leader of the Heat, and an NBA champion when Lebron and Bosh joined him. Harden is far away from that level of play.
so by that logic we should not try to add better players, since it doesn't matter? last year we were a westbrook injury from getting blown out in 4 straight games. this year we lose 4 games by a combined 13 points, 2 with the nba apologizing for bad calls and one on a buzzer beater. we were a few bounces from a great matchup with san antonio. adding a 3rd star will almost certainly help.
Morey put a 54 win team together out of scratch these last 4 years since the Yao and Mcgrady era, be patient. Its going to take a little more time to turn this into a championship winning team. We are lucky, unlike teams like the kings, 76'rs, bobcats, bucks, pistons, timberwolves who just can't seem to rebuild after years and years.
what do you mean? there is a cap. we used ours to sign howard. then you get minimum contracts. how exactly would you like to work around that? they saw through it until we played them together a ton, and fairly successfully, in the playoffs. once asik stopped b****ing and tried, it worked fairly well against a matchup we really needed it for. what trade were people willing to offer that would have guarded aldridge in the playoffs? trading asik for any contract that went beyond next year was a non-starter, so options were limited to keep flexibility. inherent in prioritizing flexibility over winning now is being ok with not winning now so i'm not sure how morey ended up paying for it. that's the trade-off. the entire idea that we should go for championships and not 1st round wins is the basis of morey's moves and if it means we lose a close 1st round series before ultimately losing flexibility and locking in the roster, then so be it. that doesn't mean we're guaranteed to win any titles or this strategy will work, but trying to not get the hardens, dwights, and love's of the world doesn't seem to be a better strategy based on championship history.
the spurs and the heat were in the finals last year and took a ton of 3's and basically every perimeter player on their teams can shoot 3's. the hawks just almost upset the pacers taking a ton of 3's. the blazers took about 1 less 3 per game this season than we did. lillard took almost 8 3's per game in our series. the suns may have been a suspension away from winning a championship in the mid-2000's because of taking a ton of 3's. there were 14 4 point plays in the 1st round this year. people take a ton of 3's now. we just take a few more than most. the idea that we should stop taking 3's doesn't make much sense given that most of the successful teams have a huge focus on shooting 3's and given the fact we have a very good offense. in fact, we have/had the 2nd most efficient offense in the playoffs this season. and you know what's crazy? there are actually 9 teams who took/have taken more 3's as a percentage of their field goal attempts than us. we're not even in the top half in terms of chucking up 3's in the playoffs! some of that was portland's strategy to not double dwight, but it still points to the fact that more and more teams buy into the philosophy of shooting 3's. and george karl? his denver teams were built to be athletic, play fast and score in the paint. they had a philosophy that they stuck to. basically like us in terms of pace and paint scoring and completely opposite of us in terms of focus on 3's. and pretty much every year they lost in the first round and the fact they couldn't hit an outside shot usually was a big reason why. it wasn't necessarily a bad strategy given their personnel, but it certainly produced no great results.
You act like this "add a 3rd star" formula is proven or something. So, since Miami did it, that's the only way to win? Did Miami win a title by having 3 'stars', or by having LBJ? Dallas beat them with how many stars? SA has how many stars? Please tell me one thing: How is this the 'ideal' scenario? It seems to me that out of the remaining contenders (MIA, SA, LAC, OKC, POR) that only one is subscribing to the "3 stars" formula (Miami), and that's going only by contracts, not performance.
I don't think this 3 star formula is actually what Morey is implementing. It's not what he has said in interviews. He has talked about how once you have two stars in place you can start adding non-star players, you just can't do it before because it limits you. I doubt Morey would pass on veterans this offseason that can help win a title while he waits for a mythical chance to add a third star.
the league wide free throw rate (free throws attempts per field goal attempt) is .322 in the playoffs. it was only .284 in the regular season. teams are getting to the free throw line plenty. the problem? houston's league leading .386 shrunk to .325 in the playoffs while portland's 18th ranked .270 flew up to .321. both portland and houston gave up almost exactly the same number of free throw and field goal attempts in the regular season and yet when the playoffs started, the refs magically decided that portland didn't foul anymore and decided the rockets fouled decidedly more. that has less to do with morey's philosophy and more to do with a ref philosophy that you can't look at lamarcus aldridge wrong 20 feet from the basket without it being a foul and that fouling houston in the paint is more ok than it was in the regular season while everyone else's free throws go up.
Man I'm glad some people can see this as I did. I argued/discussed this with my friends and they couldn't comprehend the fact that style of play does not translate to success in the playoffs. The best to ever do it was Phoenix and they didn't win jack. They also had a great floor general in to create and get guys open shots, which we don't have. It works well in the regular season, but when things get tight in the playoffs and refs aren't giving you those foul calls and the other team is crowding your shooters, that philosophy won't work.
It isn't how many stars we can get, management may think that way but we all know nothing will happen until we get a better coach. I wholeheartedly believe that with a better coach, and maybe a couple better bench guys, the roster we have now could be serious contenders.
Good post OP! Before I read this thread, I had the similar thoughts about Morey. He just wasted one year of Dwight's career by being too cheap. The mentally of winning every trade and/or getting free for nothing came back and bit him in the ass.
I must have missed where the cap prevents trades from happening. Most significant additions don't happen due to cap space in the NBA. You could probably modify that from "most significant" to "almost no" actually. Again, Scola, Lowry, Lee. Which of those acquisitions required cap space? Why do you so underestimate Morey? Did James Harden require cap space to acquire? McGrady? Steve Francis? Barkley? Drexler? Yes, it worked 'fairly well', in fact ALMOST well enough to beat a team we were favored to beat but lost in 6 games to! Morey sure showed 'em! "Not winning now" = losing in the first round? You really think that after signing his 2nd max player that Morey (and Leslie) was(were) fully prepared to lose in the first round? You're saying a guy that fired Rudy, JVG, and Adelman for what I'm not so sure sure about, but whatever, is somehow completely cool with losing in the first round with 2 max players, and the West being completely wide open?
Okay, I feel like I'm starting to understand. Some of you Morey critics are fine with his talent sniffing, but you'd like him to stay away from game-wise basketball strategy (3's and dunks, for instance, with little structure; corner 3's are the best; etc.) Is that correct? If that's your beef, I'm kind of with you. What has won for a billion years in the NBA playoffs is the following formula: about 2 phenomenal players; (2) excellent team defense; and (3) precise offensive execution. He seems to just be working on the first one and thinking that the second two are old wives' tales. I like Morey the GM in terms of rebuilding our roster via trades, draft, and signings. Then if he would get a strong coach and turn the team over to that coach, I think we'd really have something cooking.
Nope, Asik will go Freddy Krueger‎ if he's not traded. There is also the draft. The team will look different in training camp with new rotation players, but the mythical third star is probably a year away.
The Spurs and Heat also have actual 3pt shooters than can make theirs 3's. We have Jordan Hamilton You guys need to stop comparing us to teams who have complete rosters
