In deference to Crash, and his excellent points in why CD has been a bad GM, I'd like to stimulate an objective discussion on the good and the bad. So, I've listed all the personnel moves made by CD in his tenure as GM. (Pre '96/97 season: BTW, he didn't bring in Clyde.) 1996-7 - Traded Sam Cassell/Robert Horry/Bryant, Brown for Barkley - Signed FA Kevin Willis - Signed Matt Bullard - Signed Matt Maloney from CBA - Drafted Othella Harrington in second round - Signed Sedale Threatt - Signed Eddie Johnson 1997-8: - Drafted Roderick Rhodes with 24th pick, Serge Zwikker 30th - Traded a future 2nd round pick to Vancouver for Sam Mack - Clyde Drexler retires early, probably a couple years before he needed to. Later, Pippen and others said it was because he couldn't stand playing with Barkley. 1998-9 - Traded Kevin Willis to Toronto for Roy Rogers and 2 - 1998 first round picks - Drafted Michael Dickerson (14), Bryce Drew (16), Mirsad Turkcan (18), Cuttino Mobely (41) - We told local homegrown talent Rashard Lewis we would draft him with one of our first round picks, but we didn't. He sat in the draft room and cried as he went into the second round. - Traded Roy Rogers, '99/00 2nd round pick to Chicago for Scottie Pippen. - Signed Pig Miller - Traded rights to Turckan to the 76ers for a conditional first round pick (we used it to trade with Atlanta to obtain Terrence Morris) - Signed Stanley Roberts - Traded Rodrick Rhodes to Vancouver for Sam Mack. - Pursued McDeyss, but he didn't come to Houston, because he didn't feel Houston had a good point guard. (Imagine if we hadn't traded Cassell.) - We were offered a trade by Toronto for Olajuwon for Kevin Willis, Doug Christie, #5, #12 in 2000 draft. There was some discussion from insiders that Tracy McGrady could have come in the trade also, but that Toronto wanted a player that CD didn't want to part with. I remember ThaCabbage going ballistic over that one. (At this stage, if we had NOT done the Barkley trade and CD had been willing to do whatever it took in trade to get McGrady and trading Dream, we wouldn't have gone through the Pippen debacle, and we could have had: Willis/Carr/Roberts McDeyss/Horry/Harrington Drexler/Lewis McGrady/Christie/Mobely Cassell/Dickerson (one less player for McGrady), and 3 picks the next year to take Shawn Marion, one of Andre Miller, Corey Maggette or Ron Artest, and one of Kenny Thomas or Andrei Kirilenko. and the next year, we could have had: Willis/Carr McDeyss/Horry/Harrington Marion/Lewis/Kirilenko McGrady/Christie/Mobely Cassell/Dickerson/Miller We probably wouldn't have gotten Francis, since we had Cassell, but we also wouldn't have taken on Maloney, Anderson, Norris, or even later, Taylor and Rice bad contracts. It makes you wonder about those two trades.) 1999-2000 - Drafted Kenny Thomas (22), Tyrone Washington (44), Venson Hamilton (50) - Traded Brent Price, Michael Dickerson, Othell Harrington, Antoine Carr and a conditional 1st round pick to Vancouver for Tony Massenburg, Ndiaye, and draft rights to Steve Francis, sent Lee Mayberry, Rhodrick Rhodes and Michael Smith to Orlando Magic, took back Don Maclean. - Signed FA Shandon Anderson - Turned down deal for Pippen to Miami for PJ Brown. - Traded Scottie Pippen to Portland for Walt Williams, Stacey Augmon, Carlos Rogers, Kelvin Cato, Brian Shaw and Ed Gray. - Signed Kelvin Cato to a multi-year contract extension. - Waived Matt Maloney, Don MacLean, Stacey Augmon, Thomas Hamilton, Brian Shaw, Ed Gray. - Signed Moochie Norris 2000-1 - Drafted Joel Pryzbilla (9), Eduardo Najera (38). - Traded draft rights to Pryzbilla to Milwaukee for Jason Collier (when we could have taken Turkoglu, Magliorre or MoPete) and a future 1st round pick. Traded Najera and 2nd round draft pick to Dallas (which we could have used to take Loren Woods, Jarron Collins, or Alton Ford) for Dan Langhi. - Signed FA Maurice Taylor - Traded Bryce Drew to Chicago Bulls for 2 future 2nd round picks (later used in Utah trade with Rice for exception and Amaechi) - Signed Sean Colson - Signed Cuttino Mobely to cheap contract extension. 2001-2 - Traded 13th, 18th, and 23rd pick to NJ for #7 to take Eddie Griffin, when we could have taken 3 of Jefferson, Randolph, Brandon Haywood, Raul Lopez, Gerald Wallace, Jamaal Tinsley, Tony Parker, or Gilbert Arenas. Of course, many thought it was a steal, since Griffin had been considered by some as a possible #1 pick. But, we never actually met with him, or tried him out before we drafted him. - Waived Carlos Rogers - Traded Olajuwon to Toronto for 2002 1st and 2nd round picks, later used for Boki and Mattox. - S&T Shandon Anderson to NY for Glen Rice, and Kyle Hill. - Traded Turckan pick to Atlanta for Terrence Morris. - Signed Oscar Torres - Signed Tierre Brown - Signed Marc Jackson to qualifying offer, which GS matched. - Signed FA Damon Jones - Traded 2nd round pick to Milwaukee for Kevin Willis, which we could have used to draft Carlos Boozer. - Waived Dan Langhi 2002-3 - Drafted Yao Ming with 1st pick in the draft, Boston Nachbar (15), Tito Maddox (38) - Gave Francis Max 6 year contract extension - Traded Kenny Thomas to 76ers, recieved James Posey from Denver. - Didn't trade for Rashard Lewis or SAR, when they asked for Griffin in return. 2003-4 - Pushed Rudy Tomjanovich out as coach - Lost out on Larry Brown, by diddling, but signed Jeff Van Gundy as coach, their next choice. - Signed FA Eric Piatkowski, Adrian Griffin, Mike Wilks, Jimmy Jackson - Posey signed with Memphis, leaving us nothing for KT. - Didn't re-sign Terrence Morris or Jason Collier. - Traded Glen Rice, 1st round pick, 2-2nd round picks from Bryce Drew trade with Chicago to Utah, for Amaechi, 2004 2nd round pick, and exception. - Received contract extension for doing such a great job. - Signed Scott Padgett, Alton Ford - Waived Eddie Griffin, who was immediately picked up by NJ No team has done everything right. We all have 20/20 hindsight. But, once you look at the list of what he has and hasn't done, how would you evaluate his rebuilding of our team, and skill as the GM of the Rockets?
Do you really think he pushed out RudyT as Head Coach? I see a lot more mediocre or bad than good, but it may be that way with every team.
Good research. Seeing it on paper, I'd say CD has dropped the ball overall. Nice guy, but can't hang with the REAL GM's.
Well, he did sign him to that ridiculous contract in the first place, A-Train, so instead of 10 year, how about a 5 year contract extension!!
I can't possibly imagine why you guys are dumping all this on CD. Is he SOMEWHAT responsibile for poor decisions made? Absolutely. Is he compltetely to blame? Are you kidding? CD is a guy who works phones and makes deals, but he absolutely is NOT the last word when it comes to trades, the draft, free agency, etc. Haven't you guys been paying any attention to how they do things over there? Remember the Griffin trade war room video? It was LES who came in the door, told everyone about the deal and high-fived Rudy. He was the one that made that deal happen. Rudy and the staff wanted it to happen (so did everyone on this BBS, by the way) and I'm sure CD was the guy on the phone talking to the Nets, but Les was ultimately the guy who gave the thumbs up. Every deal the Rockets have done over the last 10 years has been done with the input of Rudy, CD, Les, the coaching staff and the scouting staff. It isn't as if CD sits on high and makes deals and tells the coaches, "Ok, here ya go. Deal with it." I know everyone here is desperate to blame someone for the mistakes that have been made, but CD isn't the main problem. He deserves an equal share in the blame for things that have gone wrong and an equal share in the praise for things that have gone right. But, he isn't the lynch pin in ANY deals you listed. CD can't make a deal without the approval of the coach and the owner. So, don't try to lump all of this on the guy. Pulling out every deal done over the past 10 years to determine how effective a job CD has done is nuts because that is implying that he was the catalyst for every deal and that simply isn't the case. He is just one small part of the whole process. In reality, Rudy and Les had far more power than CD over the last 10 years.
Jeff, you have inside knowledge, so your opinion certainly has more weight than most people's. But I think what needs to be criticized is not any of the deals - not the Griffin deal either, as you said, we were all happy when it happened. What needs to be criticized is that he himself said that the problems with Griffin had been going on for 1 1/2 years and during that time, the Rockets refused to accept very good trade offers for Griffin. And CD is the GM, so he is responsible for that. If there is a CEO (= CD), he needs to report to the shareholders (= Les) as well, and there are certain big decisions they cannot make without approval from the supervisory board. However, they are still responsible for the results. If the company reports bad results (= not going to the playoffs for several years in a row), who will be held responsible, and rightly so? You guessed right. The CEO and/or his board members. Will it be a valid defense for him to say "Yeah, but the supervisory board approved my decisions"? No, the results are still his responsibility.
That is valid criticism if it is true...but that is the problem. Do we really know those deals were "sure things." I think Aldridge reported the Rashard Lewis deal being turned down by the Rockets because of Griffin, but do we really know that? I am not making an argument I just can't remember how it became fact on the bbs...even less about SAR. I also agree with Jeff about the team effort, as CD certainly can't be expected to know the scouting report personally for every player when he has a team of scouts upon which he must rely, etc.. I also think the inital post was clearly biased towards the negative, influenced mostly by a decent number of poor (or at least questionable) organization moves recently. The other unfortunate aspect is that you can do this for any team (color the majority of moves as bad) because so little moves and so few players actually work out. In any event, gettig rid of Moochie makes me so happy. Hell, I wanted them to just put him on IR and eat his contract...at least the recent trade has a few potential advantages to that.
it seems he evaluates purely on stats or potential, completely disregarding attitude, fundamentals, or bball IQ...
You are right. My post is to be read as "IF these reports are true" - which we will not know 100 %. But I have read it from a few sources now, so I am inclined to believe it. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and Jeff is probably also right that it would be unfair to take CD as the only scapegoat - but the owner cannot be fired...and we just got a new coach...and we are still not doing as well as we all wish we should...
Great point! Absolutely no doubt! This is were the Rockets dropped the ball. They gave Griffin a free pass on his behavior for a LONG time and then we played hardball and things started to unravel. If Griffin was causing all these problems behind the scenes over the last 2 years then he should have been shipped out then.
Objective, my ass. Nice try at objective reporting of facts, Sherlock, but you sprinkled in too much 20/20 hindsight dreamcasting. Every team in the league can do 20/20 hindsight dreamcasting with the draft. Every "we could have had..." sentence gets a Ugh. I think the hindsight dreamcasting "we could have had McGrady and Dice and Marion and Artest blah blah blah " should be left to the younger posters here. Every damn team in the league "could have" done better in the draft once they get a year or three to see where the players actually go. Look how the top ten picks pan out each year. Look at what kids get picked #1! Kwame Brown, Darius Miles?? How does Chicago feel about picking J Williams #2? (and I'm referring to his play before the injury.) I don't like how Bryce Drew, Turkcan, Rhodes, Langhi, Zwikker, and others worked out. At all. But we also drafted Cassell, Horry, Mobes, Kenny Thomas, Harrington- all of these guys are mid-late first round or second round. That's fantastic work. There are very few teams with this kind of record in drafting quality guys late first round/second round. Sherlock's dreamcasting of this: Willis/Carr/Roberts McDeyss/Horry/Harrington Drexler/Lewis McGrady/Christie/Mobely Cassell/Dickerson Is particularly silly to me. When you get to rewrite histroy, you can make it as rosy as you want, can't you? How can you say Dice didn't go with us because of lack of PG, yet he left the Suns standing at the altar, and they had Kidd! How can you say that we don't do the Barkley trade, but then still have the same draft pick that get us Dickerson? Do you even know what "special player" Toronto wanted for Mcgrady? Rumors. Jeez. You want to rewrite history, but assume that all the drafts afterwards still go the same order and we still get Dickerson, Mobes, Lewis? Whatever. I don't think that CD "pushed" Rudy out, or lost out on Brown due to "diddling." Nice objective reporting there. He "didn't bring in Clyde," but he's still responsible for anything that went wrong, huh? I suppose he's responsible for Clyde not liking Barkley? And we've done well in free agency. Made some big mistakes in giving long-term contracts to players we shouldn't have (Mooch, Maloney, Cato is earning his now.) We signed Cat to a very good contract, considering his talent. We got Francis basically for Dickerson and Harrington! What a steal! We signed Shandon and Taylor when each of them were the only remaining prized FA's in their respective offseasons. For years we made blockbuster trades for Hall of Famers like Barkley, Drexler, Quitten, and you may not have liked those trades (obviously you don't Sherlock) but you can't say our boys in the office don't have balls. Look, we're not top five as far as personnel decisions go. But I think we're better than average. Do an analysis since '97 of each team in the league and find fourteen teams that did better than us. You won't. I appreciate you doing all this research, Sherlock, it's a lot of work and a good reference, but don't try and pass yourself off as objective and then put in all your little jibes and hindsight, it's lame.
Actually, up until this year, I had really admired CD, and the way that he, Rudy and Les worked together as a class organization. He's a real good ole' boy, and not afraid to risk it, and go for a big trade. I admired them going after Drexler, Barkley (even though I felt the trade was a mistake), Pippen, Francis, etc. And, standing Pat on Ming has turned out to be a great move. But, I started noticing a few years ago, that he seemed to over-negotiate, and then lose out on deals because he over-valued our own players, or got real close, but nitpicked, losing the deal. I think the one that I sortof flipped over was the one where some insiders said we could have had McGrady, but he wouldn't sweeten the deal with a draft pick or another player. Then, I noticed the same thing on the Lewis negotiations. I also was concerned when he seemed to overpay players to stay here, such as Maloney, Cato, Taylor, Moochie, and even the S&T of Anderson for Rice, and then in each case, they quit playing well after they got a good contract. I think they'd have been better off if they'd let them walk, and kept the cap space. As fans, we probably would have been upset, but as we saw this off-season, there were other better FAs available. The only one where that wasn't true was Mobely. When the first Dream trade fell through, I wondered if we made a mistake from a rebuilding point of view, but I understood the effort to be loyal, even though that seemed more like a PR effort than anything. I don't think that Dream went along with the deal very well, either. I wanted us to draft Jefferson, Randolph and Wallace, but I was excited that we pulled off the seeming coup of the draft by getting Griffin. I can't fault them for that one. That's just 20/20. Its hard to fault them on obtaining Taylor, either. Who knew he'd get injured immediately after signing his contract? I was very upset we lost our investment on KT, but agreed we needed to trade him to the EC for something we thought we could keep, and I don't like the way we've handled the Griffin situation, either. We should have done something to protect our investment. I don't agree with Fran on this one. In either case, we've ended up with nothing to show for our investment. I really feel the Rockets organization is a class group of guys, and one of the best organizations in the NBA. I loved the fact that Rudy was with us for so long. But, I think we are now having to face a collection of mistakes over the last few years that will be tough to work our way out of, which is frustrating, since I thought they we were putting together a championship team. I'm not so sure of that anymore, which is very dissappointing as a Rocket fan. Losing Dream, Pippen, KT, Rice, Collier, Morris, and now Griffin, with nothing but Cato and a hard to use exception to show for those investments is a hard pill to swallow. What happened to Les's evaluation that the Rockets had the most talented team ever assembled? We're right back to where we were as a team, when Ralph got injured, and having to cut guys with drug problems, and then it took forever for us to go to the Finals with Dream. But, Jeff, I have to agree, the grade has to be made on the whole management team, not just CD.
Nolen, you are absolutely right. I started off the post as an objective researched list of stuff, and then just got too tempted to throw in my own views, which made it biased. My apologies. Thanks for calling me on it. I've wanted to say stuff about Barkley (which is exactly as you say, dreamcasting), McGrady, Rudy, and now Griffin, and seeing the whole list in front of me, I just fell into temptation. I should have added my comments after the initial list, so as not to influence the discussion.
You might to also include the other trades that were bandied about over the years, that the Rockets turned down and that would have caused more harm than good.
I don't know (or care) who is making the personnel decisions for the Rockets. But anyone trying to pretend that the majority of these moves only look good in hindsight is fooling themselves. I've been very vocal about this and agree that the organization should not be criticized for the Eddie Griffin move because it did look good at the time it occurred. Unfortunately, I can not say that about the majority of the organization's personnel moves post 1997. I thought most of their moves in the draft and in free agency were poor decisions at the time they occurred. I'm talking about the signings of Mo Taylor, Kelvin Cato, Moochie Norris, and Steve Francis. I'm talking about trading Najera for Langhi, Pryzbilla for Collier (at least Pryzbilla still plays in the damn league), drafting the likes of Rodrick Rhodes, Bryce Drew, Venson Hamilton, the list goes on and on and you simply can not convince me that these moves looked good at the time they occurred. Some of them (the Turkcan acquisition comes to mind) you have to be fair and admit that you didn't know enough about the player at the time of the draft to form an intellignet opinion on the move, but I think it is BS to say that about the majority of the team's moves in the draft and in free agency. So whether it's CD's sole fault, or the fault of many, there is definitely somehting wrong with the way the Rockets make personnel decisions when compared to the personnel decisions made by your average NBA franchise.
I do not agree with anyone on the EG fiasco. It was a foolish and dumbass move then and will always be so no matter what EG may do on the court in the future. In my book, anytime you GIVE AWAY 3 1st round draft picks, you had better be DAMNNED sure you are getting the next Jordan or something close. The time has come to quit rationalizing away the faults of this organization and face facts: They simply cannot evaluate talent and until you get someone in there who has a bleeping clue, you will be simply have to content yourself with the mediocrity that is the Rockets. Have fun watching Griffin and Witherspoon and Boki ride the bench...
I can excuse all the yrs except the summer of 01. Just like the 13-3 Bears a fw yrs ago, the team was blinded about the future of the team. Lets look back at that summer: The Rockets had just completed a 45-37 campaign and missed the playoffs, but that record was misleading because of the record against the West was horrible. That Rockets had a few decision that have brought the team o what it is now. The Rockets had som tough decisions to make including what to do with the legend,Hakeem,a servicable but soft pf in Taylor,a hard working but limited swingman in Anderson, and the fan favorite in Norris. The Rockets had Francis,Mobley,Cato,Thomas, and Collier under contract for about 15m and 3 draft picks in the upcoming draft. My thought was, Hakeem should be signed for 2yrs at 8m and retire a Rocket and only a Rocket. Taylor,Anderson,and Moochie can be let go while the Rockets use the draft for Jefferson,Randolph,and Haywood. Tierre Brown,Colson,or Dmon jones could have been the bcakup pg along with the find in Torres. Once the season went down and Francis went down for most of the season, the Rocket would hav been in lotto land anyway, but look at the players and the cash they would have had to use.With Hakeem coming of the books this summer and Francis the max player,cat making 5m,Cato 6.5, and Randolph,Haywood,and Jefferson still on rookie deals to go along with that high loot pick of 02, the Rockets ould have enough money for a max player this past summer. Now the Rockets enter this season with Francis ,Mobley,Jefferson,Randolph and maybe even Ming or even a max player in one of those spots. Hindsight is 20/20, but they had everything set up until they decided to pay Taylor,Norris,and trade for Rice and even Griffin. Even with all that, thy still had a chance to make a very good move this summer with Rice and his expiring contract and a player like Griffin whom they decided wasn't in their plans and could have gotten a quality player like SAR or Odom or someone like that. They blew it 2 times, now they must right the ship if they're going to be not only playoff players, but contenders. The west will get rougher with the improvement of Denver and Memphis, and young team like Phoenix and Utah. Did I mention the Hornets are moving into our division next season?
