But the important question everyone wants to know [before they listen/watch]: did he talk about D-Mo? If not, no one cares. Spoiler JOKING!
I took it more as regretting it doing it 11 games into the season. He probably would have much rather waited until season's end.
Was gonna grab some popcorn from @FTW Rockets FTW and listen but since he didn't talk about D-Mo, I'll pass on both. Thanks for posting anyways. Spoiler _____________________________ 21 games in of the MDA era? We've had the hardest schedule in the league. Happy but still early. Our team is one that will face our share of injuries at one point. Through first 21, ahead of where we want to be, in position for HCA. That was our goal coming in. We're pleased. Players are playing well, career levels & young players stepping up. So far, so good, knock on wood. Harden in better shape, how much is that for his hot start? It's a lot of things. Anderson & Gordon were 2 players we added that fit him well. Young players stepped up (Capela, Dekker, Harrell) It's a good positive start to the year that's created a solid environment for... guys are having fun. Last year, losses created bad decisions by myself & full spiral down. You're willing to say it's bad decisions. You're accepting responsibility. First thing you'd change about last year? Lawson was my decision & didn't work out. When you give up a decent amount like we did & it's not working, you can often stop playing the player but we kept trying to make it work. That didn't work. If you know everything you know at the end of the season, I don't think a coaching change was the right thing. Unfair to our coach last year. A whole set of things on me that weren't good. We have things going in the right direction (Ryan, MDA & Harden, Bzdelik, Capela, Harrell, Gordon). Some years you just don't.... Shouldn't have fired McHale? If you have perfect information & know...you don't make a drastic move like that if you don't think it can turn your season around. JB did a good job but we did not turn our season around to the extent we were hoping. Midseason coaching changes are terrible, not good & the first one I did. We felt like at the time, the info we had, it was a decision that was best but if you know what you know at the end & you don't turn it around, yeah, midseason changes are almost always a mistake. 2 biggest criticisms - Harden & MDA don't play/coach defense. How would you combat the narrative those two with style & substance won't win you big because of defense? We do need to improve our D. Signs it's improving. It's gotten better as the season goes on. Some of our D, we're below average right now is hidden by we've played tough opponents relative to the league. We want our D around 10th in the league, hopefully higher. That's gonna take effort. Trend is good. Capela & Beverley, Ariza,...we have defensive players who can play well. Trending in the right direction. We do need to get better. We're excited about our D because of Jeff Bzdelik. Mike is at that point where he knows his strengths & they're great & also knows where having someone like Jeff is a big advantage. For the first time in his career, he's giving the largest % time of practice to defense. That was something he wanted to do. He's evolved over his career. Our focus on D has been high. The criticism of James on D has been unfair. If you compare him to the high usage offensive burden superstars, he's right there with almost all those players in terms of his D.
I regret that too. We could have missed the playoffs and kept our pick had we kept McHale all season long.
Morey is saying "it's on me." He says the coaching change (firing mchale) was a mistake but he's not exactly saying it was his decision alone
It's weird that he expects the team to have injuries. Ryno and Ego? Also wants a top 10 defense...currently 25th. I think it will take midseason moves to get there. Maybe we can get Bogut?
I thought his defensive rebounding last year made a leap, but that in making that a focus, lost sight of marking his man too much. This year he seems to be excelling at rebounding again and doing a better job of keeping his man in check. There's growth there and there was growth last year, but no one thinks rebounding is sexy anymore... in the media. There are 13 players up over 10 rpg, there were 16 players at over 10 rpg in 1992-1993 (random comparison). Sounds like rebounding is still sexy in the eyes of the lady of the night known as Court-ney. That was stupid, but I'm not deleting it.
He said we're now little bit below average, sure they are using more advanced stats. I honestly don't feel like our defense is the 5th worst in the NBA. No doubt has improved from last year, and teams like Minnesota, Philadelphia, Denver, Phoenix, Sacramento... are not better defensive teams than us, no matter what DEF EFF stat says. I would say this team is at the end of the day a top 15-20th defensive team.
