The One Thing That Will Make This Season a Success

Not a playoff birth...
Not a lottery pick...
Not even the development of the young players...

The one thing that will make this season a success is for Harden to shine... to shine so brightly that he attracts other premiere talent to come to Houston.

This isn't so much a new statement as much a reminder. The board was aware of this and came to this conclusion during the Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard fiascoes. It is the same sentiment and excitement felt only a few weeks ago when we acquired Harden.

Morey finally came to a revelation this offseason that differs from the Morey of previous seasons. Pre-2012 Morey-ball is much like the way I like to play fantasy basketball - find value-for-the-money players, exploit obscure trends in the market, and then over many reiterations buy low sell high, and work your way to the top. I want to say that he and management have even done a good way to engineer value out of players while they are on the court. He's clearly also thought of ways to adjust regular performance to correlate with playoff impact, citing metrics like ppp in isolation, performance in clutch situations, etc..

Unfortunately, this kind of roster management analysis only works in a non-marketing and consumer-bereft bubble where players + agents dictate little of how or where they end up. The reality is the NBA operates on marketable teams and star players. So every fan wants to see the Rockets turn into the Spurs or Thunder, but the reality is that these two franchises are outliers to the mean. Finals competitive teams are for the majority franchises in top markets or teams that scored a top 10 superstar level talent. This is the evolution of Morey and the Morey of now, one that seeks both advanced stat players and potentially high profile stars like Pau Gasol, Dwight, and Harden.

Our board has done most of the analysis. Tanking is an entire year at a time. Even if you tank, your odds at landing a true game-changer are rare at best. Morey isn't even really known for his ability to scope out "talent" missing out on Drummond, Kawhi, Faried, diminishing the value of Lowry/Dragic, but this is all besides the point. The reality is, it's just so hard and un-probabilistic to land superstars in the draft that can lead a team through the finals and not only that, but draw the interest of talent around them. And then you need two of these. After that, all the pieces easily fall into place, and you can sign great players desperate for rings for below market values.

As a fan, I completely want to see Terence Jones turn into [a lesser Howard], Marcus Morris into [Melo with Defense] and Asik into the turkish David Robinson. I would have loved to see the Rockets draft Kawhi/Faried (risk averse but unlikely star players) and stuck with Lowry (oh yes, I'm asian). Then by some miraculous feat, turn into some underdog version of the championship Detroit Pistons and win it all. As much as I want it, that denies playing the statistics of reality or Moreyball v2.0, which incorporates the consumerism and player psychology of the NBA. This is a much more encompassing analytic strategy and one you have to stand by if you want to move the franchise forward.

That corporate and franchise perspective has me admit, all the above guys mean squat and will be out the door if needed. It all comes down to Olympic Harden, marketing with Tony Parker, hittin' strip clubs with soon to be Houston Rocket superstar #2, and the ability to convince NBA players that he's about to show the world he's on Durant's level.

So while I eat doner kebab in Asik's honor and wish Terence Jones and DMo played 30 minutes a night and I weep every time I see a Lowry or Kevin Martin boxscore, that rational bit of me speaks, "God damn it Harden... score 40 tonight."