It’s Friday June 22, 2012 and despite the fact that you lost to the NBA Champion Miami Heat with Lebron James and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, you are ecstatic. You think, yeah we lost but we went to the Finals with a core group of players, Kevin Durant (23), Russell Westbriook (23), James Harden (22), Serge Ibaka (22) and Reggie Jackson (22), that is on average under 23 years old, our future is bright. We build on this and our dynasty is S-E-T. Seven years and 20 days later, not a SINGLE one of those players are left on your squad. This has got to be one of the worst franchise histories I have ever seen. The only saving grace I can see out of this, is that you know Presti has an eye for talent so his draft pick haul can still save the franchise. But that fall is an epic one to say the least.
Given, but when did we have that level of talent on the squad? We had Parsons, Lin and Howard. So not the same...
When the hell did morey pick someone as good as Ibaka with a late 1st rounder? And let's not pretend like Capela is as good as peak Ibaka. No guarantees Morey would pick as well as Presti with the top picks. Remember he believed in #6 Johnyy Flynn and by most accounts was very interested in moving up to draft Ricky freakin Rubio. Cmon now Presti is definitely a better drafter than Morey
Ask Leslie...... Sure, can't compare them 1 to 1..... but if he were truly genius I think 1 Finals appearance by Year 7 or 9 is not something too much to ask for isn't it?
When he became the Rockets official GM he inherited a team with an injury prone All-Star center and an All-Star swingman that was on the decline. He didn't officially acquire his own All-Star player until Harden. Between the Yao/McGrady era and Harden's arrival, I don't think Morey had the option to commit to a full rebuild to net him the necessary assets (e.g. Top 5 picks) to compete. If you are to judge Morey from the time he got his OWN All-Star, Harden, they've made the playoffs every season with two WCF appearances. Morey has had to do it the hard way: build a competitive team through trades and FA signings. He's far from perfect but given what he had to work with and given how the NBA landscape has changed (the emerging big 3 era; Golden State) the Rockets have done relatively well. Do I hope we have at least one Finals appearance by now? Sure, who wouldn't? But it's not like Morey had, at one time, 4 of the Top 30-40 players in the league. No one could have predicted Harden's emergence as one of the all time great SGs but the signs were there that he was damn good and was at least All-Star caliber (whoever didn't see this don't know basketball). Presti can run circles around Morey when it comes to drafting, sure, because the facts are there. However, the facts are also there that: Durant was pretty much 1B to Oden's 1A in 2007. Presti simply took the best player available with the #2 pick. Westbrook was in the same group as Kevin Love, Eric Gordon and Danilo Gallinari at #4 in 2008. If he didn't pick Russ he would have at least picked a 6th man of the year candidate. Harden's selection is definitely the one out of the three that I'll give Presti a lot of credit for because Tyreke Evans, Jonny Flynn and Rubio were super hyped at that time. The other fact is that he should have kept all three. There's no way around it. I don't care if the owner was cheap and wanted to cut costs or whatever the reason(s) was/were: Presti should have kept all three. This isn't some hindsight bullshit either. Those three, together, got to the Finals!!!
Let's just call it for what it is. Presti is the vastly superior guy drafting players while Morey is better overall architect and was better at trades involving players. OKC's owner does not meddle though, I dun know for sure but that is the impression. I thought he wanted to pay someone like Ibaka and not Harden.
The WCF in 2018 was the Finals. Asking for a Finals appearance in that instance is akin to asking for a championship. And yes, that is a lot to ask. Takes a little luck, as we found out.
OKC wanted to pay Ibaka and Perkins while trying to get a discount from Harden. I think that's meddling.
Presti also had 2 top 3 draft picks and a top 5, Morey would ****ing die if he had a top 5 pick. Ever.
If his ownership wasn't cheap and gave harden his max then we might not be talking about this. His star player left despite being up 3-1 on the WCF. I think he has done pretty well despite the circumstances.
Hahahahhahahaha...what? He's a pretty good evaluator of talent, if you disagree with that you're just being biased.
How many morey draft picks have made serious contribution the last few years. I can really only think of Clint.
??? Morey equated JLin to Iverson, CP3 and LBJ. on that basis, he kicked a proven young productive pg for the Rox, Dragic, out of the door, and proceeded to sign the flash-in-the-pan, JLin , to a poisoned-pill FA contract. 2 yrs later, he paid the LAL w 1st/2nd rounders to take on Lin's contract
Your entire argument that Morey is a poor evaluator of talent is Jeremy Lin? Let's ignore Clint Capela, Aaron Brooks, Carl Landry, Montrezl Harrell, Patrick Patterson, Marcus Morris, Danuel House, Patrick Beverley and all the other players he's gotten right. No no, please...keep telling me more junk about Jeremy Lin. Did you even consider that Leslie Alexander demanded the trade for Lin? No? Then you're not paying attention. [Edit: I didn't even mention his biggest hit, Harden.]
You can't just weigh draft picks and ignore what Morey has done with undrafted free agents because he rarely has picks to work with and picks beyond the lottery are a complete crapshoot. That's why I said evaluator of talent and not just evaluator of draft talent. See my reply to the other chap.
He took a team from freaking Oklahoma City, whose population is half of Austin, to the finals and WCFs. Presti deserves lots of credit for that. He can't pick coaches for ****, but sure can pick talent.