1) chemistry does NOT matter if you don't have a lineup that can win a championship. All criticisms about roster turnover prior to the Harden + Howard pairing are asinine. If you can't win a chip with the guys you have, you wheel and deal until you get a legitimate core. To go from Chuck Hayes and Kevin Martin to Harden and Howard without a losing season was phenomenal. The one time we actually did something in the playoffs (last year) Morey kept more players than he had at any time previous. Keeping KJ over Smith was unfortunate but, with the team-wide meltdown we're having, i doubt Josh Smith would be enough to turn this ship around. 2) coaching does NOT matter if you don't have a lineup that can win a championship. Adelman was a great hire when it looked like TMac and Yao were going to play together for years. When it became obvious we were going to lose both of them, he was no longer needed. Roster turnover was needed - to attempt the aforementioned championship-caliber roster. Adelman resisted that (among other things) and had to be replaced. 3) Pairing Harden and Howard was, and is, a great move (we're not actually debating this, right... ?) The McHale extension was unfortunate but, at the time, our record had improved every year culminating in him having the highest win % in franchise history. I wasn't a fan but you don't fire a coach in the middle of your "title contention years" lightly. If they would've waited until the end of the season (after the WCF appearance) do you think the decision would've been any different ?
I don't remember what exactly I said on this topic -- I guess it must have been at least 5 years back. But to respond to your comments here: of course you can't measure an intangible quality like "leadership" in an objective way, because it means different things to different people. What can be measured, even if just in principle, are only things that mean the same thing to everyone. If I'm going to invest extra money in a player because he has some intangible quality, like leadership, how do even begin to put a value on it? How do I decide if the leadership one player brings to the table is worth that extra money? You say its ridiculous to try to measure something like leadership, and maybe you're right. But in that case, how do we rationally put a value on it? In my view, its not helpful to talk abstractly about the qualities of players when it comes down to dollars and cents. It doesn't mean we should just ignore off-court stuff, or how teammates respond to a player, or how much respect a player has from his peers. Just put it in concrete terms.
Out of curiosity since I didn't remember the conversation, I found the post you were talking about: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=5025133&postcount=71 Note that I didn't say, flatly, that leadership is measurable. Facets of leadership that are observable can be recorded and used to make assessments of a player's leadership qualities. But, again, if people aren't in agreement on what leadership means or why its important, it may very well be a pointless exercise.
Okay...? Are you crediting last year's success to keeping more payers than we had previously... and are then pointing to that as an example of a "line-up that can win a championship" or at least a superior one to this year's...? Is this a joke...? We made the conference finals thanks to JSmith more so than Harden... Now, you either look at that and think we simply overachieved which undermines your claim that the assembled roster had anything to do with our success as opposed to this year's, or somehow delude yourself into thinking last year's playoff team was superior to this year's roster simply because of mister consistency aka JSmith... Either way your argument that chemistry isn't as important as the statistical make-up of a roster falls apart.. And yes we are actually debating this, I certainly am... To pair an intellectual juvenile like Harden whose style of play and half-hearted personality has a strong gravitational pull on the on-court make-up and morale of the team with a smiling man-child like Howard who brushes off head-butts to the face like a mere annoyance and has a "tomorrow will be a better day guys, think positive" attitude or lack thereof... then make them your cornerstones and put them in a structure-less system under the lack of leadership and guidance of a coach like McHale is not a great move...
You can't always be too picky about which superstar/budding superstar/declining superstars you acquire. Talent ultimately wins titles, but of course you need to have guys that "get it" in order to win. Harden isn't going anywhere soon and we got some tradeable players/contacts. We will shuffle the deck if we need to.
I respect Batman Jones's friendship with Morey. I would not question what he said. BUT, that does not mean much when it comes to judging a person's job performance. I have been working with high level leadership of an organization, and have been good friends with other leaders. What Batman said is not surprising at all. We all know Morey cares about winning and is constantly trying to improve the team. It is not even debatable. The criticism is on his method. Is it conceivable that Morey actually cares about things like leadership, coaching, character, etc.? Of course. And it is not surprising that he would share this sentiment with friends. But his performance does not match this sentiment. I am not saying that he's a liar. Not at all. The thing is, what we think we believe is not the same thing as what we actually believe. What we really believe shows up in our actions and decisions. Does Morey care about player characters? Of course. But does he care more than he does talent? That's questionable. Let's say we have two players, Player A and Player B. Player A is a 7 on talent and 4 on character Player B is a 6 on talent and 7 on character Based on the kind of players we've got, I'd say Morey would favor Player A over Player B. I've said it elsewhere. GM-ing is about trade off, about give and take. A GM cannot have everything. When you can't have everything, you have to prioritize. You have to sacrifice something to gain something else. I personally think that he sacrifices too much for talent. That said, I REALLY hope that Morey doesn't get fired. I don't think Les can find another GM better than Morey. And Morey has shown that he learns from his own mistakes. What I don't want to see is after he is let go, he goes to another team and does a much better job because he has learned from this mess. So we are paying for his tuition for another team.
There are plenty of studies on leadership as something measurable and teachable. I cannot believe that Morey is ignorant of this. What I think cannot be objectively measured is the impact of leadership on winning basketball games. In other words, how do you integrate the science of leadership with the science of basketball? The irony with the Rockets situation is that this is quite clearly a leadership problem. I actually don't blame Morey for getting a guy like Harden. He didn't choose Harden out of a bunch of franchise players. Harden simply was available at a time when Morey had the pieces to get him. Then he chased Howard, and finally got him. Then he chased Melo. That is a big give away to me. Unlike getting Harden, chasing Melo is totally by choice. Melo has never in his whole career shown any leadership or "team first" mentality, despite having a reputation of an elite player. So you got Harden, and Howard, neither was high character guy. Now you chase another non-leader and raved him as "the key to championship formula." That's when I realized Morey's priorities.
Thanks for the insight. I've seen a lot of interviews -- press conferences, post game snippets, cuts from Sloan, etc. -- in which Morey says a lot of things. But people seem to cling to the math nerd stuff that fits a reductionist idea about what he and the analytics movement are all about. It is largely on him because he gets wonky, leads the MIT conference, and pushes metrics. But he has stated that analytics is a tool along side traditional scouting, not to replace it. He has also stated that for the average NBA player the long 2 is a bad shot, but if a player has a strong mid-range game, then that player should take those shots. And we all know most NBA players do not have strong mid range games. Just an example: the Golden State Warriors are big on using analytics. Most competitive teams are using these analytical tools in some form or another.
I pretty much agree with Jerry West when it comest to putting together a great team: Just give me the best players and a great coach. ---------- Warriors’ Jerry West doesn’t see ‘analytically-based’ NBA teams having a lot of success Warriors executive board member Jerry West describes himself as old-fashioned as the NBA continues to change with analytics. After helping the Warriors front office put together the team that won the title last season, the Hall of Famer is digging his heels in after adding yet another championship ring to his collection. “All of the analytical guys that have started to play a big role in it, and frankly, I’m not a big analytical person,” West told Sirius XM on Friday. “Give me the best players, and give me a great coach, and we’ll beat these analytically-based organizations all the time. “And I know they have their role. I know they have their place in basketball. But I see a lot of teams that follow that line, and I don’t see a lot of success there. “I’m not knocking analytical people at all. But just give me the best players, and give me the best competitors, and I will show you a team that has a great chance to win every year.” The Warriors can be considered an analytically-friendly organization. Coach Steve Kerr is open-minded to using the numbers to mold the team’s style of play. Assistant general manager Kirk Lacob is a major proponent. At the same time, general manager Bob Myers is among those who would agree with West that the Warriors are not analytically-based. “What I like about our organization is we’ve got a guy like Jerry West in the room,” Myers told 95.7 The Game in February. “He’s leaning more towards the old school eye test, which is great. And somebody that’s well-qualified to take that position because he’s seen everything, has played, has played, has coached, has been a GM. So you listen to that point of view. Then we’ve got other younger guys that are the analytical component of our organization. “When we make decisions, analytics are never more than 50 percent of the decisions. So that would lead you to think that the eye test is important. But it doesn’t mean we dismiss analytics out of hand. We don’t do that. We insert them in the equation of every decision we make. But I think sometimes if you use them to be greater than 50 percent of your decisions in the sense that they’re the majority of the decision, I think then that for us personally, we would stray from that type of thing. “They do have value,” Myers added of analytics. “I definitely think they have value. You don’t have to feel threatened with them.” -------- Here are Steve Kerr's thoughts: Talking numbers with Warriors coach Steve Kerr NBA.com: I don't want to get into the Charles Barkley thing, but would you say that you're open-minded about what numbers can tell you? Kerr: Yeah. I feel like I'm open-minded. I listen. NBA.com: What numbers do you care about? Kerr: I care about passes, how well we're moving the ball, any numbers that can show us passes per possession, how often turnovers happen within a certain number of passes, that sort of thing. NBA.com: What have you learned about your team from the numbers? Kerr: I've found that most of our turnovers happen in the first few passes, in possessions of two or fewer passes. People might think that if you move the ball a lot, you're more likely to turn it over. I don't look at it that way. Generally speaking, when we have possessions of six or more passes, we shoot an incredibly high percentage and we have very few turnovers. It's very interesting. It's almost counterintuitive. But most of our mistakes happen before two passes are even thrown. I've also found that in most of our losses, the numbers are pretty glaring in terms of how little ball movement we had. NBA.com: Do you care about lineup data? Kerr: I look at it. It's tricky, because most of the stuff is such small sample sizes. So you get certain lineups that you play a lot and maybe you can get something from. But if you play a group of guys together and the sample size is literally 16 minutes, you better watch those 16 minutes, because what happens if a guy on the other team hits a half-court shot? That's a minus-3 for that group. Does that mean anything, because the guy hit a half-court shot? What if that group comes down and gets five straight great field goal attempts and they run the offense really well, but none of them go in, the numbers would be a negative. So I think you have to be selective with what is important to you, and you really have to delve into what might mean something and what might not. ----- Cantankerous Popovich and the Spurs are also leaders in using analytics. The Spurs were even recognized at the Sloan Conference as having the preeminent analytics team in sports this past spring. R.C. Buford: “I think we were valuing some things that weren’t nearly as important as what the data showed,” He said. “We learned from the Celtics on defensive rebounding. While they were really high in defensive efficiency, they weren’t very high in defensive rebounding. It made us question, ‘Is that really where we should be paying attention?’ Those were discussions that were then brought to Pop from our coaches and from our analytics team. Some great discussions came from that that then led us to re-evaluate what’s important for us.” ------ In the end, it about what data is being collected and how it is integrated into the scouting and coaching processes.
Of course you can measure it. But first it needs to be defined, and so quantified. If leadership results in a happier locker room, the what are the signs kf a happier locker room? Is it players snapping each others jock straps? If so, one can simply measure the number of jock strap snaps, and quantify the happiness level. From there it is a simple step to determine who has the biggest influence on the practice (incidenally, I hear this is why Parsons wanted to go to Dallas, Cuban is quite the jock strap snapper, and Parsons is a big fan of a good snap)
