Daryl Morey is much better than some are giving him credit for

Right, but that only furthers the drama of the turnaround.

They lost two All-Stars for almost nothing who, salary-wise, they were all in on. If an aging(-ish) wreck of a team is going to get back into the playoffs just 3 years after eating 40 million in sunk costs, it is always going to be via tanking and landing amazing talents - even the Thunder's core took longer than that to be elite via the draft. The degree of difficulty of traversing from "5-seed minus the two historic talents that dragged them to a 5-seed" to "4-seed in a brutal West" with zero top-ten picks in the interval is off the charts, and pointing out the lack of success of the Yao-McGrady teamup makes it more so, given that the supporting cast (ie, the starting point for the recovery) wasn't even good enough to ride two All-Stars to a series win.

 

Nice post. Finally what made you come to your senses? You were a big ass Morey fan.

 

In a way I'm glad the gasol trade didn't go through...... For once I will thank David stern for that.

 

I love Morey to death, but blaming him for wasting seasons going after a Big 3 is unfair.

This team with just Harden and Dwight isn't enough unless Dwight returns to the Orlando Dwight and Harden somehow just explodes. Rockets don't have the transcendent superstars teams need for a championship. There are exceptions, but NBA finals history has been dominated by those types of players. Look at the championship winners over the last 30 years.

Those teams had Lebron, Kobe, Duncan, Shaq, Jordan, Hakeem, Bird, Magic, Dirk, and KG.

Orlando Dwight fits that category, but it's unfair to assume he will return to that level especially after that back injury. Offensively he might, but his defense in those years was as dominant as it gets. He's still elite, but that Dwight was on a whole different level.

Harden with great defense is a superstar, but it's doubtful he will have the talent to be a transcendent player. Not a knock on him, but the transcendent players in the league are physical freaks.

If Orlando Dwight is back, this team with a good bench is a top contender. Without him, we need at least one more top 30-40 players to actually win a ring instead of pretending to have a chance. Morey knows this and he is willing to move the team back a bit while maintaining some competitiveness to win a championship.

Goal is a championship, not a couple of playoff victories.

Feel free to disagree, that's just make take

 

You have a somewhat fair take and I can understand the last two points. The first two points I disagree with.

Interestingly enough, the only time this team has not had "veteran leadership" during Morey's tenure has been the last two years. Before that there has always been a stabilizng force of veterans on the Rockets. I hardly think Morey does not believe in veterans. I'll take 5/7.

Also he's hardly bad at "gauging talent" as you would say. On the contrary it would seem through the years he has been elite at gauging talent. I believe some of this gets lost because of your point about roster turnover. There have been so many players that Morey has signed or traded for that some of has talent identificaiton abilities get overshadowed by that.

Morey picked out Lowry, Dragic, Landry, Scola, Patterson, Jones, Brooks, Beverley, Asik, Parsons, Daniels, etc..

He got almost all of those players when no one else even knew who they were. And the Rockets have done an amazing job of developing talent. His drafting record is very solid, one of the top track records in the league. The highest criticisms seem to be that he did not draft DeAndre Jordan and Kawhi Leonard. That's hardly a criticism because dozens of other GM's also did the same. There has to be some form of relativity when evaluating a GM.

Regardless, as Morey said, to paraphrase: "It's not the team that signs Chandler Parsons, it's the team that consistently finds Chandler Parsons"

Morey has been very good at that. This is a direct reflection of his talent gauging abilities.

 

I agree it's fair to criticize Morey those moves, but you have to also realize that every GM has guys they could of drafted. In that same draft, the Spurs got Corey Joseph and Adam Hanga instead of Chandler Parsons and Isaiah Thomas.

 

I'd love to see the data on when Daryl goes with his gut feeling.

 

You are pining for a player who does not currently exist in the NBA outside of LBJ. Kobe, KG, Duncan and Dirk are shells of their former selves. All the rest of them are retired. If you cannot be satisfied with Harden and Howard you will never ever be satisfied.

 

He also picked Marcus Morris over Kawhi Leonard; Motiejunas over Faried, Lamb over guys like Henson and Harkless. In fact, he beat himself by picking both Lamb and White before Jones, and completely missed out players like Sullinger and Wroten. He seems to be able to do better picking up other people's misses than getting the right ones when there are more choices to choose from.

Yep, that's Morey's M.O. "It doesn't matter who I get rid of. I can always find someone to replace him." He just keeps flipping.

 

Its not that Morey is not satisfied with Harden/Howard. He has to be very, very satisfied with having Harden over Martin, Lamb, and the picks used in that trade. Also, picking up Howard for nothing other than cash is a very satisfying move for both GMs and fans. We would not be in the mix for the playoffs without Harden/Howard.

That being said Morey has made the valuation that a core of only Harden/Howard is going to win a championship even with an elite bench. Heck, even as a die-hard Rockets fan I am highly skeptical that a Harden/Howard core + elite roleplayers/bench would triumph in a 7 game playoff over the other cores of elite playoff teams such as Paul/Griffen, Iving/Love/James, Rose/Noah, Westbrook/Durant + their current roleplayers/benches. That is ignoring the undeath that is the Spurs. So outside of a complete miracle, incremental improvements will not win us a championship.

If you want to do a bit better each year until your salary is capped without ever even competing for a championship, by all means pull for small improvements on the bench, at the pg/pf spots, coaching. If you want, nay lust after a championship keep pining for the third or dare I say fourth star.

 

AKA the Houston Texans

 

1) we need to have one star player to start with when we do not have any.
2) we need to have two star players to be in playoffs when we have one
3) we need to have three star players to get to the second round when we have two
4) we need to have four star players to go very deep in the playoffs when we will have three
5) time to rebuild whenever we have four.

see the logic here?

yep, lol

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Three games down, 79 to go re: Ariza vs. Parsons. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rockets?src=hash">#Rockets</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Mavericks?src=hash">#Mavericks</a> <a href="http://t.co/9qJ6VaJtJG">http://t.co/9qJ6VaJtJG</a> <a href="http://t.co/CsK606ZUeN">pic.twitter.com/CsK606ZUeN</a></p>&mdash; MoiseKapenda Bower (@moisekapenda) <a href="https://twitter.com/moisekapenda/status/529384271845531648">November 3, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying we need that third guy to be able to compete with such players. Take OKC, Durant? better than anyone we have, Westbrook? about the same, Ibaka? better than any third player we have....by a long way.

So without our stars taking paycuts, how do we beat that team? the answer is a player with greater impact than Ibaka.

 

At last an intelligent post about Morey.

 

I don't know if we are really that far off from OKC. Last year, they won 2 out of 3 and on all 3 games against us, there was no instance where all 3 had big games at the same time.

I feel that their reputation is based on their NBA finals appearance but the one piece they had which got them to the finals is now with us. We have a point guard who has the ability to slow down Westbrook to a certain degree. We have a combination of Ariza, Papa and the Durant stopper - Garcia to try and make Durant work harder than usual. Ibaka, I will gladly have him take those open jumpers all game long as long as the other 2 dont get off.

If our defense pans out they way the coaches envision it, I am more than happy to go to war with the lineup we currently have.

 

Best GM in the league easily.

People still trying to argue he is not excellent aren't worth talking too.

 

Yeah exactly. The "but he didn't pick Faried and Kawhi!" argument is just a bad one. And if that's his biggest criticism, most people with any sense of critical thinking ability will be able to live with that.

 

No, these example are just to point out to people like you that Morey is not infallible. Whenever you list out all the good picks (which are plenty) you should be able to accept people giving you counter-examples.

This is what I said earlier. Criticizing Morey does not mean that we do not like him or do not think he is one of the top GMs. If you cannot comprehend these nuances and think whoever dare to point out anything wrong with Morey must be very dumb and not worth talking to, then you are no different from those whatever-only-fans.

 

Ariza right now is playing like a Top 45-50 player right now in this team setting.

We need one more Top 40 guy IMO and wait what happens in the playoffs

Hope it be a more consistent Jones or another veteran we add