Debut of the GM's show on Sports Talk 790. Friday will not be the permanent slot, but just fit best with Daryl's schedule this week. Feel free to call in 713-212-5790. Or tweet us a ? @sportstalk790 Also, just to let you guys know, Rockets coach Kevin McHale will be on every week in the afternoon with Lance and Charlie and we almost have the I's dotted and T's crossed for a player to join us (can't say who yet) each week in the morning. For better and for worse, we are going to slam the Rockets down people's throats this season. Hope you enjoy the coverage.
Full Rockets coverage from guys who do it right. Even though we support opposing teams in the Bay and in Manchester, I still got love for ya Matty.
Thanks Matt. One bone to pick with 790 though is that they need to do a better job of Podcasting interviews on their website. Im not a fan of 610 by any stretch, but they did do a good job of podcasting key interviews. If you guys could start doing a better job at that, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for the good work.
Sooooo glad 790 is covering the Rockets. 610 did such a horrible job that for the last few years I didn't even bother tuning in because I knew the majority of the time it would be Texans coverage all the time. I understand why they do it but you would almost never hear anything about the Rockets and rarely would it be good coverage when they did.
Thanks, Matt. So glad to have the Rockets on 790 AM, where the on-air talent actually understands NBA basketball and takes the time to learn about their local NBA team. Tune in, everyone! We've got to make sure 790 AM is profitable enough to keep its on-air talent.
This. As much as I like some of the 610 talent (Vandy and Innis mostly), 790 is by far the most balanced station in regards to their lineup. With no more Rome (and let's be honest, "Rome" stopped being Rome 5 years ago) and no Rockets, I only listen to 610 out of habit, mostly. I think it's time to move my homestation to 790.
Thanks Matt. I wasn't around this morning so I missed it, but I'm looking now on your website to see if it's in a podcast.
Found it -- I'm listening now... it starts at the 13:25 mark (Hour 2 clip). http://www.sports790.com/cc-common/...podcast=Morning_Show_2_2_1350055501_17842.mp3
Nice. The questions they set up to be asked by callers are way, way, way better than what you would expect. Maybe it was just luck of the draw, or the questions are being filtered much better, but great job of getting quality conversation going as opposed to just letting a caller ask a normally dumb question.
<iframe width="658" height="371" scrolling="no" src="http://www.sports790.com/player/embed.html?autoStart=false&useFullScreen=true&mid=22529461&osu=null&startButtonColor=0xffffff" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" ></iframe> Daryl, welcome aboard, how are you? Good morning. I gotta tell you, for a preseason game number one, that game against OKC had a lot to offer. A lot of coach-able moments but I have to imagine you saw a lot of positives from a lot of the young players. Yeah, I want to count the game now. We've beaten those guys 3 out of 4. Clearly we're better than them. What's league protocol on the process and paperwork for getting a preseason game counted? We have such a good relationship with the league office that I think they'll just do it for us. Very nice. ... I wanted to get into the Royce White situation. He may be available tonight, no commitment from the coaching staff yet. As the draft approached, maybe take it from the day you selected him to where we were media day when he wasn't there and first practice in McAllen he wasn't there. How did things go in that process of learning what was known by the team about how this might take place. What was given to you informationally from his camp about how you needed to go about things to make things doable for Royce White. Yeah, sure. Obviously a very talented guy. We think he'd be a top five pick without some of the question marks overall with him. Things are in a good place with him right now. Obviously bumpy to start. We had been talking to him about alternate transportation for quite a while. He felt like just in terms of for the larger look at how people look at some of the issues he has, he wanted something in writing and didn't realize getting something in writing, though we had talked about verbally, would take awhile and have a lot input from folks between the league office and players union. We got it worked out. He's definitely available. He's still catching up. Not sure he'll play tonight. He'll definitely play in preseason at some point but he's still catching up with the rest of the guys. One of the guys, with last year basically being a throw away year for him, Marcus Morris, before he got hurt, I liked what I saw on the offensive end of the floor. Is it still the franchise's plan to be a three or moving him closer to a four that he played in college? He's been solid. He's made a strong push for minutes. He's been very good defensively too. Obviously strong offensively from college but he's been committed all around. The three is where we think he can be unique relative to others at his position but at this point at the three, we have guys healthy and playing well. The four might give him more opportunity. He's gotten more reps there and has played well. Omer Asik had a very nice first game. I know he's been working with CD and McHale for offensive improvement. Lin mentioned he saw a recognizable difference in what he has been able to do in camp. Is the idea with Asik to give him an option if the ball ends up in his hands to do something other than dunk or do you envision him improving to the point where on the occasion you can throw the ball down to him for some offense? Yeah, we like the dunk. Right now, I don't think we'll be doing a ton of plays like we did to open the game against OKC. We ran a post-up for Omer. Yeah, as you mentioned, he's worked with CD and McHale all offseason and has made great strides but I don't know if that will be a primary part of our offense. We wanted to get him to where he is comfortable if he does get the ball, he can dunk and finish in a couple of different ways. He's gotten to that. The big positive is Omer has really gotten in shape, he's down 20 lbs. ... Just one game but his debut is exactly what we hoped for when we signed him. With a limited amount of veteran presence, is there a part of you watching what other teams are doing with their roster? Do you feel like there almost must be a little more vet presence for such a young team? We went in with the strategic plan to be as young as we are. It's no accident where we're at. We'll look at acquisitions that we think can help us upgrade the team over time but we're not planning any right now. We feel good. Martin has been giving us a lot, Delfino on the veteran front, and a lot of our young players that are in their 3rd year like Patterson are very mature personality wise and mature in their game on the floor. No plans to add a veteran. There may be something as we go along and we're in that playoff race, and we feel like there is a key acquisition we can make at the trade deadline or somewhere in that range, we may do it. Speaking to Patrick Patterson's maturity, concerned that he is too good friends with Chandler and same thing with Lin? His goofball attitude will rub off on these so-called vets? Yeah, we have too much camaraderie. You need a mix of personalities. We have some strong character guys and you gotta have talented and little bit different like Royce. Is there any difference in how you're constructing a roster when you're totally overturning it and not trying to fit pieces to an established star? Maybe you brought in guys who would fit in with Yao or McGrady previously. With the amount of turnover you had on this roster, what were you looking for and how were you trying to make the pieces fit? Or was the goal to just accumulate as much talent as possible? Yeah, it's more of the latter. If we focus too much on fit right now, we'd be losing out on opportunity with some players. You have a lot of talent. Every player on the roster, we want to have all-star ability or give us flexibility in FA, we'll have max-room next year, a lot of that is because we have a lot of guys on manageable contracts that allows us to stay flexible in the FA market or give us flexibility in trade to add an all-star level player. Our main goal is to continue to add players who have elite level talent and get the foundation established like we had when we had Yao and Tracy. Once you have that, you look for key acquisitions like Shane Battier and guys who you think fit with the stars you have. This might be a Kevin question but the way you guys played the other night, and the players seemed to say we're just gonna run, run, run, run as much as possible, is there a team you think with the roster you have you're kinda modeling yourselves after? I wouldn't say roster-wise but on offense, the way George Karl has structured his offense in Denver, there are some similarities to how they play offensively and to how we're looking to play this year on offense. [Caller]: If Donatas Motiejunas had gone in this year's draft, where would he have been drafted and does signing Delfino take away time from guys like Marcus Morris and Royce White? 1st question, you can't know for sure but DM did answer a lot of questions overseas that made him drop to 20 the draft before. Rebounded extremely well and won the title in Europe. He would have gone higher in a normal draft. The draft last year was deep. I would guess he would have gone in a similar range, 10-20. I missed the second question. Delfino, you're adding a vet but does he take away time from your more developmental guys? We thought about that and balance that. We did feel like we needed someone who was a model professional and was experienced in both NBA and international play to come in and really show these guys how you handle yourself and what's required to win at a high level. We structured the contract in a way that it keeps us flexible for those goals I mentioned before. We feel like he won't cause problems in terms of getting younger guys on the floor. You mentioned the style you'd like to play but you'll get caught in the half-court every now and then. If you had to get a bucket and wanted to go into the low post, who is your best low post option? That's not a strength. Patrick has worked hard on his post game. Terrence Jones can post up a little bit although he is more face-up. Our best low post game/guy is Donatas Motiejunas. He's actually probably not known for that. He uses his quickness in the post vs strength like most but he is our strongest post player. [Caller]: Do you see at some point adding someone who is a specialist like Camby/Mutombo [previously], that when Asik goes out that can protect the middle? Yeah, obviously having a rim protector like Asik is something we want. We don't have that when he goes off the floor. Reason we don't have that is because those are hard to find. 7 footers who can move like him and protect the rim and not foul are unique. You can't force it and try another 7 footer and say we're gonna make it work. There won't be another player we can acquire. It's a unique skill set. We'll play small. You'll probably see different people at the five in our small running lineups behind Asik like Terrence or Donatas. Different players will get a chance to play the five behind Asik. We're gonna beat them with our speed and uptempo play and our rim protection will go down in those lineups for sure. See you at Toyota Center. Talk to you next week. We do have some tickets available at Rockets.com. We do have a few tickets left and hopefully folks can come out. Come out and see the new scoreboard as well. I'm not sure if we're lighting it. It's up. I think they'll activate it game one. ... It is exciting. The biggest in all of basketball for sure. I've seen the sneek preview. It's impressive. We're also excited for the All-Star game this year as well.
Yes. The answer was no. They are going to try and play fast off the bench, and get their young bigs more minutes. He "implied" that "IF" they are somehow in the playoff chase come February then they might look at making an aquisition at that point, but right now doesn't really seem like there is a point.
Thanks JR for the summary! Interesting to hear Royce was considered by Morey as top5 talent if without issue. The most optimistic opinion I remember pre-draft had him in top10 if there's no issue.
Did Daryl say that White was a top 5 talent without the issues. I do think he has the biggest upside other than Davis and Drummond.
Daryl Morey sounds fat on the phone.... dude sounds like he needs drop a few lbs, maybe he and DD can work out with Paulfsk and become a stallion.