Dude, I think HP gave you a pretty good example that a player in a situation very similar to Kawhi - although not nearly as good as Kawhi - not only got a chance, but took that chance and ran with it. So to say hypothetically that Kawhi would not have gotten that chance, or that he wouldn't have done as well as Parsons is just nonsensical. The only thing you have on your side is the fact that we did not draft Kawhi so nothing can be said with absolute certainty. But you can be pretty damn sure that that Kawhi would have had the same shot at Parsons, all other things being the same.
The fact McHale gave Parsons the starting position is all the proof I need. He also played Patterson a lot of rookie minutes. As well as Beverley, and Capela got playoff burn last year. And all the picks got significant 2nd yr minutes,,,Capela, Morris, TJones and DMo. So, what actually happened and how McHale gives rookies their chance to compete are the facts you're up against. Your idea clings to a single hair in some fantasy world scenario that no one could predict, whereby you claim you can say all things are possible. Maybe, but not all things have the same probability. There is a vastly higher probability (like 99.99%) Kawhi gets his shot with McHale along with Parsons versus your fantasy idea, based on the facts of how McHale used Parsons and all his other first round picks...and even 2nd rounders and undrafted players.
Of course it is fantasy, I did not deny that, so chill out a little bit, and this is not possibly a knock on McHale, to his credit, he did play some rookies, but it might have been tough to choose between Parsons and Leonard.
let's face it, Morey's ****ed up on the draft, it's easy to look at it in hindsight so that can be forgiven BUT the one single mistake Morey should have never done is letting JB take over the reigns has head coach. Even an idiot could see where that boat was heading. The season was over as soon as McHale was canned and replaced with JB.
If we drafted Kawhi we may have passed up Parsons and in that hypothetical fantasy world Parsons may not have gotten the playing time he needed to become a slightly overrated wing who no longer plays defense and slightly underrated heartthrob for teenage girls everywhere.
Who pissed in your cornflakes? Where the hell do you get off taking pot-shots at me? So I somehow need to be shamed for typically agreeing with Morey and his reasoning? That seems rather juvenile. FWIW, I've been disappointed in Morey's lack of radio appearances this season, notably those following bad losses. I was merely explaining why he might have skipped out on THIS one. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you changed your tone when referring to me. It's really disrespectful. If you don't like what I have to say on Morey or the Rockets, just don't read my stuff.
The minutes distribution last season between the Rockets and Bulls were almost identical. Maybe he works them hard in practice. Who knows. But what I do know is that he gets results. In his 5 seasons with the Bulls, their records were: 50-32 48-34 45-37 50-16 (On pace for a 62 win season) 62-20 And their best player, Derrick Rose, was hurt for those last 3 seasons.
It's unbelievable the "shaming" around here posters try to place on any poster that is doing something other than whiny b****ing... Which is all anyone seems interested in doing nowadays. There is a difference in objectively EXPLAINING the reasons for why Morey & Co are doing what they are doing and apologizing for or blindly supporting any and everything the team does. It's called not being ignorant. Go after me all you guys want, but going on the offensive against probably the most educational poster on the board is stupid. But we don't want education and reason now don't we? We want to be angry caged animals looking to throw our feces at the first person that walks under our tree. Sorry for disturbing your tree.
I question this reasoning by Morey. How often are you really going to find a guy who is going to blossom into a primetime scorer - the kind who draws double teams and you build around - at the 14th pick? Those kinda guys go a lot earlier. The chances of getting that kind of player at the 14th pick were so slim, Morey should have gotten the BPA, and heypartner rightly pointed out Kawhi was the consensus BPA at that pick. A smart genius like Morey should have known we weren't going to get the next Carmelo at the 14th pick. That talk is so silly.
Leonard was the BPA.... at number 14....... At the time. I don't see how Leonard, who actually became a elite 2 way player, was anymore likely to blossom into something resembling his current form than Morris at the time. Was Leonard predicted to have a better career, sure, but by how much? The Rockets didn't have Harden and swung for the fences. Are you going to swing for the fences on Morris or Leonard given the context?
The decision to draft Marcus Morris over Kawhi Leonard was the one over which I disagreed with Morey and Co. the most. I understand their reasoning (needing to swing for the fences on star potential at a time when the Rockets didn't have a star), but I just never saw Morris as realistically being able to reach that level. I felt that Kawhi, OTOH, had a much better shot at becoming another Shawn Marion type, a multi-faceted player who could defend multiple positions at a very high level. Are the Rockets complete idiots for that decision? No. But it was a bad decision at the time, and many people knew it then, too.
If you paid any attention to their college careers and scouting leading up to the draft I don't know how you can say that the condense had Leonard as "BPA". It's very easy for you guys to say that now but it's not true. I remember watching the combine and hearing all of the pundits talk about the concerns with Kawhi... That he didn't have a position.. Is really a four and might not be skilled enough to play the 3. Could he shoot, etc. With Morris, he was coming in as a much more dynamic scorer from Kansas where he was really allowed to show off much more offensively. I get what your saying about "shouldn't have been going for a swing for the fences at 14" but keep in mind that the Rockets seemed very quick to pivot and turned Morris into a stretch 4 almost overnight... Almost as if they were prepared for it. Look... Everyone wants to say now that THEY were the ones that wanted Kawhi at the time and maybe you were, but the consensus was pretty clear as day if you aren't playing revisionist historian. And let's not act like Kawhi was the only player overlooked in that draft. Morey ended up with 3 really good players regardless. One on a max contract, one would have been had he not had back issues, and the other is a very valuable offensive threat as a big who can score and stretch the floor on a great contract. Morey did very well that year.
I'm not the definitive expert on Kawhi's draft. I'm just arguing against this swing for the fences strategy at pick 14. The always repeated, common analysis/excuse for the Morris-over-Kawhi pick was that Morris was more likely to blossom into a primetime scorer even if Kawhi was a safer bet to be a legit contributor. Well, I'm saying that was a flawed idea. The odds are miniscule a 14th pick is going to become a Carmelo Anthony. At that pick, you should be hoping for the legit contributor - not gambling on a 2% chance that you will have yourself a guy to build around at that late of a pick. People overlook that Morey wasted some effort around that time on far-fetched strategies. Bringing in a high volume of busts - Jonny Flynn, Thabeet, TWill, etc. - in the hopes that one of them was going to magically become a star here. What were the odds that that was going to work? In the long run though, he got our superstar by bringing in Harden in a more proven manner. I am still pumped about that, so I am not trying to burn Morey at the stake. Looking back, it's just funny that Morey would try so many strategies that had very little chance of working.
I respect and value your input on this BBS to the point that I believe you are the most compelling reason to click on. However (I hate when there are howevers, but), I have watched college basketball about as long as I have NBA and I remember seeing Wilt and Russ and Oscar and Couz etc etc et alia live at MSG. I used to see the stars align for 3 years in college (soph-sr years) so that one had a pretty good idea who would be hits and who would be misses. And still there were scores of misses. Today? Is Ben Simmons all that or is what we have seen? Is it the coaching or the system or his teammates? It might be better having the #2 pick than the #1 in June. Maybe. I disagreed with the Morris pick in large part due to a KU professor friend telling me about behavioral issues with the twins. But I never believed I knew which player must be selected and which passed over. The highly skilled pros miss more than they hit so why would I be able to sit here and preguess? So I don't second guess picks, either. OK, in one draft I did: I lovedlovedloved the Royce pick and hated the TJo one (tho was certain he was picked to be traded that night). Well, I was right on 1 of 2. Mediocre - - or good? We the fanbase make lousy drafters. Remember Colangelo Sr admonishing his fans after they booed Majerle's pick?
Bima, I agree with you about Kawhi being the surer bet - defense is so rare in college, and he was ready from day 1 to be a lockdown defender and an athletic slasher. But if you look at Marcus Morris's college numbers, he was a knockdown shooter and efficient scorer, and at the time we didn't have anyone like that. So I can see where Morey et al got blinded by the possibility of having a stretch 4 who could create his own shot. Clearly this was a terrible decision in hindsight. I've been dogging Morey for passing up Leonard, but if you try and remove the benefit of hindsight I think the decision to draft either Morris over Kawhi isn't too crazy. I mean, Kawhi couldn't shoot at all in college and was basically a slasher on offense. How many players like that have ended up being irrelevant in the NBA? Nobody would predict that he would go on to be a 40% 3 point shooter. Kawhi's emergence into a bonafide star is a direct result of his intense work ethic, but that emergence wasn't a given on draft day.
I liked the Royce pick. And I wanted Sullinger over Jones at #19. I missed hugely on Kawhi. I didn't think he would ever be able to learn to shoot. Wasn't familiar enough with him to know his work ethic. If I had known that I may have modified my thoughts about him. But I thought he would be a bust because he couldn't shoot. Kawhi has been my single biggest miss in the draft in the last 15 years I'd say. My buddies at KU told me the stuff with the Morris twins was just immaturity issues and nothing serious. I know quite a few Jayhawks. When I was a kid I played pickup ball on weekends after the basketball season with Danny Manning, Ron Kellog, Calvin Thompson, Milt Newton, Mark Turgeon, Cedric Hunter, Freeman West, and several other players that I can't remember their names anymore. The same people told me that that boy that was supposed to be a high first rounder last year was dumber than a sack of potatoes and had very poor judgment. That was before the season started. So they were off on the Morris Twins character and as a result of that my opinion of Marcus Morris was elevated too much. (But he's a very, very talented player. A player that without the character issue would probably be a real star. The skill set is all there. He's got big time skills.) So you hit some and miss some. Even the pros miss them though. I don't know about you but I'm confident when I'm around a kid up close I can figure out their character and judge their futures better. (And character or lack thereof plays a huge role in what these kids develop into in the NBA.) Most of my misses have come when I had more limited information to make a call on. Such as Kawhi's case. All I had on Kawhi was video and public interviews. Had no background on him. Didn't know his character. Didn't know his work ethic. Kawhi has to be one of the very hardest working players if not the most dedicated player in the NBA. And the jump in his skill set in his rookie season from his last season at SDSU to his rookie season was amazing and told the story about his future.
Morris was playing with another highly skilled NBA player at Kansas. That can really screw up your analytics. That's the problem with Morey's picks, they often were players who were the lessor of NBA-class players from the same team -- Patterson, TJones and Morris. I mean, how can you really rate TJones when 6 players were taken from that UK team. Same with Morris and his brother. Taking the lessor of two NBA-class players from the same team, is one of the classic mistakes in drafting. Anyhow, I'm no longer a fan of NCAA's, so defer to others on draft day now. And wait for Summer League play. But that was one of my main things to look for back in the day when I was an NCAA junkie ... be wary of overrating bigs who are playing with other 1st round NBA-level players. It's not revisionist history to say Leonard was higher on most draft boards than Marcus. I think the consensus was that one of the twins was better than Leonard, but not both. And it was hard from analytics to decipher which one, since they are on the same team. But Markeiff taken ahead of his brother is kinda a tip to Morey that others think Marcus is the lessor of the two NBA-class players from the same NCAA team. Morey is on record saying he considered the twins the same value, and would take either. He got that wrong, too.
Thereby goes one of my pet peeves. Character is a vastly underrated "talent" in scouting, and this is probably especially true with an analytics-heavy method. (For the record, I am an advocate for using analytics.) I am sure Morey would admit that picking Morris over Leonard was a huge mistake. But Morey probably would not admit this: He values perceived basketball talent much more than character. And he got burned more than once.
Agreed there. The Spurs value talent as well but they place a significant and perhaps equal emphasis on character. This has had the direct result of making them relevant for two decades straight now.
