1) LOL @ these "stats" 2) Morey's mistake wasn't letting Ariza go. His mistake was everything else he did in the 2018 offseason.
Absolutely. I'm actually impressed with Rivers and Gordon on D. Both have done very well this season on D and even when scored on usually require the offensive player to hit a high difficulty shot. On Nene, two things that are not accounted for are his struggles running the floor and his rebounding regression. He has struggled to snatch away boards this season, partly because of age and partly because Capela is so good at it. Capelas injury actually was good in that it started instilling team rebounding, and there's no question that we need more bodies fighting to get boards when Nene's in vs. Capela. Nene also seems to foul much more than he used to and I'm wondering if thats taken into account.
Just so know which moves we are pondering, in the offseason the Rockets: 1. Resigned CP3 2. Resigned Capela 3. Signed James Ennis III to 1 year deal 4. Signed Melo for Vet min 5. Signed MCW for non'guaranteed 1 year deal 6. Let Mbah a Moute walk 7. Let Ariza Walk 8. Traded Ryno and De'Anthony Melton for Chriss and Brandon Knight 9. Resigned Gerald Green to vet min. 10. Signed Hartenstein to multi-year deal In season he 1. traded Melo 2 traded MCW 3. Traded Ennis 4. Signed Gary Clark 5. Signed Danuel House 6. Signed Austin Rivers 7. Signed Kenneth Faried 8. Traded away a pick for Shumpert 9. Waived Zhou Qi I'm shorthanding here because I'm lazy, so these aren't in order and some details left out. I personally think: Capela deal was great CP3 deal is a little tbd and looked bad at first but we'll see in playoff time. Ultimately had to be done. Walking away from Mbah a Moute unfortunately was the right move resigning gerald green an okay move Melo, Ennis, and MCW all flamed out spectacularly, and our early season suffered as a result, but ultimately these weren't long term deals and Morey was able to move on with relatively little impact. Trading young prospect Melton hurt but he hasn't done anything yet to be super regretful Remains to be seen if Hartenstein or Clark can become contributors but right now not looking great. I was hard on team for letting Ariza go, if for no other reason they could have signed him for 1 year $15million and used his salary as an expiring to trade for salary purposes for no cost except luxury dollars. However, Rockets have remained under tax this season and they say this will allow them to go over to pay next season. If that is actually true (a big if) then this move makes more sense. Faried and Rivers pickups were great. House also a great find but he could turn into rental due to botching his contract and not locking him up. Shumpert so far has only shown flashes, I'm hopeful he'll be a contributor in the playoffs, because I don't see how he fits going forward.
Ariza for $15M? No... just, no... How did we botch House's contract? We offered a 3 year GUARANTEED contract to him. Any other undrafted, unproven player would have taken that deal in a heart beat. House chose to bet on himself, but if he ***** the bed in the playoffs he has basically shot himself in the foot. At the end of the day, we offered him the biggest deal we could without going over the LT.
I agree w/ most of what you wrote. I disagree w/ Gary Clark. Dude is trash, and I'd rather give more time to Hartenstein. And turning Ryno into an eventual Shump looked good at the time but isn't anymore... , and like you say, TBD on Shump for now, but Ryno's contract is a ding on Morey's track record, no matter how small the tree is in the forest.
When we see Wes Matthews, DeMarre Carroll, You could make the argument that this year he really wasn't all that lucky. He sold stock in Ennis, super small ball, Melo fitting in, and PJ to do just about everything imaginable on defense. And the result was to have one of the worst records in the league after 15 games. If Morey hadn't been so cocky and maybe put a bit more offseaon investment into the 3/4 position (didn't have to be Ariza or LRMM mind you) maybe.... just maybe we'd have 5 to 10 more wins this season, and have a shot at the 1 seed.
I guess let me ask this, who would you have gotten other than Ennis and Melo at the time, especially given our cap situation? Melo was a given considering him, CP3, and Harden have been trying to make it happen forever. Ennis was supposed to be our Luc, Melo our Ryno, and Tucker our Ariza. It seemed at least serviceable on paper to most at least.
I thought the fact that Jerebko sat in free agency long enough to even think about going to Golden State was crazy. Thought he'd be a good fit to earn minutes at the 4 where PJ could move to the 3, or play less minutes. Just one example of last offseaon, but really the risk is how they are now approaching next year, or the signs of how they are approaching it. I see their risking of losing House as an arrogance that another House will just appear out of thin air. They didn't even make an effort it seemed to get Markieff Morris also. They gave away a first rounder (that could have been a nice future role player) for essentially cost cutting, but then tried to oversell how incredible Shumpert was going to be.
Looks like this rando twitter account got these figures by just pulling in multiple, already-overlapping defensive statistics. So basically it's trash. Still, Ariza has been pretty bad this year. So I wouldn't rag on Morey/Tilman for that.
Thing is, the repeater's tax makes it so that all teams have to pick a time to cost cut which directly affected our ability to sign Morris and House (nothing to do with arrogance). That's not on Morey, that's on Tillman.
Exactly. CF was livid of losing Ariza and Moute because their replacements were bad. Had Morey been able to sign and/or trade some guys that could help as much as the one we lost, we would have forgotten about those two guys in no time. Most people agreed that 15M for Ariza would be too much. Few people blame Morey for not keeping him at that price. Moute was more of a split opinion mostly because of his health issue. He was a fan favorite before his injuries. Come to think of it. Was MCW really any better than the injured Moute?
Youre right, biggest contract without going over the LT...maybe "botch" is too strong of a word, but my reasoning for House and Ariza is essentially the same: This is an all-in year and Rockets should have been willing to go into luxury tax to put together best possible team. That means using part of MLE to sign House, and that means signing Ariza for one year $15 million, knowing he might not be worth that amount, but then at the trade deadline being able to offer his contract with a pick (as opposed to Knight's less desireable contract that does not expire) to upgrade the team. Main arguments countering my reasoning are 1) going into LT as I desire is an unreasonable ask, and 2) Rockets have said they wish to avoid repeater tax, so staying out of tax this year means greater flexibility in coming years to go into luxury tax. We can debate the merits of argument 1, but I think argument 2 is another tbd, and if that truly is the case and Rockets plan on spending more in future years I can stomach it.
It doesn't matter if you are all in or not, you should NEVER, EVER offer Ariza a $15M contract. Even $10M is too much. Now if we gave him $10M, I would be like "OK, I guess this is our all-in moment." but even then that would be a huge overpay. Your reasoning for House makes no sense at all. He was an unproven, undrafted player with a handful (around 20) good to decent games. Why the hell would we give him more than what we offered? Like I said, any other player in the same position normally would have accepted that contract. House chose to bet on himself, which is fine, but he did NOTHING to prove he was worth more than what we had offered.
CP3's defensive rating maybe low mainly because he's often switched off on bigs & scored on by bigs in the paint. He's really not a bad defender
