Totally agree. In the past years, all Houston's trades/draft have been focusing on bargins. T-Mac's trade was an exception, the trade was meant for a super star, but ended up a big bust. Other than that, all trades/drafts are focused on bargins. You have to have two/three solid all star level players to win a champaignship. The only exception in the past years were Pistons, but that was a team that was so deep and so disciplined.
What a horrible example. The Spurs also are stat geeks. Buford, Morey, and Pritchard are all stat guys. Also look at who the Spurs have built around, that 2nd round guy named Tim Duncan...oh wait... Hindsight is 20/20 everyone wants to say what he did then was bad when at the time you all were praising him. Morey has anything to do with Yao's health? Morey had anything to do with Tmac getting hurt and becoming a scrub? Morey got anything to do with Adelman playing Hayes over Hill although he's given RA other bigger guys to play? Everyone that wants to blame this all on one person is being very simplistic. I judge GMs at the time they made the move, not 1 2 years later. They can not look into the future. Everyone that wants Morey gone must not remember the days of Stromile Swift and other overpaid Rocket players. Morey just has not had a chance to land a superstar but when he does I'd rather have no other GM in the NBA. Once again...Superstars are not easy to acquire.
It seems recently in the last 15 years, we've traded possible hopeful draft picks for duds and people that often leave the Rockets to vanish or die; such as Steve Francis, Tracy McGrady, Eddie Griffin, etc, and all the players we traded for wound up being terrific starters, such as Richard Jefferson, Rudy Gay, and Joel Pryzbilla. Not to mention all those good ones Morey has passed up, too many to list.
I have always said he is overrated. Pretty good so far. Too much praise for an unfinished product. However once he does finalize this roster a little more with those moves he does at the trade deadline or before? Maybe during the draft? Then i can completely judge what Morey has done here. Right now he has an incomplete as his grade. Go get us a star Morey or consolidate the roster so you can stop confusing that senile old coach we have with this huge roster of role players you gave him. Its too much for that old brain to compute.
Agree, if the team wasn't struggling, everyone would be crowning him. I'm more than pleased with the moves Morey has made.
Morey needs to focus more on what a real championship team looks like and not just stats and high character guys. Looking at the stats you'd think Martin is as good as scorer as kobe, but it's really fools gold becasue he's missing the most important ingredient the mid-range game, the ability to create space off the dribble for the pull-up jumper... all the top scorers have that except Martin which is why he will never be a true go-to player and he wasn't what we need to become contenders. And all the high character guys in my opinion = soft, sometimes you need those knuckle head players on your side to bring that defensive intensity, energy and passion and get under players skin... just ask kobe, first Artest and now he's even coveted Barnes to joining him he knows the celtics are full of players like that guys that play defense with intensity and takes it personal when someone scores on them unlike a guy like battier whose just a constant professional. Rockets were on the right path in the van gundy era, top defensive team, and 2 star players all we were missing was that 3rd scorer (but they traded it for battier) and just stay healthy long enough.. but now the direction Adelman has this team going is mediocrity his philosophy on uptempo run and gun princeton offense doesn't win championships it been shown time and time with phoenix but morey continues to bring in guys like brad miller
Well of course. Its about time Morey gets judged on SUCCESSES or FAILURES of ALL his moves. And not just on how is move are bargains relative to the cap. Especially when he doesnt have any "albatross" contracts holding him back. Though lets not act like coaches don't have a say in matters. And I didnt say blame Adelman and NOT Morey. Just in Morey's case there's the quant-based acquisitions that are considered a bit "different" from regular acquisitions.
To the extent someone calls him a good GM, I think that's not overrrating him. But there's so many here who go so much farther than that. That "in Morey we trust" has become a meme tells you all you need to know. It's almost creepy, frankly. Way too much praise for avoiding bad contracts. Avoiding bad contracts is great...but that alone isn't going to have you contending.
Tell you what, you be the guy to tell your boss that the asset he has that makes him roughly $25 million a year in non-basketball related business income needs to be removed from the company.
Ok, I agree in spades with this. Praising Martin for scoring efficiency is great. He's a formulaic dream. But on a team that already has a PG that doesn't play defense, that's not a great move. It SEEMS to me that Morey is always thinking about the next move..."can I flip this guy if it doesn't work out?" Which is smart. You should consider that. But of higher value is, "Where does this guy fit on MY team? Do his weaknesses exacerbate our weaknesses? Who will he be playing alongside? What will that look like?" I can't imagine doing that sort of analysis and still making that trade.
The Landry trade WAS GREAT. GREAT INDEED. The Ariza signing WAS GREAT, REALLY GREAT. SUPER AWESOME. The Ariza trade was HORRIBLE, BEYOND HORRIBLE. EXTREMLY HORRIBLE. The Battier trade was HORRENDOUS, ENORMOUSLY HORRENDOUS. Picking Steven Freckin Novak over Paul Millsap was r****ded. Joey Dorsey, David Andersen, Brent Barry, ...WHO CARES?
The Rafer-Lowry trade was SUPER NICE, VERY NICE , VERY NICE. The Brad Miller signing was questionable, given our owner's reluctance for salary. It wasn't a bad move, but it lead to Ariza being dumped. So its a signing that ran the franchise into the ground. DRAFT PICKS, MOREY IS A LEGEND. To be honest, Courtney Lees are everywhere in this league. You could grab one anytime you wanted, either at the bottom of the first round, i.e. James Anderson, or just sign one for cheap, Matt Barnes. That Landry - Martin - Hill trade was LEGENDARY, though.
How exciting. Let's put that on a bumper sticker. GO NON-BASKETBALL RELATED BUSINESS INCOME!!!! I understand this...I've been talking about it with respect to Yao here for quite a while. But if that's what they're selling, I'm not buying. And I don't wanna hear anyone rag on Houston for not supporting it.
That's great. Empty seats in the building will be fun. For all the b****ing about Drayton McLane or Bob McNair being all about the money, Les gets a pass on this??? Seriously? We commit to Tenderfoot again because he makes Les money OFF THE COURT....and we're all just fine with that? I find zero zilch nada compelling about that at all.
Les Alexander doesn't mind. Instead of those 20,000 or so in the Toyota Center, hes got 1.3 billion in China.
So whom would you have gotten for McGrady instead? You keep bashing Morey and the Martin trade (I knew you would be all over this thread) - do you have an idea if anything better than what we got was available? How do you know that Morey would not have preferred a better defender who fits the team better, but none was available?
