[Haberstroh Podcast] Morey: "Slam me. I deserve to be slammed."

WHY NOT FIRE ME, I DESERVE TO BE FIRED?

 

You would make a terrible lawyer.

Every statement you make here is conjecture off hypotheticals that would never come to be. Nobody knows what Doc Rivers prefers other than the fact that he’s gonna coach his tail off for the roster that he has. And that roster is quite simply outperforming the Rockets right now in Win Losses, Efficiency, Defense. Etc.

You must be drinking the same Kool-Aid as CP3 and a Morey pre-season is you believe we remain this big time threat and contender against the Warriors.

At nearly a third of the season in, we are merely battling for one of eight spots. All this talk about returning to the WCF is so premature.

 

Unlike D'Antoni

 

You would be a terrible lawyer actually. This is not a court room and those are not factual statements, we are literally passing around hypotheticals and conjecture here. Whether they would come to be is a matter of opinions. The strongest piece of evidence there is, if any, is that vegas still has us as the better bet. Btw, I never said we're returning to the WCF, I am saying any team right now if they could choose their playoff opponent in the future without knowing what happens between now and then, would choose to play the Clippers.

Also, when healthy we have almost the same winning % as them. We are not more likely to have injuries. Have a look at Tobias Harris, Patrick Beverley, Danilo Gallinari, Avery Bradley, Milos Teodosic and LMM's injury history and you'll quickly understand why.

Even if we were to finish a few games behind them, teams would rather avoid us and play them. We have the MVP. We are filled with vets. This team + Ariza made the WCF and brought the Warriors to their knees. Do you think anyone wants to take a chance this injury and chemistry catastrophe doesn't partially correct itself when the stakes are higher? Come on.

Edit: Btw even that ESPN panel you posted says they wouldn't pick anyone in the West over the Rockets in a playoff series except the Warriors, and the two guys mention the Lakers as a possibility.

 

It's crazy how the West is shaping up. Only one team (Phoenix) is bad. Think about it: one team. All fourteen teams are fighting for the playoffs. The usual suspects of weak teams in recent years, Kings, Mavs, Griz, Clippers, Lakers are all doing much better than last season.

 

For us? Yea it is the standard we are playing for a championship(I realize im saying this despite how bad we are). We will see what their and our records are come march, but if we meet in the playoffs, you can bet we will beat them. They may have a better chance going forward but we made this trade for Chris Paul so we maximize Harden's prime and beat the Warriors now. Clippers are just happy to be here. You make the Chris Paul trade every time.

 

No one would agree with me.

Coach is underachieved too. How can this team sit at 11th to 14th seed most of the time?

First Seed Nuggets: 3rd best player Will Barton missed 21 games

Third Seed Thunder: 4th best player Andre Robertson missed 22 games

 

Third and fourth best players are not the same as 2nd best player or 1st best player. Each "level" of player is an order of magnitude more important.

Also, fans aren't the best at judging who the most critical players are.

Finally, Roberson and Barton are more wings than point guards - losing a point guard is like losing a quarterback in football or a starting pitcher in baseball. They dictate the spacing and flow of a game.

Another way to look at it is that Barton is 10% of Denver's "Active Roster Cap" of $116M. Roberson is 6.9% of the Thunder's. Paul is 26.5% of the Rockets. (https://www.spotrac.com/nba/houston-rockets/cap/)

When you lose a guy who is 26.5% of the money on your roster, you don't have a lot to fill that hole. This is also a case for why his contract is too large. But that's a different conversation.

 

Many examples, one of them

Led by 19 points, then lost by 12.

Something has to be wrong with coaching.

 

WRONG. Not “they’” but ONE guy. Go back and watch the vid. The only guy who favors the Rox is ONE loud guy. You make sound like it was consensus when it was nothing close to the whole panel. In fact Paul Pierce goes on to say the Rox’ championship window is closed.

If this were last year, I’d agree with you wholeheartedly that the Rockets were the team that other teams dreaded to play.

But this year? I’m sorry. But this is NOT the same team. Even with CP3 healthy on the floor it’s not the same team that once had swag.

Plus - inconsistency is not something that is magically cured in the off season. Especially on the defensive end.

If you want a meanngful hypothetical, do you really think we can even grab a playoff seed if either CP3, Harden, or capella were to suffer a multi-week injury?

(My take? Last year - there was no doubt as to the depth and resilience and professionalism of that squad. This year? There is more reason for doubt than optimism.)

 

Who cares what Paul Pierce thinks honestly? And you forget, the roster right now is not the final version, lets see what happens after we make a trade.

 

Not just responding to you.

All these "let's wait till playoffs" "they don't want to face us" "Morey will fix the roster" talks sound eerily similar to the 15-16 season.

 

Wrong. They both nod, but bring up the Lakers as a question, and they side with the idea that the Lakers would be a team in addition to the Warriors to beat the Rockets. This is true AND Pierce says the championship window is closed. They're not mutually exclusive. They are saying we can't beat the Warriors and the Lakers.

I really just don't understand whether we're having a conversation or you're just making new points you want to make. This is not the same team. We are currently nowhere near as good as we were last season. If a meteor destroyed earth or if we lost Paul/Harden/Capela or if the Clippers lost any of their top 3 players, the playoffs would not be likely. Consistency doesn't magically appear and it doesn't magically disappear either.

Now back to the only point I was making: right now, you, me, vegas and most people would pick the Rockets as the better team in the playoffs if we didn't know what was going to happen health or trade wise between now and the playoffs.

If you want to place a tipjar bet as to whether the Rockets or Clippers finish further in the playoffs, let's do it. Remember that I'm offering this while the Clippers are #2 and the Rockets #14, Chris Paul just had his worst game of the season (and maybe his career) during his worst ever season, we are short on depth, Melo flopped, Clark has fallen out of the rotation, Gordon is having his worst ever season and we collapsed against the Wolves. Rockets finish further, you put $100 in the tipjar. Clippers finish further, I put $100 in the tip jar. Deal?

 

Lack of Talent does not get you up by 19

Rocket River

 

Down years happen, team building ain't linear.

 

This is a really bad message to be sending to all the new players on the roster.

Morey has just gone out and told the world that he doesn't think any of them are any good, and he's trying to get rid of them all.

That's going to be a real good influence on team chemistry. Good job Morey, blab to the media again and cause more division in a team that clearly isn't playing for one another. Real good job.

 

AWESOME

 

The talks aren't about long term team building. They are talking about how this season is still fine comes playoffs time.

 

We are a quarter way through and 5 games behind first place and 2 games out of the playoffs if you want to talk about this season alone. Not a bad place to be when you start off almost as poorly as you could have.

I understand the negativity, but Morey is always looking to finding and keeping good players for more than one year and the cap situation involves looking past one season.