Agreed. But @Nook told us that Les forced Morey's hand. He had to spend the money. The only shame is that Morey couldn't get a Team Option on the last year of Anderson's deal.
Based on what we know now, absolutely. The context surrounding 2016 was different where we had just moved on from Dwight. I would have said in the summer 2016, that if Anderson was missing time it would be because he had an injury, not because he lost confidence.
Disagree. There were zero people that considered Ryan Anderson to be even an above average player, much less somebody you give $20M a year to. Context doesn't really matter there.
I am sure Les was like go give Ryan Anderson 80 mil, Anderson will fill up the stadium. Maybe Les's goal was to make TC less urban. Morey is Teflon Don. If its a good move morey is a genius. If its a bad move it must have been les or someone else.
Morey was told to spend Alexander's money or someone else would be brought in to spend the money. The Rockets targeted the best two players that they could realistically sign. Anderson and Gordon were not the Rocket's first or second choices. As for Anderson, the Rockets had competition to sign him and gave him what they had to. Les Alexander was extremely unhappy with the entire organization at that time.
At this point Morey was really still reeling from the Ty Lawson disaster and the ripple effects. Looking back, tbh it is amazing how much (and how quickly) the culture changed after Lawson/McHale/Bickerstaff/Howard got out of the picture.
You are basing your information off of hindsight, be careful with that. Context always matter. Les believed that Gordon and Anderson were worthwhile additions in the summer of 2016. This is an owner that wanted a “competitive rebuild” after TMac and Yao. We did what the owner wanted. Saying there were “zero” people that considered this and that just comes off as a very bias outlook and not even steeped in reality.
I’m sorry if it’s factually true that Morey doesn’t have the final say. Owners and GMs are in positions of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Thanks for the context. We forget the place we were in during the summer of 2016 with both Dwight and Lawson flaming out specularly after getting whooped by the GSW in the first round. Real NBA teams aren’t run like 2K where you don’t have to get approval to make moves.
Morey has said repeatedly that he provides the owner with the information needed to make a decision. If Nook is correct, it seems Les was very unhappy. We have no idea if Morey was banging the desk that Anderson at $80 million was something we needed to do or merely presenting Les with a series of options.
All this crying about Ryno’s contract is funny and super unhealthy considering it might not go away for another year (possibly year and a half; hell maybe even the whole remaining 2!). We’ve got the same team as last year minus Ariza and regular season Luc, but PLUS Carmelo and James Ennis and more familiarity with Tucker and Paul and GG. Let’s hope for a long healthy season. WE GON BE AIGHT!
Morey's bigget blunder, but the good news is it brought us EG, so you combine the two contracts and divide by 2, doesn't seem so bad. DD
