I'm generally talking about the modern era, or since the 90's. Even then, Isiah was hardly a high-usage PG in comparison to many of the top guys today. He was relative to his time, but the efficient Dumars (both as a scorer/passer) allowed him to shoot more than he probably should've.
How are people agreeing with the idea that Morey has an eye for PFs? Dude drafted gazillion of them and really only hit on Jones. PG is the only position where he seems to have the Midas touch. You can say Jeremy Lin is actually the worst deal among all his PG acquisitions, which isn't even an indictment of Lin. Just how great his other deals are. And people who thinks that Lin is better than Houston or Toronto Lowry should not be commenting on players they never seen play before. The only times I would take Lin(any Lin, including Linsanity Lin) over Lowry is when Lowry was having his fits over backing up Dragic/Calderon.
yah landry, scola SUCKED (being sarcastic here), ppat has also been a collosal failure.. and btw all of his picks have been mid first round and lower so you are not gonna hit on a high number of them in terms of getting superstars
Morey has been the Rockets GM for about 7 off seasons, inheriting a veteran teams with injury prone superstars that took up cap space and without ever having a high draft pick in those offseasons. Here's the players he added in those 7 seasons. ---------------------------------------------- From Draft picks: Carl Landry Chandler Parson Terrance Jones Aaron Brooks Chase Budinger Pattrick Patterson Avg slightly under 1 Solid rotational player per season that contributes without ever having a high pick ------------------------------------------------------------- good trades: Lowry (Alston) Kmart (Landry) J Hill (who became a 1st round draft pick) and draft pick for a broken down McGrady Harden (no need to rehash here) Dragic + 1st round (for AB) Courtney Lee (Trevor Ariza) Thabeet + 1st (for Battier who was leaving at season's end) 2nd Round Pick (for S-n-T Courtney Lee) Luis Scola And good Signings Chuck Hayes Dwight Howard Omer Asik Patrick Beverly Jeremy Lin (yes still a good signing) Mutambo Morey averages 2 good trades or free agent signings per season ------------------------------------------------------------- Debatable moves: Batum for One Year Rental of Artest (Batumn didn't blossom until his third year, we would not have had a 2nd round run to send off Yao without Artest. That was almost a Championship team that season save for health). I could be biased but that was the biggest regret of all Morey's move for me. Battier for Rudy Gay: Same as Artest's trade, except so many people still harp on it. But think about this, if we drafted Gay, we would've had to sign him to a max deal just like Memphis, do you want Gay at max? Would you take 3 years of Tayshaun Prince to get rid of Gay at max? Those two we mortgaged the future for a Championship run, didn't work out, but I can't really fault them. -------------------------------------------------------------- Just Solid: Trevor Signing: turned it to Courtney lee pretty quick Jeremy Lamb: Good player, helped get us Harden, but average pick ---------------------------------------------------------------- Bad moves: Terrance Williams (horrible, cost us a pick to get rid of) Royce White (cost money to get rid of) ---------------------------------------------------------- Last thing, you listed Dragic as average and Thabeet as bad, but those two players both came with 1st round picks which we store up and got to use at a later date (see Harden trade). Just like snt of Lee who we weren't resigning, it's the small incremental moves that Morey makes, squeezing every last possible ounce of juice from an asset that really sets him apart. TLDR Conclusion: Morey makes on average THREE (one from drafting and two from trading and Free Agency) beneficial transactions every year. He improves the team in three ways every year for seven years. Some are bigger improvement than others but he's almost always improving the team, which allows you to slowly build up and get some one like Harden in a trade. He rarely makes mistakes, and neither of them were that costly.
I think we should all be thankful we have DM as our GM as opposed to the GM of say Bobcats, Bucks, Knicks, ect. I for one am very grateful for what DM has done for our Rockets.
TBH, I wouldn't even call those debatable moves. If you have THE two main pieces to a championship contender, you HAVE to move young, developing players for bonafied veterans. We weren't gonig to be able to develop 25-shot-a-game Gay, and Batum has turned out to be a versatile player, but we were in no shape to throw him into the fire of a championship-contending team.
Morey got Scola because of a failed trade one day earlier, leaving the Spurs with like a one day window to trade Scola. It had less to do with talent evaluation and more to do with preparation. Landry, yes. But overall, Morey's investment into the PF position relative to other positions is clear. Name another position the Rockets invested 14th pick, 14th pick, 16th pick(which needed another 2nd rounder and cash to get rid of), 18th pick, 21st pick, 31st pick, MLE(Brad Miller) and in the end the best players are Scola, Landry and Jones. I already covered PGs. As for wing positions, ignoring Harden for a bit, which means ignoring Lamb here, we got Artest for 2 1st round picks, KMart(at expense of Landry), Budinger (2nd), Parsons (2nd), Delfino($3mil), and wasted a 31st on Taylor, wasted MLE on Ariza, but turned him into Lee on rookie contract. Morey's centers were Camby(2nd rounder), Dalembert($6mil), Hayes, Dorsey(31st pick bust), and Asik($8mil). Minimal investment, and Asik probably better than any PF Morey's drafted. So yeah, if I were to rank the Rockets player acquisition rankings in terms of returns on investment, I would rank them 1. PG 2. Wings 3. Center 4. PF
Lowry and Dragic are massively overrated by you guys. Yes, they're putting up nice numbers on teams with no hope of much playoff success, just like they both did in Houston. But guess what, Lin's done that before, too. Don't get me wrong, right now I'd definitely rate Lin 3rd after them in terms of pure skill, but he's younger than both of them and he isn't that far behind them. Of course I also think we're better off with Beverley starting and Lin off the bench, so obviously I'm just a misfit who doesn't belong on this forum.
From what I understand Morey's reasoning at the time was "I'll get the guy with star potential no matter what" so it wasn't a case of getting the better player, it was the case of getting the guy with higher potential. From what I understand, this is also the reason why Morey did "stupid" trades like trading for T-will when a pick would have been much better. At the time when DM was drafting the team needed star power, so from what I understand even if the player was good if he didn't have star power he wasn't valued highly, and even if the bust rate on the player was high it didn't matter as much if the guy had the star potential. In Morris' case I didn't really mind because Morris turned out to be a decent player (would've been perfect as our stretch PF if he wasn't traded), and we drafted Parsons as the "solid workhouse" guy who actually turned out the best of the 3.
PFs are the guys who aren't big enough to play center (plenty of those - asik will get us something). and PGs are a dime a dozen. morey got two power positions filled (SG/C) and can now plug-n-play all the parts around them til it works.
Put more concretely, would you prefer Harden/Bev over Westbrook/Sefolosha? The issues you bring up with PGs have indeed been the recurring criticism of Westbrook. When he looks for his own offense too much, he has a tendency to overlook his teammates. On the other hand, Tony Parker has worked out really well for the Spurs, and then some teams have had a lot of success without even having a true PG, like most of the Jordan Bulls teams, which used high IQ SGs at the PG position. IMO, it's not the position specifically, but whether the player can balance his duties with his actual play. This seems to be a very difficult balance for a lot of the scoring PGs.
Patterson, Landry, Morris and Parsons all were drafted by Morey and all have had time at the 4 spot with success. Morey has not had many high draft picks, but overall he has done well drafting PF's. Actually he has done well drafting at virtually every position other than center.
bottom line he got scola for nothing, does not matter how he got him, every other team in the nba had a chance to get him and he got him. spending 14th as the highest pick and as low as 21 and 31 picks are not really "wasted picks"
Lowry actually is averaging 16.1 PPG playing 36.2 MPG with 42.9 FG% this season. With so much time on the floor and shooting at such a low FG% (only higher than Beverley and DiMo on the ROX team, all other players are higher than 44.5%), he is going to take away Harden and Howard's shots, or simply not able to maintain that 16.1PPG. He would most likely demand to start too. Nothing against Lowry, just pointing out the numbers and his history.
It really is crazy if you think about all the starting point guards we've had over the past couple of years, from Brooks, Lowry, Dragic, Lin, Beverly, I think Ish Smith even started a few games lol. I still got hope that Canaan can be a solid rotation player as well.
