If we're getting the benefit of hindsight, his biggest mistake was not trading away Yao and McGrady when he was hired. It was a good gamble to try to contend with those two, but it obviously didn't work. If he could have traded them when they still had value, he'd have hauled in a treasure trove and avoided a few promising seasons shipwrecked on the shoals of the playoffs. Even though it was a good bet, I'd put that on top because of the gravity of losing the bet. You could say Royce White and T-Will were worse failures because they were not even good bets. But, really what did we lose? A mid-first rounder on each one? That's not too bad. Trading Battier (and a playoff berth, imo) for a bag of beans was worse than that even with him leaving anyway after the season.
If you take a glance at Royce White's Twitter account, you'll soon realize that he will go down as the greatest mistake by Morey and arguably the greatest mistake ever in NBA history. He really is an A-Grade moron right now, not too dissimilar to when Ace Ventura visits the nut house. Lets see that, in a slow motion replay! 2-42, 2-42 hut. He is such an embarrassment he'll wake up in five years and look back and wonder who was that idiot he used to call himself. When he's healthy that is.
No, the reason behind it wasn't about Lin or Dragic...it was about our ability to acquire a star. At that time the Rockets had no stars and their primary goal was to acquire a star. All other things were secondary and they weren't going to lose their ability to acquire a star for a non-star. They created some cap space, had accumulated draft picks and had young players that were attractive to other teams. That was a huge advantage in trading for a star but it certainly didn't guarantee them that they would be successful. The fallback plan was to take a step back (i.e. get worse) and set themselves up to have massive cap space in 2015. That meant that they wanted all of their player contracts to expire after the 2015 season. The Rockets offered Dragic more money that Phoenix but it was a straight 3 year deal that would have expired after the 2015 season. Dragic wanted the option for the 4th year and that would have potentially reduced the 2015 cap space they were building by $9M. If it had been a team option then it wouldn't have been an issue but a player option could have prevented us from signing the star that we'd been seeking. The Lin and Asik contracts both fell in line with this plan and expired after the 2015 season and allowed them to maximize their cap space to pursue a star. Of course, once we'd signed Lin and Asik we were able to pull off the Harden trade and the whole team direction changed. It was then about getting the 2nd star which turned out to be Dwight. Other than Harden and Howard, Lin and Asik are the only sizeable contracts that we have to use to acquire a player with a good size salary. Because of that you likely won't see Lin and Asik traded unless the deal makes us a contender, we can acquire even better trade assets (think draft picks) or we get players who'd contracts expire in 2015. I guess if Asik and Lin were both moved then all players we receive could expire in 2014 and move our use of that cap space up a year.
Exactly because he did. He wanted a coach who would try out his analytic experiments. And McHale is the only HOFer who agreed to do that. I still think it's too early to say the McHale hiring is a good move. I have been critical of McHale's performance. But I'd give him and Morey some time. McHale is pretty much still a "rookie" as far as a coaching resume is concerned.
I agree that trading Battier when we were fighting for a playoffs berth was a bad move. Not sure if it was as bad as the White and Williams moves, but it's up there. I thought that was one of those moments when Morey overdid his assets management.
I've got to disagree with this one. We weren't going to do anything in the playoffs and Battier was gone at the end of the season. Acquiring a first round pick for him was the correct move and that pick helped us acquire Harden
Trade Yao and Tmac for who? As I recall, the best player we can get at that time was Ray Allen, do not know if it was a big deal for the rockets. To me, the biggest mistake should be the Pau Gasol trade, but David Stern helped us to avoid the mistake.
yea, always confuses me when people mention we could of gotten a boat load for Yao and Tmac but fail to mention who we would of gotten, and with complete certainty
Biggest mistake in recent years 1) let Dragic go 2) Gasol Trade 3) Morris over Leonard 4) Royce White 5) Terrence Great moves 1) Harden Trade 2) make a lot of good moves to bring Dwight Howard to Houston 3) draft Parson with a second 4) draft Terrence Jones 5) Be a good playoff team without tank, without a top 10 pick in the draft, without cheating
Yeah, let's disregard the fact that pretty much everyone in the NBA and their mother recognizes it as the most lopsided (in our favor) trade in recent memory. You are insane.
three team trade between rockets lakers and new orleans. we would have got Pau Gasol and most likely have signed Nene lakers get chris paul i dont remember what all new orleans got but it was something like Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, I think Luis Scola as well
Royce White was pushed hard by Kevin Mchale ifso facto morey's worse mistake was listening to Kevin Mchale
Then Rockets will have a line up: Chris Paul Lin Parsons Pau Gasol Asik yeah, Morey will rob Chris Paul from the Lakers.
It's too speculative to say we could have gotten this and that for those 2 guys. That's not really the point. The point is we gambled many seasons on McGrady's and Yao's health and lost. We had some fun seasons and all, but got zero championships. If we got pennies on the dollar for those guys, or dumped them from cap space, we'd be able to roll the dice again on a different gambit. Maybe better gambits or worse ones, but different. I mention all that, because all these 'mistakes' are not mistakes so much as gambles that lost. White was a bad investment, but we paid modestly and there was room for a big win there. Hindsight says both the White draft and staking your future on Yao/McGrady were mistakes. But, that's probably not the way to gauge things.
New Orleans would have got Dragic and a first from houston as well... it was bs that was all LA had to give up
That's an excuse every GM in sports would love to make after every bad trade or free agent aquisition. Morey's made plenty of mistakes, alot go unnoticed because we were mediocore prior to James Harden. Running Adelman off is his biggest. The JVG firing was pretty ugly. I don't really blame him for the Yao/Tmac era, but he definitely held on to Yao way too long. Right now, he's in reality an above average GM with potential to be either great or the most overrated GM in basketball. The next 2 or 3 years will define his legacy
