Morey's Moves Since Harden; Or How we got here and what's next.

At the end of the day he is an above average GM in the 7-10 range. Maybe at the higher end of the range now but with room to go lower if he continues to have turrible off seasons

Off late, Terrible contracts handed out to Ryan Anderson and CP3. Off season pick of free agent signings like Melo, ENnis, MCW, etc

Before that, terrible coaching hires like McHale and then JB.

Instituting and forcing an ISO and 3 ball only type of offense which has almost always been found out in the playoffs

Morey has also said crap like Self proclaimed favorites to land Jimmy Butler and self proclaimed western conference champions

 

you see all those trade could have help you did we gain anything

 

I have to move him down a couple spots because of his arrogance and cockiness.

He cannot back it up most of the time.

 

Absolutely fantastic post.

 

I agree to an extent. They seem slower at development at least compared to the Warriors and Spurs. They're contenders that give the younger guys run throughout the season, creating depth and rest for the vets.

Brooks (Before Ginobili took him out), Lowry (The battle for the starting position between him and Aaron were fun times), Parsons, DMo, Capela, Clark. The last 4 being late 1sts and 2nd rounders actually speaks a lot to their development abilities. We just tend to get coaches that have shorter leashes which affects the biggest part of development, playing time.

With that said, I'm not sure Kawhi would be what he is today if he came here—especially with the coaching staff we had at the time. Some here are hoping to get Marcus Morris back and he could barely sniff time with McHale when he was here.

 

I'd also say if Morey was on a big market team, some people here would hate him a hell of a lot more. He'd be able to back up his talk probably 80–90% of the time. lol

Morey with the Lakers: "Yeah I think we'll be in the market for a big FA and we'll probably get one through trade."

Reporter: "How?"

Morey: "Eh, you know we'll sign one cause we're LA and one will probably force their way here someway and I'll likely fleece the other team by not even giving up that many assets"

Reporter: "Can you say that???"

Morey: "Sure, we're the Lakers"

All while maintaining financial flexibility. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

morey has come a lot closer than beane. Also Beane did not have to deal with a dynasty (perhaps the best dynasty ever) always in his teams way

 

he has always put the rockets in position to grab a big name. Its not his fault they choose to go somewhere else. If he was Lakers GM, they would be a dynasty

 

This is why I am not in the HE F*CKED UP BY NOT DRAFTING KAWHI camp.
I don't know that Kawhi becomes KAWHI here. . . . .I am just not sold on that

Rocket River

 

This is why when there was a rumor Les was selling the team and one of the proposed buyers was a group that INCLUDED Morey, I was super excited. My thinking was that if he was a part owner and given more control it'd be best for the franchise.

tbh Tillman was my last choice, ugh.

 

Houston is a big market. But not a big media market. Tilman needs to invest in the Houston media and make it bigger

 

Maybe he felt compelled to resign CP3, and that’s fine, but his mistake was giving him a long term max contract to a guy on the downside of his career. Even when Paul was at the top of his game he was never a guy that could carry a team. That was clear when he played with an all-star player in Blake Griffin and DJ as a center. A two year deal, maybe a 3-year and it doesn’t look as bad but a 4-year max? That was just stupid! Also, if Morey was afraid he’d walk then he could’ve traded him to get good player in return. Now we’re stuck with him, and we won’t have any salary to bring in another good player barring a trade of EG or Capela.

 

The Rockets have had very few draft picks that have been high enough to judge his ability to draft.

The highest the Rockets have ever drafted (for themselves) under Daryl Morey is #14 twice.

The Rockets took Patrick Patterson and Marcus Morris with those picks. Both are still in the league nearly a decade later.

The Patterson draft was a bad draft with the only star players were Wall, George and Cousins and all were taken long before the Rockets pick. The only players they passed on that were better than Patterson was Bledsoe and Avery and they went #18-19 in the draft.

In the Marcus Morris draft, Morey famously passed on Leonard. At the time Morey said Leonard had a really high ceiling but the Rockets wanted a player to contribute right away. He deserves some criticism for passing on Leonard but 13 other teams passed on him as well. Marcus Morris has turned into a pretty productive player. Players that he passed on that are likely better than Morris are Tobias Harris (19th) and Jimmy Butler (30th). That was also the draft where he took Chandler Parsons in the second round. Isiah Thomas was the last pick in that draft as well.

He took Clint Capela at #25 that was an exceptional pick. He took DeAnthony Melton, Isiah Hartenstein, Dillon Brooks, Chianu Onuaku, Zu Qi, Montrezl Harrell, Chandler Parsons, Isiaah Caanan, Nick Johnson in the second round over the last 8-9 years and his success there has overall been very good.

There were some "meh" picks as well. He took White and Jones at #16 and 18. White did nothing and Jones teased for awhile but ultimately didn't do much. The players taken after White and Jones were not much better in round 1. In round 2 Draymond Green and Jae Crowder were drafted.

So I cannot really say how good a drafter Daryl Morey is.

As far as player development goes. I don't think the Rockets are the Spurs (by far the best) bur the Rockets have developed a very raw Clint Capela. Montrezl Harrell and Chandler Parsons both improved and developed with the Rockets and Isiah Hartenstein has been showing growth. It is hard to develop players when the players you are developing are late first round picks or second rounders.

 

Very nice post, but dem Morey Haters arent even going to bother to read it sadly. Haters just like to note the bad stuff and ignore anything that counters their viewpoint.

 

Excellent post. It really does paint the picture of moving all these chess pieces around for big moves.

One thing I wish I could see, though, is the circuitous pathways and missed opportunities necessary to correct certain big mistakes along the way. This ties into @Nook 's excellent post about how Morey has been hamstrung in certain ways by the owners. I mean, the very first thing even before we got Harden was Les forcing Morey to go grab Linsanity and pay him that exorbitant contract. I've always felt that must've been a ball-and-chain to Morey trying to make better moves early in the Harden era. The Anderson contract seems like an even bigger ball-and-chain, though that seems to be Morey's own doing. I don't know enough details about everything to figure this all out, but knowing how bad decisions early on in anything can snowball, I wonder if the team isn't still hurting in various ways from that Lin contract.

I think there's a lot of figuring out how to unload guys hiding in the background in addition to setting up for big acquisitions with all those trades.

 

Chris Paul was a top 5-8 player in the NBA for most of his career.

The Rockets were coming off a season where they were an injury to Paul away from winning their first title in almost 20 years. There were teams willing to give Paul a max deal. There was not really any reasonable option. The Rockets had Paul opt in with the understanding they would resign him for a set amount and number of years. The Rockets and Paul agreed to have one less season on the deal. The Rockets wouldn't win anything without Paul. The whole point was to ADD to Paul and Harden.

Also Chris Paul is by far the Rockets second best player. The narrative that he is garbage isn't true. There are genuine concerns about how much more he will slow down. However he is still a very good defender, an exceptional passer and solid three point shooter. He doesn't go around players like he used to but he does a number of positive things.

The Rockets need to do a better job of limiting his minutes. He should be playing 25-28 minutes a night, not the 32 minutes he played last year.

He has three years on his deal. His contract is worth it for this season at least and likely next year so the Rockets are likely looking at one and possibly two years of negative value. They can likely deal him if they really need to for cap space after this season and certainly next.

To me the bigger issue is they never were able to spin Ryan Anderson and his contract into a third star.

 

The marching orders from Les were to spend the cap space or someone else would be brought in to spend it. Les was not happy with the performance of the team and flexibility did not mean much to him if we were not playing up to his standards. The plan was for the Rockets to perform well and target Durant. The Rockets did not perform well. Durant didn't give us a meeting and signed with the Warriors.

With Durant not granting us a meeting, we made an offer to Dirk Nowitzki which he rejected. We made an offer to Al Horford who came very close to signing with the Rockets. Supposedly he choose the Celtics because his wife had family in the area.

At that point we moved on to Kent Bazemore. We offered him the most money, but he choose to stay in Atlanta calling it home.

At that point there really were not many really good free agents left. We had no interest in players like Evan Turner or Luol Deng.

We then moved to Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon.

At the time the criticism was more based on the Gordon signing as he was viewed as damaged goods.

The Rockets signed Ryan Anderson to a 4 year deal for 80 million. The Rockets had to sign him for that amount because he has at least one offer that was higher than the Rockets offer.

Around that same time the Rockets also lost Chandler Parsons to the Mavericks and the Rockets signed James Harden to an extension.

Would Daryl Morey have ever signed Anderson if he didn't have a lot of pressure from ownership? I really don't think so but it is debatable.

Do I blame Les? Yes and no.......... the Rockets lost Howard that off season, the Rockets were not playing well and there were serious chemistry issues. Alexander wanted to avoid losing so he told Daryl to spend the damn money as that is what happened. Had the Rockets ended up with Al Horford instead of Anderson, there wouldn't be any debate.

 

With hindsight, Eric Gordon ended up being a steal, and Ryan Anderson not so much, but it worked out for one season at least. There is a narrative that signing Ryan Anderson was necessary to convince Eric Gordon, do you think that is true? Could Morey have gotten Gordon without Ryno? I guess it's tough to say, perhaps if Rockets didn't sign Ryno maybe Gordon says no to that contract, but yes to a more lucrative contract that still would have been better for rockets than signing both....

 

Sometimes I wonder what makes a fan happy. If you just compare the Rockets past 5 years or so how many other teams results would you have taken instead? Warriors, Cavs, Raptors, Spurs, anyone else? And the only difference between the Raptors and the Rockets essentially has been that the Raptors faced the weaker Warriors team compared to the Rockets.

Are fans actually are happier rooting for losing teams cause then you can just dream on Zion Williamson or DeAndre Ayton taking you to a championship in 5 years instead of an actual team that competes. Because the latter offers the possibility of failure while the former doesn't.