Those of you wanting to get rid of Daryl Morey are DEAD WRONG!

I agree with this. Stability in your regular season records is not a good measure for success. It doesn't show you anything, and it certainly didn't result in championships. There are certainly lotto benefits from losing; there are also some benefits in credibility to free agents by being mediocre to decent. And maybe there's some benefit to consumers who want a team to be at least respectable. But it really doesn't say very much of anything about your chances to be a champion. No fan should be quoting it. It's PR puffery. It's something you say as a moral victory when you have no banners to point at.

All those non-losing seasons were failures. We might have been able to point to them as stepping stones that got us Harden and Dwight Howard, and a deep cast of supporting players to compete in the future. But, Howard is about to leave again, and people think the supporting players are all trash. So all those non-losing seasons got us what, exactly? All that was built -- aside from nabbing James Harden -- is about to get plowed under again for cap space. Which we could have also gotten by doing nothing. We're at the end of another era and Harden is the only thing we have to show for it.

Yao & McGrady era: In 5 seasons (3 with Morey), 1 second round appearance after the wheels came off.
Martin & Scola while we wait to plug in a franchise player era: 3 non-losing seasons before we gave up and liquidated.
Harden & Howard era: One third round appearance in 3 tries, our greatest success in a long time.
And now Harden & ???: Should be good for a few more non-losing seasons at least.

I'm not even advocating for getting rid of Morey. But, please don't tell me he's been so successful in the last decade. He tried to contend about half the time, and was only a genuine contender for 1 season. His big collection of non-losing seasons are like filthy rags to me.

 

Am I the only fan that thought 2008-2009 was our year? It takes a mix of great skill and luck to win it all. If it weren't for our injuries that season, I honestly think we could have gone all the way.

I still support morey. He's done a very solid job with the cards he's been dealt. The whole championship or bust mentality is pretty unrealistic. If that were the case, more than half of the GMs in the league are failures and should be fired. We just have to keep chipping away, bank winning seasons, and hope the stars align for us one year.

 

Still not sure how everybody from JB, Harden, Howard etc..can be held accountable but the GM who brought them here is immune smh

 

You're not the only one. Those Rockets had only one team in their path en route to a title: the Lakers. And they took LA to Game 7 without Yao(after Game 3), Deke, or T-Mac. It's a "what if?" that'll always haunt me. And I do genuinely feel bad for Morey since he did do a fantastic job putting that team together. Injuries just destroyed their title hopes.

But it's what he and Les did in the aftermath that bugged the hell out of me. They wasted 3 years when they had a bunch of role players and no superstars where they should've committed to a true rebuild. They also made dumb decisions like letting Dragic go because of a 4th year option only to turn around and badly overpay Jeremy Lin. They got very lucky the Thunder panicked and handed them Harden. Otherwise we'd probably still be rebuilding.

 

I agree..... but keep in mind that the owner would not allow Daryl Morey to tank for higher draft picks. Indeed, Morey has tried numerous times to trade into the top of the draft without success.

You have to judge the GM/Coach based the constraints they are under. Daryl Morey doesn't ultimately pick the head coach, and Morey is not allowed to have his teams bottom out. That severely limits his ability to make moves to improve the team. If you don't like his performance under those constraints, so be it. People just need to realize that short of Les Alexander dying, whomever they want to replace Morey with, will have the same constraints.

 

Again, the decision to not have a true rebuild was not a decision made by the GM. It was made by the owner of the team. Also, signing Jeremy Lin was something that the owner wanted to happen.

The Thunder didn't panic and deal Harden; they looked to move him for weeks and made numerous offers to other teams. Ultimately the Rockets made the best offer.

 

I'm well-aware the problems start at the very top. I've made no secret that Les is doing a lousy job running this franchise. I just wish Morey if he truly wasn't onboard with all of these stupid decisions(like Lin for example) would stand up to "Mr. Alexander". If he's that great of a GM, he could get another gig elsewhere in no time if Les refused to budge and decided to can him instead.

 

This doesn't make a lot of sense. You criticize them for bringing in a bunch of role players and no superstars and then you criticize them for letting Dragic go. Dragic is a good player, but I don't think anyone has ever called him a superstar. Harden is a superstar - Dragic is a very good complementary player at best and an above average PG at worst.

In hindsight, as painful as it was to watch Lin struggle and pretty much all of us would have preferred watching Dragic over Lin in Harden's first year but the stats don't necessarily suggest this was a colossal mistake. In his first year in Phoenix, Dragic was 20pts/6ast on 44% FG and 32% 3pt at $7.5 mil while Lin in that same year was 13pts/6ast on 44% FG and 34% 3pt at 5 mil a year.

...also, if Dragic's 4th year had been the difference between getting Howard(who recently HAD been a legit superstar) and not(since we had to get really creative with salary structure and moving some pieces to get Howard), then it would seem your endorsing keeping non superstar Dragic even if it meant losing out on Dwight(superstar potential if he could ever recover from injury - which he didn't' unfortunately). Again, you seem at odds with your stated position.

 

There are plenty of algorithms out there for analyzing market sentiment, and the stock market is like a sport where all the players have PHD's.

Adjusting a model to fit players wouldn't be hard. game theory would be particularly useful, given that only 10 players can interact with each other at once. Hell, we could even use discrete functions, since the outcomes of one game only affect the outcomes of other games in negligible ways.

 

I'd also point out, though, that contending with 2 stars with known high injury risk profiles was a strategic choice. Maybe that bet could have paid off really big, but we lost it instead. While it doesn't mean Morey & Les were wrong to take the bet, we still don't have anything to show for it now.

That's where these debates always seem to end up. I don't think this is true. Morey is in a position to manage his boss. If Morey figures out the winning formula but he can't convince Les he's right, that's Morey's fault. If Les puts him in a position to fail and he accepts it, it's Morey's failure. When he said it'd be harder to win without tanking but it was possible to do and he was undertaking to accomplish it -- he endorsed his constraints and obviated them (in my mind) as excuses for failing.

 

i am not crazy about morey. his evaluation of character and chemistry, if any at all, is particularly dubious.

but,,, realistically, you dont let anyone go just for the sake of letting him go. gotta ask yourself the question "who's the replacement?" unless ofc it's a situation that's getting out of hands completely (ala mchale), which is not the case right now.

 

Morey needs to go. He done an okay job, but not good enough. I'm still scratching my head why he cut Lin (before Linsanity), Livingston, Black, Covington, traded Canaan, Daniels. Harden needs shooters to spread the court so he can go iso. But Morey keep getting rid of the good shooter and keep bringing players that can't shoot.

 

Funny thing is

Rick Smith had amuch more successful career than Morey

 

We value 1 thing championships, regular season is for losers and that's what we have a GM focused on regular season wins because he has zero to show for the playoffs. It's like having an associates degree and bragging to people with MBA's!

 

The win it all or fail mentality is kinda silly . Sure that's the goal , you feel great if you win . But just becuase you don't win the ultimate prize doesn't mean you don't have success . Only one team can win . It's a 7 game series . It could be decided by luck .

Hypothetical scenario for those who don't agree . Say last season when we play the Warriors , half their team gets hurt . We win . They play the cavs , Lebron gets hurt . We win . Great we won the title . Then fast forward to this season and say we don't make the playoffs .

Scenario 2 , everything last season stays the same . This season we beat the Warriors in the first round with both teams fully healthy , then in the second round James gets hurt and we lose .

Which one of those scenarios is more "successful" the first becuase we win a ring ( even though we get absurdly lucky ) or the second where we are actually a better team ?

You can't invalidate regular season success just becuase it happens in the regular season . The playoffs are more important , but given the smaller sample size , luck plays a much bigger factor . Regular season success is a great predictor of how good your team is and how well it will do in the postseason . End of story .

 

There is a famous saying which came from the Roman empire which states that "Fortune favors the strong". When applied today the phrase means the stronger or better you are (in the NBA context) the luckier you get. Simply put, luck is an important factor in success but the better ones, teams in the NBA for instance, get more chances or have better luck to win championships.

 

Rick Smith who? Of the Texans?

Rocket River

 

It doesn't have to be an either/or.

 

He has a blueprint that he hasn't been following.

 

Amazing isn't it that the guy in charge has no accountability, that is pretty much the culture we have on the Rockets these days.

DD