Where did Morey go wrong?

He went wrong when he assumed, based on his interaction with Harden and Paul that MDA and Melo would make it work.

Yes, he went wrong when he signed Anderson and horsed around with DMo instead of signing DMo. But we overcame that mistake last season.

He went wrong (at least temporarily) in signing Capela and letting Ariza and Luc walk. I think this will be rectified by trade and will become a non-issue.

But the Melo deal was the worst. If Morey had known Lebron was pulling CP3's leg and that MDA/Melo wasn't going to work he'd have taken a different course this past summer. And we wouldn't be so behind.

 

I'm going with letting Ariza walk , mainly because he cost them no assets to retain - It was just tax money and the fact that he had no way to acquire a similarly talented player as a replacement because none are / were available and if they are / were it would cost significant assets to acquire that player - assets the Rockets just don't have..

Luc was / is injured … I wouldn't have kept him either but you had to keep one or the other then Ennis is a quality backup , not asked to be a starter.

Melo was a low risk decision - it was a veterans minimum contract …. and a roster spot.

Obviously the Anderson deal was a poor one but dictated by the market - specifically the HUGE jump in the cap that year - the same cap jump that allowed Durant to sign with those scrubs. You got to within a game of the finals with his contract on the books …. a negative but not earth shattering if you don't compound the mistake.

Trading for CP3 got you to within a game of the finals , cant complain. That $40m a year for the next 4 years is going to really hurt at some point but , you had to make that move to keep your window open. You can win with a healthy CP3. His minutes have to be managed to limit injury , no quality backup hasn't allowed for that.


They lack a couple pieces - quality backups at the 1 and 5 and a starting caliber 3/4.

 

Promoting bench players to starters. You're not only playing your bench against their starters but now you have no bench - except scrubs.

 

The Anderson contract by far

Morey knew he was overpaying for Anderson but he did it anyway for the sake of the system.

With Paul you at least get a HOFer who is the best leader the team has had since Hakeem. You wouldn't need to strap draft picks trade him no matter what some 14 year olds say. Anderson put this team in a bind that forced it to move Trez and Co to get Paul.

OP still can't see that Chris Paul is the reason we got to a game 7, not James Harden.

 

You got to within a game of the finals with that contract on the books … it was bad but acceptable in that you could play him against anyone but GSW getting PJ some rest.

Now you are carrying 70% of his contract in dead weight …. getting no minutes as a result and PJ is overworked.

The real issue is that the wing situation is horrible - you have Ennis who is a backup as your only starting option besides a guy who is playing out of position and …. doesn't belong in the league in MCW.

 

And I believe that the depth issues stem from Ryan Anderson's contract. His contract is what forced us to HAVE TO trade for CP3. We wouldn't be able to sign Paul that summer outright. Paul's contract now could have been worse believe it or not. He could have demanded that 5th year.

 

Letting Les sell the team to Tilman.

 

I wish I shared your optimism. Looking at The assets of this team is like looking at a dollar store hoping you can find high quality merchandise.

 

First of all, anyone says Melo deal was the worst idea is just stupid and know nothing of Basketball. Melo was cheap low risk gamble. It doesn't put any financial constraints on us. Low risk high potential gamble.

CP3 signing was a must have wink wink deal we did. We knew and had to pay CP3 knowing all the risks prior to the trade and it got us one hamstring from a championship. Therefore that was not a bad deal. CP3 is still one of the best pg in the league right now.

Signing Anderson to that contract was the worst move, because he was clearly doesn't worth that amount. We were given him that contract solely due to the financial market at the time, where every team got huge amount of cap. Additionally, we tried to fix that problem by trading for two injury prone and a bust player. That trade started off the whole mess we are in right now.

 

The Melo deal stopped us from pursuing other rotation pieces because Morey was assuming he'd get regular rotation minutes, and we'd be good enough to go to the deadline and do our shopping for serious championship horses at that time. The MDA/Melo fiasco basically left us void of 30 minutes a game to fill. We're patching it with Ennis/Clark/Isaiah and those guys should be getting spot minutes at best. You compound that issue with the fact that Paul has been injured and suspended and you have what we are.

The MDA/Melo freeze was horrific on this team early. MDA did this to himself. He's the main culprit here, not Morey, because of his refusal to modify his system at least temporarily to accommodate Melo.

We would be a much better team than what we're showing right now if we had Melo in the lineup playing 30 minutes.

 

CP3 is the reason we went to 7 games in the WCF...

 

Chemistry.

 

imo if we have another player instead of Anderson we could be world champions.

 

You can't put the blame on Morey. The one thing about our organization that was and should still be a selling point for FAs is that they are all on the same page - Tillman, Tad, Morey, MDA, and our star players. The only decision that seemed to have excluded the one of those out - the star players - is when they decided to tell Melo that they wanted him to take a lesser role than he already had.

This is probably the only mistake I fault them with, and only in retrospect, is that they made that decision public right when we went on our 5-game stretch. I was on the fence on whether the "scapegoat" narrative was real or false, but it's still unclear as to why they had to make that decision public to not only the media but to Melo.

In these losses, we could have used Melo as another body in lieu of giving heavy minutes to our rooks and House. They made that decision to make Melo's lessened role public seemingly without much foresight that we were paper thin in players that can play. One could say we were being professional and upfront about letting him know ahead of time, but if they really wanted him to work out in the end, they could have had the coach make minutes decisions as part of tweaking with what works.

The rest of the reasons I'm seeing are not really to blame on Morey. In no other multiverse would I not want CP3 on our team for what we gave up. His extension, one of the best deals Morey's made. Forget what our record would be if we didn't re-sign him; we'd have people on here creating threads like "Harden gonna leave" and everyone guessing what Harden's thinking if we had CP3 for a one-year rental and couldn't retain a legit star.

We going thru a rough patch right now, no need to panic. We just need to get our guys health. I'm ready for us to takeoff from our 5-game win streak. We looked locked in and every bit the part from last year. I'm not worried.

On the flipside though, Zion in Rockets red would be hype!

 

and you calling me a homer homie?
i dont see ariza particularly talented so far so that you couldn't find a replacement, except if you are talking intangibles?
and correct me if i am wrong but if i recall well 15mil for ariza would cost 45 mil in luxury taxes

 

Any choices above that is/was out of Morey's control should be eliminated.

 

No mistakes, just happy accidents.

 

thinly-disguised Morey is a horrible gm thread. Morey does not go wrong. People simply fail to divine his ultimate plan. In Morey We Trust.