You get attacked for being a pessimist or "not a true fan" if you cite reality and it doesn't fit the narrative. This organization needs a makeover from the ground up.
Is this guy delusional or what? The only run Rockets are likely to make in the playoffs is when they run back heads down into the locker room after every beat down.
Why would he get into specifics at this point? There is absolutely no benefit in doing so and only negatives. It would be bush league to complain about specific players or coaching when there is nothing that can be done about it until the end of the season.
I'm not satisfied until Morey performs Hari Kari. Decade-long experiment fun time is over. Seriously this is Morey's ideal coach, which somehow way too many people find acceptable: No respectable, real, non-inflatable coach would ever work under Morey's anti-coach system. Hence Rick Adelman leaving. Hence empty suits like McHale and JBB. "It's everyone's fault, but it starts with me" is a diluted fault admission. Just say "My bad. I should've maybe got a coach" All this talk on Harden picking the coach he will follow, or finding a coach that Harden respects that would keep Harden in line...none of that matters if no coach will work with a GM whose system fundamentally has the GM getting way out of his lane and all up in the lane of the coach.
He said he needed to a better job weeks ago on 790, alluding it to being on him. Nothing new. But y'all ignore everything if it's not ESPN reporting it, and then when they do cover something you guys whine about that too and call them BSPN. Gratz.
This team lacks toughness and relies too much with Harden and his ISOs. Morey knows that the game had already evolved but had chosen to rely too much on individual prowess. He has forgotten about the tactics that are essential to be successful. Brawn without brains can only take you so far. Along with good players, a great head coach is also a requirement. Choosing to stick with McHale and Bickerstaff is his greatest blunder so far.
Making the playoffs is obviously this team's last straw to clutch, as if it's something they want to be able to brandish, however feebly, to Les Alexander: "See? You didn't just waste 80,000,000-some-odd dollars. The season wasn't a success, but we're going out on a note of optimism." But JBB, Dwight, Jason Terry, DMo....others, perhaps?....are dead men walking. JBB can't coach them, and for those on their way out, they won't be coached anyway. And Daryl can't positive-spin it anymore. It's his job, I suppose, but it rings awfully hollow. I have optimism for the summer (not necessarily KD optimism, but enough just the same), if only because I can't get away fast enough from this dumpster fire of a season.
I don't lay the current coaching situation entirely at Morey's feet. Les is TOO INVOLVED in our coaching decisions. I suspect Les tied Morey's hands somewhat and prevented him from making a big coaching hire. That combined with the fact that Les let go of McHale mid-season made it doubly difficult. The primo head coaches don't usually take a new job mid-season. It was an awkward firing, and Les drove the train on that decision. The mistakes Morey have made have been when he went away from analytics. Re-signing Brewer, trading for Lawson, etc. Those were moves that were made because of Harden. Morey trusted Harden more than the cold hard analysis. This team over-achieved last season, and got lucky with the helter-skelter play against the Clippers that drove us into the Conference Finals. Then we bring back the same guys EXCEPT for the key guy in that random helter-skelter series that put us over the top......Smoove. And we add a no defense point guard without changing the system to let him run the team from the top while moving Harden to the wing??? If my simple analytics showed we were lacking.....I'm sure Morey's analytics showed we were lacking as well. Especially when you throw in the DMo long-term injury situation. Yes....that is a product of Morey working with JAMES HARDEN to shape this roster. James doesn't want other players creating their own shot when he's on the floor. James either wants to shoot the ball himself or he wants to create the shot for a teammate himself. He wants them to catch his pass and shoot it...so his assist numbers go up. Consequently we have no other playmakers on the roster and we get rid of guys that create their own shot. (Mark my words....if Beasley starts to create his shot too much and doesn't wait for Harden to feed him the basketball...he'll be on Harden's .... list next.) Which speaks to the heart of where Morey missed it. Once again, it was too much about Harden and who Harden wanted and not enough about what this team needed. We "needed" another playmaker. We've had a chance to trade for several playmakers over the past couple seasons but didn't because Harden didn't want them. We finally traded for the playmaker Harden wanted. Then Harden puts him on the wing. It didn't work. Wonder why? Too much Harden decision-making and too little Morey analytics and decision-making. Before the season started we needed help on the interior. The analysis showed it very clearly. I kept waiting for Morey to acquire someone. We finally get Smoove back later in the season. But we came out of the box with a huge problem on the interior. This was obvious before the first game against Denver. We finally get Smoove back and is dinged. So he has had virtually no impact like he did for us last season. (But I suspect if we make the playoffs he'll come back and be a big part of it. That is for us to have any semblance of a chance of reaching last year's heights.) Furthermore we've been killed defensively at the rim. Because we've had to play Capela extensive minutes and Capela is not capable of holding down the paint without Dwight alongside him. Those things were KNOWN by analysis before the season started. So it should have come as no surprise when we got off to a rough start. But...losing the first 3 games by 20+ points each????? Guys that was a huge red dinging alarm bell right there. Huge. Showed we weren't even close. And that there was much more wrong here than just needing another defensive big to grab boards and lock down the paint. And that HUGE PROBLEM is and has been Dwight's pending free agency and James pushing him out. And I can guarantee you alarm bells were going off at TC after those first 3 games too. Morey knew. He knew very early. Frankly, he knew before the season started but he ignored all the analytics and chose to believe in Harden and the Randoms. The cloud hanging over this team all season has been Harden/Dwight. Harden doesn't want him. It's blatantly obvious. And their on-court lack of chemistry has just mushroomed this season into a disaster as Harden has worked to make Dwight as uncomfortable as possible to make sure he opts out (Harden was hoping we would trade him at the deadline) so Harden can bring in his buds....who don't want to play with Dwight. Guys, Morey knows all this stuff above in detail, much more fine detail than I do. He knew the defensive issue before the season started. He knew the offensive issue that without Smoove in there making random plays we were stuck with Harden right, Harden left, Harden up the middle unless Harden/Lawson gelled big time and Harden was able to move off the ball. He knew Lawson wasn't going to play any semblance of defense because Lawson simply cannot play defense and never will be able to. So, he was depending on Harden wanting to play with Lawson to create this greater chemistry that would tide us past some of our obvious holes. He gambled on Lawson ..... because Harden wanted Lawson ...... and he lost. He knew the Harden/Dwight issue was on-going, especially when Smoove jumped ship out of here for less money....and he hasn't addressed it effectively. Because Morey is still in the mode of giving Harden what Harden wants. Morey is going to have to make some serious decisions this summer about how he operates in the future. Is he going to try to modify his relationship with Harden and bring the team back to the middle of the road and use his analytics to bring in teammates and a system that will produce a championship? Is he going to work on Harden to get Harden to accept both offensive and defensive systems that produce balance, less randomness, and beautiful execution in the half-court....which is where we lose games? Or is he going to continue to go all-in on Harden and continue to shape the roster, the coaching staff, and subsequently the offensive and defensive systems around what Harden wants??? Kevin Durant is the obvious get this summer. Everybody, including me, wants Durant. But....just getting Durant and running the same system the same way isn't going to take us anywhere the Thunder haven't already been, which is playoff exits. It's going to be interesting to watch Morey's approach to the off-season. My personal hope is that he has a long talk with Harden. Because we cannot win a championship with Harden controlling the basketball to the degree he controls it and running our half-court offense the way Harden wants it run. And we cannot win a championship by running a defensive system that allows Harden to just lay around in the weeds looking for steals while completely losing his man defensively with the other 4 guys picking up all that slack. It's a system that will allow Harden to put up gargantuan numbers season after season but will doom this team to fail season after season too. Morey knows that. Morey knows this team has to have offensive and defensive systems that work when we aren't in helter-skelter basketball mode. He knows we cannot force the better teams in the league into helter-skelter mode. He knows they'll just burn us over and over. He knows he's got to get a coach and systems that work. And he knows Harden has to buy in to what Morey knows will work...through his analytics. Will Morey make these necessary changes or will he continue this charade of catering to Harden? Who knows? But this season is on Morey in that regard. And if he isn't fired, this team's future is dependent on Morey to get James to buy-in to him instead of him just buying in to James.
Dude, you don't have to tell me this or right that essay. I have said time and again that Harden has Mauri and by extension this franchise by the cojones. Murray will do anything to cater to Harden and this is part of our demise this season. Harden sure wants to win but he wants to win on his own terms where he is the main contributor and everyone else just have smaller roles and IMO you cannot win a ring this way. Our entire offense is give the ball to Harden and let him do what he wants. That is part of the reason we look clueless when he takes a seat because there are literally no plays designed for the other guys. This off season whether right or wrong Mauri will go to Harden and ask him which coach he wants. Coach will have to be hand picked by Harden and again Harden is not the caliber of player of LeBron or Curry or Durant etc to deserve such treatment.
I told you that because you are implying that Morey's analytics are the problem here. They're not. Morey going away from his analytics is the problem here.
Look, part of me sympathizes with Morey. He works for an owner who's a star chaser. Les got lucky with the Clyde deal in 1995 and he's been playing the same hand nearly every year since then(Barkley, Pippen, Francis, T-Mac, Artest, Harden, Dwight). But most of them have failed. The only ones that were arguably successes are Barkley(and that lasted only one season), Artest(again, one season), and Harden and Dwight(two good seasons with only one successful postseason). What's lost in the big picture is how utterly mediocre this franchise has been during the vast majority of the last 2 decades since that 2nd title. Once that championship core became over the hill, instead of tanking and rebuilding from the ground up, Les(and Rudy at the time) starting looking for shortcuts. The Francis trade and a bunch of panicky signings(Cato, Mo Taylor, Moochie, Shandon Anderson). Then trading 3 first rounders for Eddie Griffin. Then trading for T-Mac. Trying to trade for Dwight, then trading for Harden. Trying to sign Melo or Bosh. Now it's trying to sign Durant this summer. Notice a pattern here? Les never wants to build through the draft(aside from Yao who almost doesn't count since that was the luck of the ping pong balls). And why is that? Because he hates losing. And while part of me respects that, at some point this competitive streak of his becomes counter-productive. Because instead of building towards something, we wind up mired in season after season hovering around .500 spinning our wheels and swinging for the fences with free agency and trades during the summer. Let me give you a hypothetical. Let's say on the final day of the season in the home game vs the Kings, the Rockets are faced with two scenarios: beat Sactown and get the 8th seed or lose to them and wind up in the lottery and keep their pick. Which would you prefer and which would you think Les and Morey would want? The fans may be split or at least not overwhelmingly leaning toward one or the other, but does anyone believe Les and Morey would prefer the latter? I sure as hell don't.
