And Curry, Klay, and Barnes were all drafted with puck higher than the Rockets have had. When you're asked to build without having a top 11 pick, Klay was 11 and Barnes/Curry both 7, there is a little more work to do. Id love for them to have 2 top 10 picks of their own to draft/develop players
It's not Morey's fault. I am pretty sure that Les made the decision to fire McHale. And Les told Morey we have to keep Bickerstaff until the end of the season. What was Morey supposed to do with that?
ya, i want to clarify also that i don't dislike morey, and when i say control freak i don't mean it in an overly negative connotation. i mean i'm sure he means well, and likely worries about every single aspect of winning instead of trusting others to simply be accountable. he would benefit from more delegation. and i suspect that his mathematics background is part of his psyche to try and make everything neatly work out to perfection. but unfortunately basketball on the floor does not always work out nice and clean like neatly resolved equations on a board. in short, we need a bball artist by his side to provide the ying to his yang :grin:
That's just ridiculous. It's the on the court decisions that the coach makes without input from the GM that are so bad this year. It's 100% on JBB and he's a "basketball guy". If the Rockets had even a halfway competent head coach, everything would be better. Hell a halfway competent coach would have them as the 5 seed or better THIS season.
I agree Les was the reason McHale was fired, because McHale was Morey's guy. So the mistake goes all the way back to Morey hiring McHale after letting Adleman go. Coaching doesn't really matter in the playoffs? If his opinion on coaching not really mattering has not been fixed, i would not necessarily fire him, but i would reduce a lot of his control if i were LES.
And the GM that drafted Curry/Barnes and put the team into position to draft klay isn't there anymore. Their current GM came in before the Klay draft. The guy who drafted Curry got demoted to Director of Scouting.
Les Alexander, leader of the Analytic Empire, has deployed a weapon of mass destruction that can tear the Houston Rockets apart. Daryl Morey. However this weapon has a weakness that has been discovered by the anti-lottery rebellion. It has absolutely no DEFENSE system whatsoever. There were no plans to steal, it literally has no DEFENSE.
I'd bet that after seeing what truly incompetent head coaching looks like this season from JBB, Morey's view of how much coaching matters might be radically different.
look i've been complaining about these stupid fukin coaches since before you even joined the site. but it's a chicken or egg question. i mean we've likely had mchale/jbb because DM wanted control over his chosen idiots on the sidelines.
Morey doesn't have control over in game decisions, never has. He went with McHale because he had a bad experience with Adelman fighting with the FO so much. He wanted someone that would listen to him and not do childish things like permabench people he traded for without giving them a shot or by going with 7 man rotations in overtime games after the team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs rather than seeing what some of the guys Morey brought in can do. IMO that was a mistake and I hope he learned his lesson. With a halfway competent head coach, the Rockets as currently constructed could have been a contender this season. Under JBB, they are a lottery team. At one point he said that coaching didn't make a big difference in the NBA, I'd bet he knows better now.
Oh, so you're blaming the team's failure on taking 3 point shots? LOL, that's one theory anyway. The non-existent defense along with truly awful lineup decisions by JBB has been the problem, not a philosophy of taking good shots instead of bad shots. Hell the efficiency that comes from that philosophy is why the offense hasn't really struggled this season overall. That's like the one good thing about the team and yeah, it probably comes from Morey.
oh come on. Morey absolutely has a say over in game decisions, why would a team with dysmal 3pt shooters continue to show that they don't know how to do anything else, and can't even do the one thing that they do---well: ? JBB is not a good coach by any means, but what he also has common sense, you don't need a coach to tell you that a team with bad 3pt shooters shouldn't be the most 3pt centric team in the NBA. The rockets went from shooting 3pters from a league average to being the most 3pt centric team in NBA history----and by a LARGE margin, as soon as Daryl Morey took over. A large part of that isn't just Morey, its just stupid to take long 2s (not talking about normal midrange), a step or two inside the arc when you could take a well set 3 and The Celtics furthered this concept in 2008. With all that being said, you can't tell me that McHale and JBB are both just accustomed to playing the same 1-trick pony offense with little to no defense. Its Morey, and if it wasn't, he wouldn't have been in the hot seat earlier this year and wouldn't be under the "microsope" now. Look no further than his infamous quotes --"coaching doesn't make too much of a difference" , "the series vs Portland was coin flip." This is a guy that has stuck his nose up the bowels of these matters which is why he can say stupid things relating to them so nonchalantly.
This team needs an inside scoring presence in order to translate to easy high percentage buckets. Too many random outside shots. Scola would be our best inside scorer.
you said DM has zero control over what happens on the court (good or bad). unfortunately, there is plenty of blame to go all around for this disaster all the way from les on down to the players. sorry that i can't just pin this sh!tshow entirely on JBB and tjones :grin:
I'm gonna steal a line from "little Marco " "We need to dispell once and for all, that people who criticize the rockets offense are criticizing 3pt shooting in general." I cited it in my last post, if you don't think its a core issue with both the offense and defense you need to look closer. There was a guy that compiled a highlight reel (only needed to look at one game) showing many clips of this just last month
The bolded is not accurate, the most 3 point centric team is the Warriors, you know, reigning champions, team on pace to break the all time win record. There's nothing wrong with the philosophy, and going with that philosophy that you should take efficient shots isn't a bad thing and it's not what I mean by "in game decisions", what I'm talking about is rotations, lineups, time outs....that sort of thing. The general philosophy of "moreyball" shows up on the court, sure, but that's just about the only good thing about this team and that's not micromanaging in game decisions. What I was talking about was player management, game management, that sort of thing. Sure the Moreyball philosophy shows up on the court, but that's the ONLY thing that has kept this season from being even worse. The reason for the season being bad really is on JBB being the most laughably incompetent head coach I've ever seen in the NBA. As to Jones, he is irrelevant to the Rockets, I don't blame him for anything.
