I believe that most posters recognize that Daryl has not had some very nice to solid draft picks, but that he has never drafted an all-star quality player. Few teams get the number of NBA quality players with late 1st round or 2nd round draft picks that Houston does, but most teams at some point (not Dallas) draft an all-star quality player regardless of draft position. Daryl has been employed by the Rockets since 2006 and in that time, Aaron Brooks and Chandler Parsons are probably the closest any Rockets draft pick has come to being all star quality for at least one season. Since 2006, the Rockets have had four lottery picks; 8th once, 12th once and 14th twice. Below is a list of players selected with the 8th pick or later since Daryl has been with the organization that are arguably better then any of Daryl's draft picks during his time in Houston. 2013 15th pick Milwaukee Bucks drafts Giannis Antetokounmpo 17th pick Atlanta Hawks draft Dennis Schröder 2012 9th pick Detroit Pistons draft Andre Drummond 20th pick Denver Nuggets draft Evan Fournier 35th pick Golden State Warriors draft Draymond Green 2011 8th pick Golden State Warriors draft Klay Thompson 15th pick San Antonio Spurs draft Kawhi Leonard 30th pick Chicago Bulls draft Jimmy Butler 60th pick Sacramento Kings drafts Isaiah Thomas 2010 10th pick Indiana Pacers draft Paul George 33rd pick Sacramento Kings draft Hassan Whiteside 2009 9th pick Toronto Raptors draft DeMar DeRozan 17th pick Philadelphia 76ers draft Jrue Holiday 19th pick Atlanta Hawks draft Jeff Teague 2008 10th pick New Jersey Nets draft Brook Lopez 17th pick Indiana Pacers draft Roy Hibbert 21st pick New Jersey Nets draft Ryan Anderson 24th pick Seattle SuperSonics draft Serge Ibaka 25th pick Portland Trail Blazers draft Nicolas Batum (drafted by HOU specifically for Portland) 35th pick Los Angeles Clippers draft DeAndre Jordan 45th pick Phoenix Suns draft Goran Dragić 2007 9th pick Chicago Bulls draft Joakim Noah 46th pick Los Angeles Lakers draft Marc Gasol 2006 11th pick Orlando Magic draft J. J. Redick 21st pick Boston Celtics draft Rajon Rondo 24th pick Memphis Grizzlies draft Kyle Lowry 47th pick Utah Jazz draft Paul Millsap You can argue that Daryl has never drafted a player as good as any of those players have been during their careers at one time of another. Almost all of those players have been all-stars or have been elite at something. Chandler Parsons is probably Daryl's best draft pick and you could argue that he belongs in that group. But in my opinion, no GM would take Chandler Parsons over any of the players on this list. So while I absolutely believe Daryl has been consistently outstanding drafting late 1st round and 2nd round players, he has never hit that one all-star caliber talent regardless if he was drafting in the lottery or not. Perhaps Clint Capela will change all of that.
The CF mojo is real, as real as the DD curse. Remember we all loved Capela in his rookie season? Poof he disappeared in his second year. Just when CF began to write him off, he broke out. Then when CF raved about how he made Dwight obsolete, he got hurt. Every player we love turns out bad. Every player we hate turns out great. It's real. Let's hate on them all and sit back to watch the Rockets win. The people who complain about fans hating on their own players don't know ****. Watch out, folks. Unlike y'all, I'm hating on Dekker. He's no good.
Morey had the 8th pick in 06, but he hasn't had any better than the 12th pick since. So basically, with the exception of 2008 (which was basically our Ron Artest draft), every draft has about 2 great players after the 11th. Even with 2008, that's 20 great players in 8 drafts, And even of those 20, 7 of them were moved to new teams (sometimes multiple teams) before they really blew up. That's 13 players in 8 drafts in which teams were able to reap stardom of a non top 10 pick. It obviously can be done, but those are some tough odds.
My position is that Morey has done a masterful job putting together the Rockets over the years. Having said that, most teams have drafted an all star quality player at some point regardless of draft position. Has Daryl had that player yet? It's hard to say since Clint Capela has played so well this year.
Morey also traded away some of his draft picks that could have been high quality players. Batum comes to mind. My position has always been that Morey is average (not bad, not great) as a drafter because without NBA data of a player, his analytics models don't work as reliably as he likes. But he is very good at erasing his draft mistakes by trading. Jeremy Lamb is the most obvious case. This kind of threads are always kneejerked. Whenever a draftee is doing good, Morey's defenders come out to say, "See!" Whenever a draftee turns to be a bust, Morey's haters come out to say, "See!" But if you look at the whole body of his drafting work, he's pretty much average, some hits and some misses, just like all other GMs.
We will never know who the Rockets would have drafted in the spot they drafted Batum if Portland hadn't wanted the pick. It might have still been Green but who knows. Daryl is good at drafting NBA quality players just not good at hitting the home run with an all-star caliber player. Most teams have drafted an all-star player in that time so both sides have a point IMO.
If he did pick Green, it would have come down to another miss. It's the same as trading the pick away which the other team picked a good player. It's common knowledge that the limitation of any data-driven methodology is the quality of the data. If you don't have reliable and relevant data, you are as blind as the other guy.
Sorry but I'm not following your point. The Rockets picked Batum with the single intent of sending him to Portland, therefore the Rockets don't get credit for drafting him. Had the Rockets intended to keep that pick there is a pretty decent chance they pick Donte Green which was who the picked for themselves just a couple of picks later. Regardless it doesn't matter since the Rockets did in fact draft Green for themselves and he essentially turned out to be nothing. Apologies if you are saying the same thing just in a different way.
Morey has had 11 first round picks, all but one (#bewell) of them are currently in an NBA rotation. Now of course simply being in an NBA rotation is no great accomplishment for a 1st round pick, but about 1/3 of 1st round picks will be nearly out of the league within 4 years and the fact that Morey's are almost all still contributing a decade in suggests to me he is a little better than average at identifying NBA players even if he hasn't been able to land the big fish. Let's take Jaremy Lamb for example. He doesn't look like he's even gonna be anything of significance, but of all the 1st round picks selected after him only Evan Fournier could be argued is better than a rotation player. Draymond Green was selected 34th, but the entire league missed on him. GS themselves passed on him in favor of Festus Ezeli only 5 picks earlier. Identifying, drafting, and patiently developing great NBA players for your team without top 10 picks is really hard. Like I said in my last post only 13 players across 8 drafts meet that criteria. And of those 13 only 3 (Leonard, Butler,Green) could be argued are franchise game changers. I would say Morey's ability to draft good NBA players is much better than average.
My point was, Batum is clearly a much better player than Green. If the Rockets did pick Green over Batum at that spot, it would have been a mistake. Now, Rockets gave up the pick to Portland who picked the right player. That is the same as not picking the right player at that spot, unless the Rockets had something in return that was better than Batum the player, which is not the case. So when we judge a GM's drafting records, we have to also consider what picks he gave up (and for what) which could have been used to draft a very good player.
I heard this argument a lot. It is even used to excuse the Leonard miss. But that's exactly what it is. Morey missed a great player JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. It's no consolation. It just shows that he is not much better than the other GM in that regard. But that's not what Morey does. Almost none of his draftees remains with the team beyond the rookie contract. IMO, Morey drafts first and foremost good assets. I am not saying that he does not think about those players being the future of the team. I am just saying that it does not matter that much if they develop into something useful FOR THE ROCKETS. What he cares most is whether they can turn into some assets that can improve the team. That's actually a good strategy. I am in no way criticizing Morey as a GM in general. I am just saying that Morey being not a great drafter is not a "myth." BTW, it is also my opinion that there is no such thing as a great drafter. Drafting is a very non-exact science. I cannot name one GM you can say is "great" if you consider the whole body of his drafting works.
2 mistakes glare at me, but his track record for finding late draft talent and the Harden trade itself should cement him as an outstanding GM. Morris over Leonard, who I was screaming at the TV for him to take and the Lawson trade, but hey, no ones perfect. Oh, and we got a bit lucky in hindsight that the CP3 trade got nixed...
Greene got us Artest after his 40 point summer league game, just like Gay got us Battier. That team could have won it all if injuries don't slow down our playoff run.
I think the point of this thread is to judge Daryl Morey's ability to draft not his overall effectiveness as a GM. Donte Green was a very bad draft pick, no matter how you slice it or dice it. What he did with Donte Green weeks after he drafted him was brilliant. The trade of Donte Green to Sacramento is and must be considered a separate transaction that in no way indicates Daryl Morey's ability to draft. Likewise in 2006, Daryl really cant be graded at all on who he selected with the 8th pick since he did not draft a player with the 8th pick. You can grade the transaction and if you think and if you think Battier was worth it or not but it was a trade all the way. Had Daryl drafted Gay himself with the intent of keeping him then you could absolutely grade him on the Gay draft.
Appreciate the research you did but I have to slightly comment on the analysis. Not sure it is fair for us to use stats which says, we had the 8th pick once but was unable to produce an all star and then show a player picked at the same spot but for a different year. Derozan was 9th but we did not have the 8th pick for that year so that could not be counted as a fail on DM's part. 2008 has a lot of all stars but the only one we really missed was Jordan and Goran. Additionally, there needs to be some context to why we did not draft player X. Let's take our 8th pick(2006) where all the players you noted were not SF's. We traded our pick with for another SF, which supports the idea that this was the position we needed to fill. Back to 2008 draft, we had Alston, Lowry and Brooks for the pt guard spot and had Yao, Dikembe and Chuck for the C. Getting Jordan and Goran would not have made sense. Drafting the best player regardless of position might have not been the best play as we can see with the current sixers.
I agree with you that I shouldn't have used the 8th pick since Daryl never actually picked a player with the 8th pick. I also agree that the only misses in 2008 would be Goran or DeAndre. My only point in listing all of those players was to show that other teams have found all-star quality talent up and down the board while Daryl has only been able to find good players. But there is nothing wrong with good players, particularly when you find so many of them.
Each transaction and draft choice should be graded separately. (See crash's comment to you.) I see a lot of this kind of logic: Trade X gave up asset A and produced asset B. Trade Y gave up asset B and produced asset C. Therefore, Asset A produced asset C. If asset C is better than asset A, trade X is a good trade. That is a flawed logic. Trade X did not produce asset C. Trade Y did. Trade X: You pay $100 for something that is worth $10. Bad deal. Trade Y: You fleece someone to give you $200 for that same thing. Great deal. But Trade Y does not make Trade X a good deal--unless someone told you he'd give you $200 for that thing BEFORE you bought it with $100, which is mostly not the case in NBA trades. Did Morey know he could get Artest from Donte Greene when he drafted Greene? Extremely unlikely. The fact that someone was willing to give up Artest for Greene does not make taking Greene over Batum a smart move--unless the Kings told Morey that they would give him Artest if he could get Greene for them, but that's not the case.
^ That logic also has holes. It's likely little coincidence that Donte Greene erupted for a 40+ point summer league performance (and other awesome ones after that) which was unheard of at the time and the Kings trade came in soon after. They were clearly very impressed by Greene. Enough so to give up Artest (if you recall, he had a renaissance in Sacramento) for him. Batum didn't put up that sort of performance in the summer league. You discount a couple of things: 1)Morey likely did know you could use a newly minted, shiny, first round pick whose potential was evident, as trade bait. 2)perhaps it was not Morey's intent to pick a player who would be better overall for years to come. We were in win now mode. Maybe he drafted Greene because he knew he'd attract attention early which would make him more valuable as a trade piece for a star. There are many cases of players who max their value out early that would have been better used to trade for a good player. Tyreke Evans and Jennings (50 pt game rookie year) come to mind. 3) you assume that Greene would not have gone on to become as good of a player as Batum had his situation been different. Clearly we've seen how many picks Sacramento has destroyed with their terrible culture. There are a lot of variables to consider. Greene never really played for us so who cares? For that I disagree that Morey didn't know Greene could net him a star level player. The fact is, Morey drafted him, and Greene ended up doing just that. Because we were in win now mode, I have to believe the intent was always to trade whoever we drafted. It makes a lot of sense the strategy was based on drafting someone who showed off a lot of promise early (as Greene did by tearing up SL).
I don't think God would appreciate that. And what's your problem anyway pal? It's my right as a merch buy fan to voice my personal opinionated displeasure I have with the organization whenever I see fit because merch includes tix amigo. Whatever man crush allegiance you've mentally brokered with Mr. Morey will have to wait says the man wearing rockets boxers and rockets sock and I want another kid I'll **** with my commemorative rockets condoms that I found in the old toolbox in my parents attic after hurricane Ike. Because those condoms unlike my disdain for your overall pompous tone in "disagreeing" with my opinion or my mortification with you misdirected blasphemy, those condoms have an expiration date
