Agreed. Funny that we played what some are calling the greatest team ever and were effectively without Luc the entire series, had a ton of calls go against us,no Chis Paul for games 6 and 7 and had a historically bad shooting night in game 7 yet we only lost by 9 points. That much adversity and we only lost by 9? That seems like a validation of what they are doing.
If anything he should be applauded, his plan would have worked if CP3 was healthy. We had the supposed best team ever on the ropes until our 2nd star went down. GS was almost toast. Pretty amazing if you ask me.
All of this is true. But all of those did things happen and bottom line is you can't play a rotation of 6 guys through three full playoff series and expect them to keep their legs. It definitely needs to be taken into consideration.
I agree with you on that. But, it's not like we had unlimited assets to go allstar-shopping with. We traded Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell, and some other junk for Chris Paul. We could not possibly have gotten better value than Chris Paul even with his age and injury-risk.
People. Chris Paul was out Refs had two horrible games We missed a lot of 3’s If one of those thugs doesn’t happen, most notable Chris Paul, we win the series against a team with 4 hall of famers in their prime. Morey didn’t miscalculate ANYTHING
I don't think there was any miscalculation. Look, Morey knew that the Rockets would have issues if players got injured. A healthy Luc, and a healthy CP3 makes a huge difference. But, we were up against the salary cap, so this was the best team Morey could build. Morey rolled the dice on CP3 and almost pulled it off. They had the Warriors right where they wanted them until "the injury". My guess is that Morey rolls the dice again on CP3, because what are his other options. It's going to be an interesting offseason. It's a shame that Harden's prime years are going to coincide with the Warriors prime years, but that's the way it goes.
Can't have a max contract sitting on the bench doing nothing. I never liked RA's contract, and I think it's one of Morey biggest screw ups. Even worse is that Morey's going to have to package mucho valuable assets just to find a team willing to absorb Anderson's hideous deal. Nor do I think the roster is even remotely close to being championship ready.
For all the dislike I have for our system, Morey actually did the math and calculated the odds of our threes being hit at just the right percentage to win. Last night was an anomaly, when has Ariza ever gone 0-9, Harden 2-12, Gordon 2-13 and Green 1-7 while CP3 was out, Luc was out and Ryan was a non-factor. Had one or two of these players shot their average or just below from 3, we would've won. Since we have too many 3pt shooters who are inconsistent, I'd say he goes out and gets 1 or 2 pure shooters like a Korver, Troy Daniels or whoever.
Game 6, 3rd and 4th quarter where they had 25 points combined in those 2 quarters? I think harden went 0-11 from 3. You asked. Also Game 4 and Game 5 I think they did not shoot so well either, they just won out with Defense and CP's midrange game. There were several occasions of 'anomaly', they were consistent at being inconsistent to say the least.
With all of Morey’s supposed miscalculations, we still had two games where we were up double figures at half time, and if we won either of them we would have advanced. The Rockets got as far as any person before the season could have reasonably expected. People act like if they just did A, B, and C differently then they’d have upped their odds — but you can’t really know how the season plays out in that case. Playing a different style or with different personnel, who’s to say we still win a franchise record number of games and end up with the top seed?
Maybe I'm more pessimistic than the rest of y'all, but there was always an above average chance that CP3 would get hurt at some point during the season/playoffs. CP3's durability has to be a factor in our plans this offseason. I also agree with the OP that tired legs and tougher defense are a variable that should be accounted for. You also have to take what the other team gives you, and more often than not, the midrange was open. I'd say Harden needs to work on this area of his game, but he mostly already has it.
I honestly thought Harden or Gordon would go out first this time.... but Chris Paul was more or less expected.
During the off-season of course. You don't create or change a system this late. Maybe now he will see we need better 3pt shooters and maybe take a potential injury into account, but that's tough considering our contracts.
I think his only miscalculation this season was in the choices of buy-out guys. Had we signed Belinelli (rumored to have wanted to come to us before Philly) and Ilyasova instead of Johnson and Wright we would have had so much more shooting off the bench. Even if their defense wouldn’t have been good enough to play the whole series, you’d think they could have helped us make a couple more 3s than we did. Belinelli played big for the 76ers in the playoffs. Joe Johnson was a complete non-factor when he got minutes.
Yes, Morey did miscalculate, his acquiring Wright and Johnson who, he thought would help in the playoffs !
