Talking about 'the art of the trade' (from 12:12-25:45). Stream: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/player?rd=1#/podcenter/?id=6177544&autoplay=1 MP3: http://c.espnradio.com/audio/522555/openmike_2011-03-03-103855.mp3
Ha. But seriously. It's a very interesting interview. Possibly the most interesting Morey interview I've ever listented to. If you haven't already, go check it out.
Spoiler Lets start with a simple anecdotal perspective: what is the 2 weeks, week, and last 24 hours of the trade deadline like? 2 weeks out, you're putting out your highest priority feelers. Things you're hoping to accomplish. Any feeler or any early offer, everyone just doesnt know. If the greatest offer was ever offered, the other team would say no at the beginning. About a week out, you're getting to secondary ideas. You wanna get these things on the radars of the other teams. A lot of teams have complicated decision making processes between owners, CEOs, GMs, and Head Coach, its complicated to get something done so you wanna get things on their radar early. Again, everybody just doesnt know. Everyone wants to look at their options and everyone is trying to get the best deal they can. Usually, things dont shake loose until All-Star weekend when everyone meets together. Every once in awhile things get done there if things make sense like this year with Denver and New York. Everything else falls into 3, 2, 1 days out and even then the morning of when it's a big game of chicken where teams are trying to do the best they can. If you are the one pushing it, you end up being the team that ends up paying more than the other team usually. How does your in-house politics lay out for decision making of yes, this is a trade we can make, no it's one we cant. We're pretty simple. We got a good owner in Mr. Alexander. He makes things simple. We dont have multiple owners. Got myself, coach Rick Adelman who is incredible to work with. Got an attitude of I'll coach the guys you give me but when I need input from him, he'll give me great input. Got a good staff that is prepared. We have it easy I think. I worked it Boston --they have a good process too but when you have multiple owners it gets a little more complicated. Most teams have...more than half the teams have more than one owner --minority owners. So that adds some complexity. We've been able to use that to our advantage in the past. The Luis Scola deal --some of it was because other teams...the Spurs had a deadline to meet, we were one of the teams that could meet it because our decision making process was quick and straight forward. How involved is ownership. I dont want to say the Brooks-Dragic deal, that wasnt a small deal because it involved rotational players but not a Carmelo level deal. Is that the level of deal your ownership or any ownership around the league would still be involved in yea or nay? A lot of misnomers on ownership involvement. Here's the bottom line: every owner is involved with every decision with every team. What people should think about is if you were the owner of a team would you just shut off your phone and wake up the weekend before the deadline and the weekend after and say "Hey, what happened?" No, you would want to be involved. It's appropriate and right that they are involved for a couple of reasons. 1. Generally, owners are very smart. If you cant explain your rational for doing a decision, you should go back and do your homework on that decision. 2. Often, they are the only ones that have the right exact time horizon. They're gonna own the team for a long time. A lot of our decisions are short term, medium term, and long term. Often, if the owner is the only one who can make those calls. Also, often you have 2 choices. There is no right or wrong answer. You can go in a direction where you push your chips in the middle and go for it or smartly maybe setting yourself up for a better team down the road. There is no right or wrong answer. That comes down to what direction the owner wants to go in. The owners are all involved and all appropriately involved in my opinion. If you can roleplay here, so instead of using players, you had the...I'll use local politics. You had the ESPN play by play announcers for the NBA --myself and Mike Breen, and you're gonna call TNT to try and make a trade for the two of us for Marv Albert and Kevin Harlan. Hold your jokes everybody. Anyone who gets me get the worse end of the deal. Let's get that out of the way. Roleplay as me. You're picking up the phone, calling my guys. How do you start the conversation of the trade of Breen and Tirico for Albert and Harlan. Breen and Tirico and Albert and Harlan. Well I guess first I'd have to assess...step 1 is to assess what's your evaluation of the talent you have in terms of how much you think they're worth vs how much their paid relative also to how much they're being paid in the future. Then compare that to who you're trading with. Then make your own assessment of what that's worth. Then you have to make a guess of what the world thinks of that. So not only know what ESPN thinks but what your competitors think --CBS, FOX, etc. We'd have to understand what they think of your assets. Lets get through all that. You've decided on your end that that's a trade you want to make. How does the conversation go as you pick up the phone, do that first kick of the tires with the other guys, TNT in this case. Hi, how are you, I got an idea for a deal. How would that conversation start from your end? Step 1 is you're trying to gather information. Both sides..you'll ask them what goals they are trying to accomplish. You dont bring up the deal immediately. You ask them what goals they're trying to accomplish. On the flip side, to make it free flowing, I'm usually very open about our goals we're trying to accomplish because time is short and I'm ok with other teams knowing what we're trying to do even though you can lose a little leverage that way. I'm more interested in getting deals done that will help both clubs. To speed up the deal, I'll be open about the goals. If it sounds like the goals will line up for that deal, you name one name, not both. You say "What about Marv Albert? What do you think? Is that someone you're open to moving? What are you looking for?" You start with each name. Assess where it's at. Usually takes a couple of conversations before you get to maybe what you're hoping to accomplish. Would you go into the initial conversation(knowing with what you would want back) with almost a column a, column, b or column c, depending on saying what they like or dont like or this guy is untouchable, we want to keep him? The reason I'm having trouble with your question, usually the best deals are done not by you going in with an idea what you want to accomplish but by trying what they want to accomplish. You're trying to find out what they want to accomplish as part as due diligence? That is correct. If it lines up your deal works for both sides, great. But if you go in with too much of a proactive mindset of I'm trying to get x and y done, you'll end up missing out on an opportunity. So, what we'll try to do, most teams are good at this, my counterpart GMs are good, one of the things that is making it harder to win in this league is how well run these other teams are. I start with what are they trying to accomplish because thats where the best deals are done. Unless you're doing what they're trying to accomplish, you're not gonna get a deal done anyway. No team is interested in helping me out. I've found out more in the last 15 years, its not the former player moving into the front office, although it can be, but now you have at the college level, more business people who have become athletic directors. And now in pro sports, you have less guys who played the game but more guys who have become experts or scientists if you will at the game. Much of your background goes back to MIT, served as professor at Rice w/ their sports management program as well. You have, going back to moneyball theory, as great as grasp of analytical, statistical data and how it impacts a trade. How much do you look at all the analytics and stats and data as you start to make your decision of "Yes, this is a good trade for the Houston Rockets." We look at it as a weapon. We feel we are continuing to learn about that weapon. We think it helps us. At the end of the day, this job is about decision making and making right decisions. Every decision you make is based on some assumption. If it was the trade you proposed, I might have a going in assumption that you really help us with 15-35 demographics. You speak to them. I'll make a trade based on that assumption. Before we make our trade, we'll say what are the assumptions we're operating under and lets go check to see if they're true. Lets see if we're right about that before we make that trade if thats the key thing of why we're making that deal. All the numbers, statistics, and probability is using our normal human intuition but we're adding a level of check to it. Lets see if we're right before we do it. That's really all we're doing. What's the feeling when a deal is done? Papers signed, all the sudden, the new player, Dragic this deadline, that is your player now. What is that feeling like? It's tough. Sometimes it is sad. You often say goodbye to players you were close to. Shane Battier and Brooks --Brooks was first pick of me as GM. Shane was...I hope I'm not insulting any of my other players but by far the favorite player I ever had on the roster. Great person and great player. Thats tough. Some sadness. A little like the first day of school. You got the new players in there. You turn into a fan a little bit. Excited to see how these guys are gonna do for your team. Generally, a lot of butterflies. Like in real life, conclusions are drawn from people on first impressions. Dragic on first play, he drove the whole way and layed it and I think, even those tiny little first impressions make big difference to fans and everyone else so that was fun. Especially with finances and labor issues in the NBA, the trade deadline came more interesting and exciting. Made pressure on GMs hire. Appreciate your input on the art of a deal. Daryl, thanks for time. Thanks for having me on the program. Appreciate it Mike.
Just as I thought, RA knows about every trade made. It's really his typical way of deflecting high expectations when he says "I wasn't responsible for any of the trades made."
I think it's a way of maintaining professional boundaries. Publicly Morey doesn't comment on Adelman's moves and vice versa, but behind closed doors, you can bet they give input and suggestions to each other.
