If you were the GM.......what would you have done different ?

What better team?

 

You would have traded Yao and T-Mac because of being injury prone, and then pulled the trigger on a deal for a guy with an injury history where we weren't allowed to give him a physical? How does that make any sense?

 

Using your reasoning we all should feel sorry for Morey, because he's doing us a huge favor by being the GM for this hopeless franchise. The Rockets and their bad luck is holding him back because he could easily be winning championships elsewhere.

Well if that's the case my friend he should move on because you can't say we can't win big without him, because we haven't won big with him. I like Morey (he's done some positive things) but he's not above criticism bro.

 

hornets. they had cp3 and david west when he was with them if i am not wrong.

 

i can easily turn that around on you/morey and ask him/you why he would bank on yao/tmac being healthy and not amare? that doesnt make sense

and amare doesnt have half the injury history that yao or tmac has. his last serious knee injury was in the 05-06 season. other than that, he's had the eye problems but that doesnt affect his game other than wearing goggles. so it does make sense to trade for him bc he's been putting up great numbers since his injury in 05-06 and hasnt had any problems since. yao and tmac? every year it's the same song: theyre out for the season.

anything else?

 

Let me ask a question, was there any anger from RA about not getting a new contract? If not, I wouldn't be surprised if we let him go to get a cheaper coach for a few years until we build a team that can actually contend and need to pay more for a better coach. I could see him coming back in a few years when (hopefully) that happens.

 

Things I'd have done differently with the information available at the time:

-Draft Blair with a second-rounder
-Trade Brooks last season
-Trade Scola last season
-Make it clear to Rick after Yao's injury that our young talents with upside are to play a minimum of 20 minutes per game.

Yes. With the benefit of hindsight, we can point to mistakes Morey has made. We could also complain that a batter hitting .330 is failing two-thirds of the time. Both complaints have about as much legitimacy.

We've avoided the big cap-killing deals. We've cleared the dead wood and gotten younger and more athletic. We've found numerous players who have outperformed their draft slots. The vast majority of the time, we've made smart trades. We do not have a superstar, but we are not in a position that precludes us from getting one. You could argue that if a few of our players had performed at the start of the year like they did at the end, we might have been able to deal for one already.

To those complaining about the 30 players in two years: First, this is not an unreasonable figure. As Morey pointed out, the Celtics have had the same number in that timespan. Second. We. Are. Not. A. Contender. I'm not sure how you think we can become a contender without making moves, but if you've got an answer, I'd love to hear it.

And the center complaints are silly. Hill, Thabeet, and Miller are all centers on the roster (four if you count the big fella) Be honest with yourselves: You're not complaining that Morey didn't bring in a center. You're complaining that those centers aren't Brook Lopez or Joakim Noah. Good centers are not common, and the few that exist are out of our price range.

Implicit in the criticism is the idea that Morey is in fact not a good GM, and if we had a good GM, we would be better off. Can you point out to me the NBA GM's who have done more with less in a shorter timespan? If Morey is as unremarkable as you say, there should be numerous examples.

 

I don't think you're really familiar with micro-facture surgery or the continuing concern that Stoudamire's knee would hold up over the long term. Here's one ESPN article titled N.Y Takes Amare Despite Injury History . And here's a more recent article with more information about Amare and his knee. I cherry-picked a few quotes below:

Anyway, we were stuck with Yao and McGrady. By the time we realized the seriousness of their injuries it was too late to trade for anything of value, or even trade them at all. I just think it's disingenuous to question them about not getting rid of Yao and McGrady early, and then be completely 100% behind mortgaging even more of our future on another injury risk without even giving the medical staff a chance to look at his knee. Any team would be taking a huge risk to take Amare without at least reviewing his injury (which the Knicks had the luxury of doing before signing him).

 

Life is full of what ifs so I'm going to give you a couple. What if Portland had drafted Durant instead of Odem? OKC would not be as good as Houston right now. But OKC has him and right now OKC is one of the better teams in the West.

Now, what if Yao can get healthy enough to log 15 - 20 minutes of quality ball as a sub. And what if the Rockets can get their hands on Kanter or Biyombo in this draft and they live up to the hype? Suddenly this Rockets team is serious contenders again.

The roster as is will not challenge for a championship, but we are not that far away.

 

If I were Morey, I would have told Rick Adelman what the plan was going forward and asked if A) he could get on board with that idea for the Rockets and B) that the job was his if he was okay with that plan.

I imagine that is how the plan went down, but you never know. I would have treated RA as a free agent and told him he was our first choice. I have no problems with any of the other moves.

 

If by a little you mean committing 100M on a guy who's knee condition is unknown then yeah, that's a "little" risk

 

My point is that the same job done by the same person under different circumstances results in vastly different perceptions.

If Morey had surrounded Hakeem with the current cast, everyone would hail him as a genius. But he didn't, he surrounded a Yao Ming who can't get on the court with this cast. So he's now an idiot who only crunches numbers.

 

Tmac and Yao were in the final years of their contracts, Amare would be signing a 5 year extension worth over 100M. If you were my GM and you told me you were shipping out Tmac and Yao because they were injury prone, but then were bringing in another injury prone player signed for 5 years to the max, I would slap you.

 

Once Yao went down this season, Martin, Scola, AB and Battier would have been gone for picks and young players. I rather take my chances in the draft then trying to trade for a star or via FAgency. Grow the star like SA, Dallas, Lakers, OKC, Portland, and NOLA have done. Trade for key complimentary pieces much like those same team did, not the other way around.

 

When? The only time Morey could have got more value for McGrady than he did was prior to the 2008-9 season. Would you really have shipped him *or* Yao then when they just picked up Artest and ran off a 22 game winning streak the previous year? McGrady and Yao were still relatively young and well thought of then. I tell you one thing, Morey would have been lynched if he moved either of them going into that season. People were freaking excited back then. Nobody was ever saying that Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis were leading the Sonics to anything. Presti had a far easier job and landing Durant with the second pick was a gift from the Gods.

 

Point taken. I never said the man's an idiot. He's clearly not, but he's not the god that many make him out to be either. I was just pointing out the flaws in his GM game. In my opinion he should trade the valuable vets for draft picks, because the man is as good as any GM in basketball on draft night. His recruitment & treatment of valuable players on his roster could stand some improvement though. Remember, he doesn't have a lot of experience and could evolve just as players do.

 

It seems many people are taking this whole "Morey is god" thing too literally. People say it with players all the time when they do something incredible. It's a figure of speech, not meant to be taken literally.

As for what Morey can't do, expecting perfection out of a position that cannot control everything is pointless. It's like complaining to scientits that your cell phone can't work forever. Or complaining to a doctor that he can't cure every disease. Morey is not a god, obviously. He does his job, which is to bring in the best possible players given what he has. But he's still limited by circumstances beyond any one person's control.

 

Let me get my head around this. The team with the best sports medicine staff in the NBA is offering to trade you their superstar with a history injuries that tend to be chronic. Said supestar will walk in free agency if he is not given a 5-year, 100 million dollar guaranteed contract (and might walk anyways). For said superstar they are asking for a significant chunk of your available assets.

And you're willing to pull the trigger on this deal...without a physical?

 

I would have drafted Rudy Gay, Deandre Jordan as I would have before the draft. Not after hindsight. Those the guys I wanted at that time. I would have I would have had Tmacs replacement in Rudy Gay here already. So that means as soon as he had a long stretch of being healthy I would have traded Tmac. At that time or during? Some guys where not yet stars and as expensive to get as they are now. I could have traded Tmac for Danny Granger or multiple players from Atlanta like Josh Smith and some other guys off that roster. Then I would have probably had to keep Yao because of Les Alexander. Thats ok because we would have had Deandre Jordan and Chuck Hayes. I would have kept Carl Landry and Scola together. Then still drafted Patrick Patterson. Then I would have traded Landry and Ariza who we still have, plus our draft pick and Brooks for Chris Paul. Our lineup would look like this.

Deandre Jordan/injured Yao
Scola/Patterson/Hayes
Danny Granger/Budinger
Rudy Gay/Lowry/Budinger
Lowry/insert a drafted or free agent point guard

 

I forgot I had Chris Paul on our lineup too.