Its better to tank. Morey may try to move up into the top 10 with his assets every single draft, but the thing is its almost impossible to get a team in the top 10 is going to want to give up their pick for any of those assets. Year after year Morey has tried to get into the top 5. He couldn't even get into the top 10. So there you go, even in this bad draft no team wanted to trade us their top 10 pick. So tanking is the only way. We're not one or two players away from contending. We're one or two SUPERSTARS away from contending.
I think one of the other important things was that the only way we had access to Rudy Gay in the first place was because we sucked. Tried making the playoffs that year and getting a 20th pick or something, and there is no chance that any team was going to trade their pick in the top 10 so we could get Roy or Gay or Aldridge. In the Yao-T-Mac era, our picks were, Luther Head, Aaron Brooks, Carl Landry. Role players in every sense. Yao was the best offensive C in the league and T-Mac was T-Mac. If Les really wants us to be pushing for playoffs year after year with this kind of roster, then I hope he does realise that we'll be doing this forever.
By the way, I want to mention to those anti-tankers: How did Cleveland get LeBron James? They tanked. They traded away veterans such as Andre Miller for next to nothing. How did the Spurs get their franchise player? Now I'm not saying tanking for the sake of tanking, I'm saying we should tank because at this stage even if Morey gets Iguodala/Granger/Biedrins for absolutely free, we'll still never be able to beat OKC, and Clippers, in a few years time.
I think Morey is just doing his job within the parameters laid out by Les. Les needs to activate tank mode. Give the organization (read Morey and McHale) clearance to earn a top 5 pick in the 2012 draft. It has annoyed me to watch guys top talent get drafted in the top 8 while the Rockets have continued to spin their wheels, struggling to trade up. No team has succeeded on the path Les has them following. Suck it up for a season. Morey is doing as good a job as can be expected given what he has to work with, but it is easier to move up from within the top 10 than to struggle to move up from the outside looking in. Given the youth on this team along with the new coach, 2012 might be the season to get that pick.
It's kinda amusing how it's always the same people who are wrong, and somewhat tedious. So now were acting like the Celtics 4th best player was the key to a championship and ignoring their actual best player who was acquired for...wait for it...a buncha assets and expirings! Amazing CF logic as usual, I expect no less.
I think a value-based trade of assets for a superstar (like Boston did for Garnett) is just difficult to pull off. How often does a player of Garnett's caliber get traded w/o being a free agent? Very very rarely. The last player with as big an impact as Garnett to be traded was probably Charles Barkley. That was a long time ago. On the other hand, a lot more top quality players have been traded when threatening to leave via FA. DWill (a bit early), LBJ, Bosh, etc. So that's a more realistic model. Thinking back to teams that have obtained a franchise player this way, I think our best model is the early Shaq Lakers. Their team stunk for a few years, and then built their way into mediocrity (Eddie Jones, van Exel, Elden Campbell). That's about where we are. Then they cleared a huge amount of cap room and got Shaq when he became a FA. There is no way they would have been able to do this if Shaq hadn't been a FA. So that's our model.
yao didn't pan out so that's not a good point. sucking doesn't guarantee anything. i think that's a big reason why they prefer not to suck.
so much wrong in this post it's almost like you make the wrong decision evrry time on purpose. i can't think of any other explanantion. i know you arent' going to pay attention, but i'll keep it simple for other reader's sake - morey indeed COULD have landed a top pick in this draft, or another draft, if he was willing to overpay. that's a very important distinction. so far, he has not been willing to do so, but there may come a time when he decides it is worth taking a swing for a grand slam. if no superstar trade after a few years, it remains a possibility that morey can cash in all his assets for a top lotto pick. its another way to blow up the roster without tanking a whole season in order to do so. i'm sorry its too difficult for some people to understand. tanking is for losers.
LA didnt tank to get Shaq and Kobe. just sayin. we are not as glamorous as the lakers but it's possible to rebuild without tanking.
The OKC/Supersonics and Grizzlies aren't doing too bad. I think they made the playoffs or something this year. Sarcasm aside, you can look at the Rockets a decade ago. We were horrid, then we drafted Yao Ming and Steve Franchise, and flipped Franchise for T-mac. It didn't turn out that well, but at least we had a foundation to build upon.
Now we're pretending that Francis wasn't acquired for Othella Harrington and Brent Price, among other scrubs? K.
Francis absolutely did not want to play in Canada and the Rockets took advantage of that. The problem is, do you see Morey duplicating that in the near future? Players these days don't 'hold out' lest they want to be blacklisted by every team in the NBA. My original point still stands, many teams were horrid before they were good again. You don't think OKC fans think its worth it they traded Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis now that they have Durant/Ibaka/Harden/Westbrook? That said, I don't think Morey needs to blow up the team. He just needs to trade Scola and Martin (two of our more valuable assets that I don't think will actually decrease our win rate that much, esp. Martin) for valuable draft picks or an all-star.
If you can guarantee that the next draft will have KD and we'll be lucky enough to get him then I'm all for tanking. Problem is you can't guarantee that blowing away your roster and enduring seasons of losing will result in a superstar. Pointing to exceptions and making it seem like tanking=superstar is just pure stupidity considering the amount of evidence to the contrary. If you look at our roster today, we have the number 2, number 6 and number 8 draft picks of the 2009 draft. Why don't you just pretend we tanked and got those guys for our trouble? You can get your fix ogling all the high pics while I go watch "mediocre draft picks" Patrick Patterson and Marcus Morris wreck shop next season.
PPat and MM are solid role players, maybe even borderline stars in the future, but it's been established time and time again that a team needs a superstar to win the championship. And you seem to think drafting a superstar is 'luck', you must not have that much faith in Morey or Rockets management then. I believe given a top 5 pick, they will bring in a player who will make a big impact. It's also pure stupidity to think we have a chance to draft a superstar positions 14-30 when most superstars are drafted from 1-13.
Is this an accurate look at our cap, not counting the rookies of course? http://hoopshype.com/salaries/houston.htm
Problem is good management won't get a top pick. That's like saying you expected LBJ in cleveland to only score 5ppg and get 1 steal/assist/reb a game so the Cavs will stink and give them top picks that he can compete with. Just as LBJ can't help himself and put up monster stats and give his team a high seed, a good front office can't help themselves and will continually get good players that will win the team games. Sometimes you get a perfect storm in which a great GM gets a blank slate to work with and a superstar happens to be in the draft (like OKC), but those are few and far between. If its bothering you so much then just go and be a fan of OKC, nobody's twisting your arm to be a Rox fan. FYI though the Lakers have been the best franchise in the L for the last 20 years, and the only top pick they got was Bynum for number 10, and he wasn't even that important to the Lakers' success.
After a few more years of not selling out, perhaps Les will have a change of heart, because the fans have zero reason to buy tickets right now.
Spurs - drafted Duncan. 4 Chips. Mavs - drafted Nowitzki. 2 finals, 1 chip. Miami - drafted Wade. 2 finals, 1 chip. Celtics - drafted Pierce. 2 finals, 1 chip. OKC - drafted Durant. Conference finals. Orlando - drafted Howard. Made finals. Chicago - drafted Rose. Made conference finals. Minny - drafted Garnett. Made conference finals. Hornets - drafted CP3. Made conference finals. Utah - drafted DWill. Made conference finals. Lakers - Yankees of the NBA. FAs like Shaq, trades like Pau Gasol, Kobe at pick no. 13 just happen for them for some reason. Oh and... Houston Rockets - drafted Hakeem. 2 chips. As you can see though, most teams that became good drafted a superstar. And built around him. So when you say drafting a superstar is far and between, I disagree...there's always 10-15 teams in the league with a superstar or even multiple superstars.
Okay. What's over-paying? Because I'm pretty sure if it involves dismantling our whole team for a single high draft pick, we're going to be tanking anyway. Is that difficult for you to understand? This debate is AMAZING to me. By Morey's own admission he is trying to do something that he doesn't think ANY team has ever done before in trying to build a championship quality team without ever dipping below .500. And you guys are acting like it is RIDICULOUS to suggest that we MIGHT should try going the route that actually has worked before? And, for the record, while the Lakers didn't need to tank to get either Kobe or Shaq, they did only win 33 games in 1993. All of that is irrelevant though considering Houston is neither one of the largest markets nor most glamorous destinations. But what I really don't understand is why any of you care if we tank or not at this point? Nobody is suggesting we intentionally throw games - just that we go young and lose the natural way. Do you really think it would be less enjoyable to watch a bunch of young players develop than it is to watch our current squad fight and scrape so that they can fall short of a playoff berth anyway? Or, if they're lucky enough to make the playoffs (and cost us five or six places in the draft in doing so), get knocked out in the first round like nothing? How is that fun? Personally, I'd rather go watch young players develop and see the Rockets lose than watch a mediocre team go nowhere. I'd prefer having some hope for a brighter future.
