I have to agree with you here although I certainly don't see how you can consider Morey's tenue thus far as "successful" given the overall lack of success he's had in putting together a true contending team. It's like you said: all of his nice little moves get trumped when a Dallas signs a Chandler or a Miami signs a LeBron. Meanwhile, Morey keeps making his "moneyball" moves which fail to advance this team out of it's rut of mediocrity. Most unfortunate.
you have to give morey leeway on his stars not panning. hell, this team was a contender without mcgrady just two years ago. how soon we forget. i'm not a morey apologist, but give him some time to work after the end of the yao/tmac era
The same way you can consider an at bat "successful" when the opposing pitcher threw 4 pitches outside the strikezone and you drew a walk and failed to hit a home run. Lets be real here: 1. Chandler was not the difference between Houston and Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki, a healthy star player instead of an injured one, was the real difference. The Mavs were something like 2-7 during Dirk's absence this year. Chandler did not "trump" Morey's moves, having Dirk did. Adding Chandler to the Rockets team would improve them, but won't carry them to a title. 2. "Moneyball" doesn't exclude the pursuit of a star-- in fact, Morey said repeatedly that a max player is usually the most efficient use of your resources--, nor does it doom one's prospect for pursuing a star. Boston is an analytics-oriented team, for example, and they acquired both Garnett and Ray Allen. The Rockets simply hasn't had the good fortunes of (a) having their own star player stay healthy, (b) being located in NYC or South Beach, and (c) having a superstar choosing to come to Houston. None of these factors have anything to do with Morey or "moneyball." Where "moneyball" does come in is to make the best out of difficult circumstances: drafting wisely, making good trades for guys actually attainable, not overpaying free agents, cleaning up you mistakes. There is only so much good management moves and good scouting can do in the NBA-- just like there's only so much a quality coach can do-- and it doesn't mean you don't want to have good management. I'd rather have the current team than one full of Mo Taylors, Mirsad Turkcans, and Kelvin Catos.
The natural criticism of this is going to be that by being incrementally better, when you're in the lower middle class region the Rockets are, is going to hurt you rather than help you when it comes to drafting a superstar...again something that isn't really as big of a deal in baseball. Sounds crazy, but "moneyball" is almost a victim of its own success. In fact, it's not really even "moneyball" but actually just "winning" or "not sucking" that we're talking about here. Now we're aware that the natural counterpoint to that argument that Morey et al. tell us is that while you increase your "superstar chances" with the draft by tanking, you actually come out a net loser because you diminish your "superstar chances" of acquiring one via trade or FA (not to mention punish your own fans). I don't know if there's enough evidence that can be normalized across all the variables to say one way or the other that tanking, ex ante, is a good thing. But I wouldn't have minded clearing out Scola and not signing Miller last year, as well as "selling high" on Battier in 2009.
1. I think what Morey isn't saying in order to not depress people even more (though the fact is fairly obvious) is that the chances of getting a superstar just ain't very good whether or not you tank-- even if you have a good front office. If these star players aren't so hard to get, they wouldn't be as valuable. 2. Even when you get a superstar, getting the good supporting cast necessary to win a title before said star's time with your team expires (for one reason or another) is no joke whether or not you have a good front office or not. For example, Cleveland, Denver and Toronto got their franchise-level players in 2003, but none of them got a title. Hell, it took the Rockets 10 years to win at title with Hakeem. 3. That said, I think even Morey would agree that there are circumstances in which you are better off tanking. Specifically, I recall Morey saying (either on the radio or at the MIT conference) that he didn't understand what Charlotte was thinking in taking on aging expensive players to try to barely make the playoffs. That team won 44 games in 09/10 (after winning 35 or so games in prior seasons), but had little in the way of "upside": most rotation guys were older, no draft picks, no salary space, no good younger guys with potential, sank right down to 35-wins territory a year later. I would think that if Morey had that Hornets team, he would have chosen to blow it up just like Rich Cho did. 4. I agree there probably isn't an exact formula for "tank or not tank." At best such a calculation would be based on the history of the league (probably during the era after 1993 or so, when the lottery system with the current odds was put in place) and of course the availability of star players in future drafts may not follow the same pattern as it did during the last 15-18 years. Roughly, I think the "tank or no tank" line is drawn somewhere between the state of the current Rockets and the the Bobcats. It's not just a matter of wins, but also whether you have (A) guys who hopefully getting better, (B) draft picks in future seasons, (C) cap space, and (D) desirable players/contracts to trade.
Bill James disagrees. In short: leadership, chemistry and other "intangibles" exist, and are incredibly important, but they can't be quantified.
How did it get to this? How did it get to the point where people believe that you can quatify team leadership? I blame the Tron sequel, primarily.
Bingo. Well, one of the questions people ask me all the time is "What's the next frontier of sabermetrics?" Maybe [quantifying intangibles] is it. I don't know. Maybe somebody will try to figure out a way to classify personalities and quantify the impact of those. I don't know. I doubt that's going to happen in my career. But maybe the next one. - Bill James http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...ames_on_clubhouse_chemis.html?syndication=rss
Lets see, franchises rewarded for tanking in the lotto era San Antonio not Boston same year with the lotto variable i don't think its ever a good idea to tank. also, very few drafts are strong nowadays like 03. the most superstar caliber players you get in a draft today are maybe two. and if it isn't about getting the superstar, then its pointless.
I like how Chandler is being compared to LeBron when the top offer for him was Dampier's corpse. <3 CF
you CAN quantify leadership and other intangibles, by comparing the best leaders to the worst leaders and examining the differences from many different statistical angles. anything that can be observed can be quantified. eyeballs and gut feelings work fine sometimes, but adding pencil + paper + brains + computers will give you an even better result. in the end, thats all statistics really is. i'll never understand how or why somebody would be avserse to the collection of observations and data.
intangible just means you don't know the stat yet, doesn't mean it is non-existant. there are many things in this world that used to be considered intangible, until they were observed and tracked and became tangible.
