C'mon bro, gotta admit it's still the NBA and the guy has been kicked around the league. It's cool to see him ballin when no one thought he could.
Oh trust me I'm not taking away the fact that its a feel good story and the guy could be made into something rather than what he's gone through, but to berate Morey for waiving Lin is just a bit amusing.
Letting him go was not a mistake. Lin was picked up knowing all the while that he would not make the roster. He was snagged up for the sheer case that they were able to make any moves before the season started. Unfortunately they werent able to do that, and had to let him go. They did him a favor by getting him extensive PT in the last preseason game to audition for other teams like the Knicks. No NBA team would rightfully keep 4 PG's on their roster anyways. Also listen to Morey's podcast this morning on 610. He has great things to say about Jeremy and his experiences scouting him in college. The Rockets saw more in him than almost every other team before 8 days ago. And to be honest, its worse in Clutchfansland to have a player like Lin sitting at the end of the bench because then everyone would be going crazy with "Free Lin" threads almost daily.
Sure in the THREE games Lin has played, letting him go over Flynn looks like a mistake. Lin looked good in the 6 minutes of preseason we got to see too. I fully expect Lin to maintain a level of play that is higher than Flynn, which isn't that hard. Morey has admitted it was a mistake, so I don't really know what else you want him to say? Flip Murray scored 20+ in 10 of his first 11 games for Seattle in 03, let's see if Lin can keep it up. I don't think Morey was even evaluating whether Lin was better than Flynn when Lin was released. If Lin didn't look like he was to be better than Dragic or Lowry, then it doesn't make much sense to waive Flynn who you are going to have to pay anyway, so that you can pay a different 3rd string PG who isn't likely to play any significant minutes anyway. Maybe Lowry's injury makes that a bigger deal, we shall see. If you think Morey "should have known" Lin would put up 20+ and have a 10 assist game in his first 3 games as a starter, then I think you are being unrealistic, because even the Knicks who were the only team to offer him a spot didn't know until they found out by accident almost half way thru the year. The Warriors didn't know and they had him an entire season. The Mavs didn't know, and they had him on their summer league team. I think it's safe to say that if ANYONE in the NBA knew they would have picked him up off waivers and he would have played more than 3 games this season.
The best hitters in baseball still fail more often than they succeed (just to use another sport an an example). No one is perfect and even GM's are allowed to make mistakes.
Cutting Lin was actually all part of Morey's master plan .... This tweet is the second step. Morey sometimes looks too good in the eyes of other GMs .... So he willingly made a mistake and then tweeted about it to show other GMs that he is only human .... when in realitly he knew that Lin was better.This way other teams will be more willing to deal with us. Also Jeremy Lin is a spy for us. He is being secretly paid by Morey to make sure the knicks dont get a top 5 pick ... but also to start sucking if they start doing too good :grin: All in all a genious plan by mister Morey
Bad move by Morey. He didn't have to know if he was going to have starting potential, but surely he had to know he was better than Flynn...
I think the jury is still out on if Jeremy Lin is better than Flynn. To say that after 3 games against bottom 3 defenses is a reach, especially considering Flynn's productive rookie season. The Pacers offered the 10th pick overall for him after that year. In any case, Flynn's contract situation was much more favorable going forward. He has value as an expiring. For two players who would likely never see much time anyway, keeping Flynn was a pretty obvious choice.
I failed to see your reasoning. They didn't pick him up for making the roaster without a trade, that's fine. Picking Lin up for whatever reason was not a mistake. But they picked him up and failed to see his potential or how good he could be, it becomes a mistake. It may not be a strategy mistake, but at the very least level, it's an evaluation mistake. Again, the assumption Lin would never get a chance sitting on Rockets bench may not be true. Even Johnny Flynn got chance earlier in the season. And nobody would expect Parsons to start at the beginning of the season.
Steve Novak has averaged 19ppg during this recent stretch. Its crazy that some people here think he is a having multiple fluke games.
Hill was never remotely close to being the best player on the court for any of the games he played, and he played a lot games. Lin played starting minutes for three games, and he was the best player on the court in all those 3 games.
Straight up throwin' it down with the Knicks. Honestly, I am considering watching the Knicks and... enjoying it? Thought this day would never come.
It's NOT amusing exactly because it cost us. We are talking about this because of two things: 1. We could have had him, and now he's helping the one team we want most to fail. 2. Morey is supposed to be the master of picking up players like that, i.e. players that are undervalued by everybody. Alas, Morey himself undervalued this kid and let him slip through. Morey himself is essentially saying, "If I knew back then what I know about this kid now, he would be playing for the Rockets right now." To be fair, the decision to release him was a reasonable one. But given the expected abilities of Morey, it's a big deal.
If you watched the games, you'd know that Novak wouldn't average close to 10 points without Lin. Lin was the one to make all those NY scrubs look better than they are. That's the main reason I think Morey made a mistake. A PG who makes others better is different from a PG who gets his stats.
Morey already said he regrets cutting Jeremy Lin... That means he knows it was a mistake. However he is still correct in saying that NOBODY knew Lin would play like he has the first 3 games this year. That doesn't mean that nobody knew he might be better than Johnny Flynn. If anybody did know he would play at this level, he would have been picked up on waivers by someone else, all of whom basicly had the same amount of film as the Rockets did. The Rockets only had him for 2 preseason games where he played 6 minutes combined, and a hand full of practices with Lin probably getting very little participation considering how much the new coaching staff had to go over with their starters. Even the Knicks who did pick Lin up didn't know, or he would have been playing way before the last 3 games.
