[ClutchFans] For Rockets, winning in 2012 would be nice, but losing might be better

You talk as if it is for sure possible that Les can be talked into things. NBA owners are successful businessmen and most think that what they think and want is best. You think GMs in the past didn't try to talk Donald Sterling into spending more money? Until the owners are really willing to listen it doesn't matter who the GM is. Sometimes the best you can hope for is someone that won't let the owner ruin the franchise.

 

Thanks for the in depth response. I agree with a good majority of the points made. Im not entirely sure that Morey's hands are tied, but theres a def. a compromise he's dealing with internally that is a bit baffling.

Its going to be an interesting Summer thats for sure.

 

Morey has tried to cut the team's legs from under them last year by trading two starts in AB & Battier. That was very sneaky and downright disrespectful. I am glad Adelman found a way to stay competitive, because Leslie and Morey probably wanted to force Adelman to tank.

I wouldn't be suprised if the "direction" the team was going which supposedly was the main reason Adelman left. He wasn't in favour of this new direction which I'm thinking now might have been tanking. They might have indicated they wanted Adelman to develop young guys, play with minutes and rotation and don't worry about wins i.e. tanking. If so, much respect to Adelman for turning them down!

 

Post Gasol debacle there was almost zero time before the season started to get a deal worked out. The Rockets most likely refused to do a "Lamar Odom" type of deal where they dumped him for nothing just for being too sensative about the trade.

Morey most likely assumed the trade deadline would be a good time to try and move Martin, but at the deadline Martin's value was just at an all-time low. Something nobody would have been able to project.

The Gasol deal not only cost the Lakers loosing Lamar Odom for next to nothing, it also destroyed Kevin Martins value for the rest of his tenure with the Rockets unless he has an amazing first half of next season. In that case, his value is still pretty low given that he's most likely going to be considered a rental for a contending team.

Retaining Martin & Scola after the trade might been a choice if there was an option out there to get "something" back, but going back in time no one in their right mind would have just dumped two quality players like Scola & Martin for nothing but trade exceptions when just two days before you were able to get Pau Gasol for those two & Dragic.

Its just insane how much that vetoed trade completely screwed the Rockets front office plans for years. The effects of that are still coming to fruition.

 

they were GMs but it doesn't mean they were good GMs. just like a good scout, he can not only recognize talents but also convince his GM. if you can't, your finding will never be known.

 

That doesn't really answer the main point of my last post which is what makes you so sure that a guy like Les is open to being swayed. Not everyone is open to opinions no matter how sound your logic or reasoning is. Mitch K is a pretty good GM but if Jim Buss Jr. had refused to offer Bynum in any deal for Howard there is nothing Mitch could have done about it. Sometimes the owner puts his foot down and you just have to do the best you can.

 

All true, but to be fair, the Jordan Hill trade was similar to the Portland trade in that it was for the future, so even though we went and got Camby, Morey did also go for a future type of deal as well.

DD

 

It has been beaten to death that DM doesn't tell the coach who to play. General managers manage and coaches coach. No sane coach would have started Thabeet and Williams. I guess some of yall wanted DM to trade every quality player and field one of the worst Rockets teams of all-time. Could we have just forfeited every game?

 

I think your echoing what I was getting at in my previous posts. Clutch did a great job of explaining his stance on what he saw and his frustrations with the direction, or lack thereof this team took the past two seasons.

To me, what it all boils down to is the front office's mindset going into last summer was to pretty much rebuild by stripping the team down even further and they were going to most likely trade away everyone on the roster if they had to. At the time everyone in the media was like... what... Keep Adelman, keep Martin & co. and build on this. Clutch was thinking, yes, strip it down and rebuild.

However, something in the last year or so changed in the front offices moves and their stance after the Gasol trade debacle. There have been moves that were made like the Dalembert signing that shows that Morey was trying to compromise either to McHale's demands, or Les' demands to actually try and make the playoffs.

I personally believe to properly tank you need a coach who is on the same page with the front office about the direction they truely want. Most coaches will not accept the job of a team who doesn't truely want to win for a year or two and knows they are going to be babysitting young brats until you finally get thrown under the bus like a Paul Westphal type of coach.

The front office was walking a fine line between keeping the coaches and owner happy, and trying to rebuild the team with youth. The coaching situation is often overlooked. They want a solid coaching staff that can develop and properly coach up the young players they have, but they know they cant keep on tredding water like this.

I dont think Morey's hands are completely tied, but I think he has to seriously show compromise to someone in the organization.

 

Solid Article.

I liked the idea for competing and rebuilding at the same time at 1st. But its been 3 years now and always the same result - we cant pull off major trades, we cant seduce premium FAs into playing for us. We cant even make 8th spot.

Dont know what the answer is but its time for a change. Enough is enough. And hurry up about it.

 

I hate posting on Friday night, because then everyone knows you have nothing else going on that night. Ugh.

However...

If there ever were a year for all-out, no-holds-barred tanking, this was it. What could David Stern have said or done? It was HIS OWN DAMN FAULT. We should have played the worst possible lineup every game and dared him to call us on it.

 

That argument doesn't really hold water, because the scout and the GM both want to do the same thing: draft the BPA. As a scout all you're trying to do is convince the GM to pick player A over player B.

In this case, Les Alexander doesn't want to tank and DM is trying to convince him to tank. Its entirely opposite of what the owner wants to do, its like saying you have to convince your boss to give you a big raise otherwise you're not a good employee. Firing DM won't do a single thing, unless you want the owner to pick a worse GM and end up in the lottery anyway due to sheer ineptitude.

 

Lmfao Adelman found a way to compete after trading Brooks and Battier?? Adelman is the one that insisted on playing both of them, and the team did better after his twin crutches were removed.

In fairness I don't think the strong finish last year was all moving Brooks and Battier, middle of the road teams have hot and cold streaks, we saw it last year and this year... But at the end of the day you have a mediocre team with Adelman and McHale.

 

You just helped proved my point thank you.

 

Wasn't Lowry starting when Brooks got traded?

 

The Cavs offered their #4 pick in last year's draft for Rudy Gay. Jonas Valančiūnas was the 5th pick. If only the Rockets had a scrub like Rudy Gay they could use as an asset to move up, they would have gotten Valančiūnas.

 

First off, great response clutch. Let me respond only to the last part when you said brick on the accelerator. There is this internal thing called self preservation. Now I've read and heard posters talk about how if morey is fired, he would be scooped up tommorrow. I challenge posters to show me why other teams would be so high on morey? What has he done so great to warrant the rest of the league to take notice? He hasn't built a great team,nor acquired great players in any capacity. Let me go further.

In the act of building a resume, it looks a lot better for morey to lay down his track record if he doesn't have losing seasons. Let's not forget that morey is stil new in the nba and he's still being judged. I mean its one thing for rick adelman to say he's gone because his track record speaks volumes, but morey is a lot different. So, the game morey was spitting sounded good, until the self preservation thing kicked in. If they were truly committed 1 way or the other, adelman was still a better option than mchale and I like mchale. I highly doubt a hands off guy like les e-mailed,sent a text, or called morey and told him how to construct this team.

The article that keeps ringing in my head is the one in which morey is the one who convinced les to sign off on the battier for the 8th pick deal. I've mentioned this many times, what has changed? How can all of a sudden les has morey in a chokehold and preventing him from doing his job? Morey was the gm in training and convinced the owner to give up #8 for a role player, yet he can't convince the same owner that its better to play younger player more even if it means more losses. Les didn't seem to have a problem with the francis and mobley show. Again like I'm saying, morey is building his best resume for his out. His resume looks a lot better without a big loss season. To me, that's where the shift came.

 

I had never read or heard that particular quote before. Wow. Morey's saying exactly what many of us here are saying...that you have to take a step back to take a step forward. But he's completely tied down by Les.

And at the same time, I'm assuming that ultimately Les will hold him responsible for being unable to do the impossible: rebuild and make the playoffs in the short term as a true competitor all at the same time.

I've said it before...it won't shock me at all if Morey walks this job fueled by the frustrations of being under those parameters and his frustrations with Stern.

 

Eh...I think the Battier is a far easier one to sell to Les than taking a step back to rebuild. Battier is about wins NOW; not waiting for a younger player to develop. That seems like a move it would be pretty easy to convince Les of.