The Problem is they dont want to tank... A lot of you here dont want us to tank... but somthing has to give and I dont know if it is Tmac bad mouthing us to anyone who will listen , but there has to be a reason we cant get a Top FA and why we keep hanging to the 14th pick...WTF
The truth, now, ask the hard question. "Who put this team together?" At what point do we as fans start holding people accountable? DD
Its easy to blame Morey for the roster he's put together .... but you also have to place a large amount of the blame upon Les for not allowing Morey the opportunity to "really get better". Sure , Les is willing to spend $$$ but he's not willing to risk asses in seats due to a "bad team" a team bad enough to get better. The Rockets went from a team with two stars and sub par role players to a team with no stars and more solid role players than they can play. They are a star away .... Most teams draft those stars in the early picks. Les is standing around waiting for lightning to strike ..... If you want to place blame and hold someone accountable , make sure you have the right target - Les. The more I think about it , the more this situation reminds me of the DisAstro's after their trip to the World Series ..... The team got worse yet Drayton kept trying to sell us a hog that they would compete .... year after year. Now they had a 100 loss season , have the worst farm system in baseball and a team full of players no one has ever heard of ...... and are 4-5 years away from being relevant. Tired of the 14th pick every draft , no chance at a trophy ? Stop going to games , dont watch them on TV (DVR it). Cancel that league pass. Send Les a hard message.
Today Daryl, Marc and John, good morning, how's it going today? Marc, John, good morning. One more game tonight. What are you looking for, if anything tonight for evaluation purposes? Do you look at this in a different way? We're gonna have some guys out. Chandler Parsons hurt his shoulder in that last game. Marcus Camby has been a warrior for us and probably shouldn't have been playing, so he's out. Kyle Lowry also came back early and probably shouldn't have been playing is getting surgery this week on the sports hernia he got. Kevin Martin is still out. We'll get to see some of the other guys and try to evaluate. We got Marcus Morris who hasn't had much chances this year and think we'll see some Greg Smith, Courtney Fortson, Diamon Simpson I'm not sure, he joined later than everyone else so he might not make it out there but we'll have some younger guys out there and hopefully we can finish the season on a high note here. What are you looking for from Marcus Morris as we move into year two of his career? Sure, a lot of this, we'll talk to the players once the season ends. With Marcus, we need him to live in the gym and live in the gym in Houston with our coaching staff. Work on a bunch of things, work on his ball handling, perimeter shooting, post up game when he gets a smaller guy switched on him, work on his perimeter defense, chasing through screens. A whole set of things we'll have him work on. We'll take a look at him and get a longer look in summer league in Vegas, which we obviously didn't get to do this past season. Marcus is a big priority for him and us to get him where he is potentially a rotation guy for us next year. How crucial is this off-season, not necessarily job security but of finally getting that deal done? Every off-season is crucial. You're always trying to up the probability that we're a championship team from year to year. That's really the goal we're chasing. The reality is every off-season you gotta get closer than farther. Every off-season is important. This year we definitely have among the top five in terms of cap room in the league to upgrade the team, we're gonna have two good picks in a deep draft and Donatas Motiejunas. Not to cut you off but isn't he like your #1 pick already for this year? Yeah. That's why the draft picks we have, we could use them to move up, we could use them to add players, we could use them to create a future asset that we could use in a trade(ie trade that pick for one in the future that allows us to send multiple picks to a team for a player). So we got a lot of flexibility to upgrade the team with multiple picks, Motiejunas coming over, and a lot financial flexibility. And then a lot of players of other teams around the league have interest in if we want to go that route. Although the season ended in a disappointing way, we have probably as much flexibility and ability with draft picks to upgrade the team than almost any team in the league. Evaluation on Motiejunas? I'd say it's just not fair to compare any young player to a HOFer. A very mobile 7 footer. That's the best way to think about it. Probably gives you more O than D at this point, like most young players. Ability to shoot from the perimeter but the interesting thing on offense is the ability to play in transition and also has a pretty good post-up game which something Dirk doesn't really have and probably won't develop at this point in his career. His mobility gives him potential on the defensive end but that's always something that takes time in this league. The reason we're excited about Motiejunas, he fell in the draft for probably one, couple primary reasons but one of them was his lack of rebounding at the big spot. At that point, we thought it was good gamble where we picked him at 20 with the hope he would increase his rebounding and then continue to develop his offensive and defensive game. He went over to Europe and set records in rebounding. He had an extremely good year. In this draft, he would have gone much higher just because of a lot of the things that were risk factors for us when we picked him and for the league are trending in a positive direction for him. Is it fair to say the makeup of this team, the faces we see, will be dramatically different? You can't force it. If an opportunity comes along to get a franchise big man like we were looking at before this season, then I think you could see change. If not, you can't force these things. Just because we have cap room, we can't use it like some teams have used it, bring in a bunch of middling players... Spend it just to spend it. Yeah, just to add a few wins. The reality is,...to lose a franchise big man, the strategy to getting back to being a championship contender takes years and years. We're feeling some of that pain. We're really in year one of this. This is the first year we went into the season knowing we didn't have Yao Ming and didn't have much financial flexibility coming into this season. This off-season we do. Each season away from that, we'll be trying to pull off a trade, ???which players can make that leap forward and get back to being a championship contender. We're in year one. Unfortunately, I don't even want to say the number of years because panic every fan if they knew how long it takes to go from franchise player to franchise player, we're trying to flip it as fast as possible because that's our job but the reality is, it generally takes time. Favorite players of the 00s? I'm gonna be biased towards the ones, I obviously didn't come until 06 so Yao Ming, Shane Battier, Luis Scola and Dikembe. My favorite guys I had on a team both on and off the court. All those guys were unbelievable competitors and people. That's what you remember over your career. This is our last visit. Thanks for all the Daryl Morey shows in the season. Appreciate the times you've been with us. No problem. I'm surprised we didn't take calls from the angry mob. Pitchforks are out. We know fans are frustrated. We're absolutely headed in the right direction. We got a team that we can upgrade over time and one that we're pretty proud of even though we fell short at the end this year. Thanks for having me on. http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/04/26/this-offseason-crucial-for-morey/ http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d1/d0/dD/dI/dU/10DIU_3.MP3
Yup. Don't think the kid is long for here. Daryl missed. Oh well. Daryl got another 14th pick to use to correct it. And when you get 14th pick after 14th pick, you can miss on at least one 14th pick, no?
In 2005 the Astros went to the World Series with an 89-73 record. As recently as 2008 the Astros were probably a hurricane away from making the playoffs and finished with an 86-75 record. Perhaps they waited a year to long to blow up the team, but you can certainly see their point in still trying to compete for a playoff berth in 2009.
Wow - the more I see out of this org, the less I think they know how to evaluate NBA talent. They have gotten lucky on a couple of flyers in the 2nd round, but their first rounds have been, at best MEH ! DD
Not that PPat has made any of us true believers either, but oh well. If Marcus goes...IF he goes...then he'd better not just be a throw-in. Dude has talent. At least aim for a comparable draft pick. (Although Morey tends to either ask for a lot or throw a player/pick into a deal just to make sure the other team with the All Star for sale will take a bite.) McHale zeroed in on Parsons pretty quickly. Morris didn't have much chance to develop. That D-League stuff might work for that 1 kid in 15 whose ego can take it, but isn't the end-all be-all that Morey thinks it is.
lol, one star away from playoffs if that is what you saying. It is Morey's job to make this team work, not Les. I believe Les has done what he can, provided full support for Morey, including cash for draft picks, which turned out nothing. As for this team, it is a mess and there isn't a clear clue about which direction it is heading. All I heard is Morey saying our goal is to make playoff. Heck, we can achieve it being a very averaged team, which is the 8th team in a 15 teams conference. People keeps talking about tanking. A good manager can make it without tanking. Everyone knows how awful the Knicks was a few years ago, and they made some good trades and turned things around. I believe Donnie Walsh is available.
What exactly are you expecting at mid first round picks? Getting a contributor, IE rotation player, is pretty much a win. They have gotten lucky on a few second round picks? They probably are best at the league at pullting NBA caliber players out of the second round. I have no idea why you refuse to give the organization credit for ANYTHING.
I honestly think this organization is at a tipping point. Actually, I am surprised they have been able to maintain the fanbase they currently have. I think this is about to change. The spin and empty promises and now the seemingly cluelessness that prevades the organitzation is about to run out of fan interest and participation. Therefore, I expect some radical moves. If not and they come up with another "Dalembert Splash" to roll out next season, they are in a heap of trouble.
