I'll be sad if he doesn't average 10 and 5 his first season. Would that be disappointing to others? Am I aiming too high?
Even such a player like Dirk Nowitzki averaged 8.2pts and 3.4reb a game in his rookie year. So yeah... I think you might be getting your expectations high. That being said, anything is possible.
A strong possibility that you are correct, but Dirk did come into the NBA at 20 and he still needed a lot of work on his body. In Donuts's favor: he has played against harder competition (certainly not nba level, but I'd hope harder than what Dirk played against) and he has a stronger base.
The worst thing about the Rox lack of rebuilding is that they are not getting much development time for guys who need it, sure they play some that are NBA ready, but rookies are not going to make this team better.....so they might as well embrace playing them and live with the results. DD
Well - I certainly am impressed by DMo. He is not the skinny 220 pound kid that was drafted. He looks to be 240+ with a strong lower body. And while he might have benefited from playing at the top level in Europe this year, it looks like the competition may be roughly equivalent to Division 1 NCAA. And he no longer looks soft out there on the court. I could see him backing up Scola this year ( so sorry PPat - bye bye). What D-Mo has in spades is what the PF position has become in the NBA. Great range, the quickness to blow by the big PFs, the speed to outrun big players in transition and an almost unblock-able shot when he elevates and releases from rim level. Solid with either hand and seems to smell the rim when attacking the basket. Great first step and the coordination dribbling the ball of a SF. He appears to have heart and the needed work ethic also. The Rockets and the entire NBA told him that he needed to put on muscle and rebound better. And he showed up to play in Europe with 20 pounds more muscle and focused on rebounding the ball with great success. I won't deny that he needs work, but that is what NBA organizations do. I truly believe we got our 2012 top 5 pick last year at 20. Great job Morey!
I have to disagree DD. Isn't team sports about playing whoever is ready to play and everyone else works their butts off to get there in the off season and in practice. If you cannot dominate coming off the bench and in garbage time you are not going to see PT with the starters. Maybe having an off season to work on their games PPat and MM can get their, but I really doubt it. Parson's got it, the others are not there yet. And they quite possibly won't ever get it. It is an unfortunate situation when the best prospects can just coast on their physical dominance of the competition in high school and college. But that just does not work in the NBA. And therefore the fans look at the physical abilities and skill sets of players and howl to high heavens when they cannot get PT. Well, if you don't have LBJ type abilities you won't ever get PT in the NBA unless you can change your lazy habits acquired in High School and college. And that is why I doubt PPat and Morris will ever be anything other than bench warmers.
If I may..... I think your both right and wrong here. In the past, the Rockets have done well working with guys over the Summer and preseason workouts who really came back as completely different players. Im thinking of Landry, Brooks, Hayes, etc. that really did well in the Rockets system of earning playing time and steadily getting their rotation minutes going into their second season. However, this past season, the timing was just aweful for guys like Thabeet, Twill and Morris who really needed to develop on the fly and did not get a full seasons work to develop into the player they really needed to be and more importantly, how they would fit on the court with other surrounding players. Morris especially needed this. Going forward I dont see too many lockouts hampering the Rockets summer plans so I dont see the need to start throwing guys out there when they simply aren't ready to play in the NBA. At this point, it really doesn't make a difference, I understand that the Rockets are stuck in the mud in the middle. I get it. They had a nothing to loose type of season and they should have found a way to get these guys more burn on the fly. It makes sense, and agree with you about this last season. The fans also needed something to hold their interests, and seeing how young guys work out or dont work out is one way of doing that. I do also understand that you had two other factors in play. Im sure you will argue this (Im not arguing, just stating the facts) The front office was not willing to force McHale to play one guy or the next, and there was tons of duplication on the roster left over when they were not able to make the trade they thought they might make before the season started. That duplication on the roster really killed the development they should have had on the fly for guys like Morris, T-Will, Flynn even in some respect. With Motiejunas, he's going to get plenty of development time this Summer one way or another. Either he's going to work in Houston pre-Olympics/ go to the Olympics/ train in pre-season camp or he's going to work in Houston pre-Olympics/ play in Summer league/ go through pre-season camp. Either way, the Rockets are going to get an even better look at him this Summer. If he's going to be the next best thing for the Rockets, Im sure McHale will find a way to get him on the court next season. If not, he's probably just not that good on an NBA level.
jtr, If you are trying to win every game, and compete for a particular season, then yes. If you are trying to build for future seasons (as the Rockets are) then no. They should be identifying guys that will be here in 3 or 4 years and be playing the hell out of them to get them ready to compete in that time frame. Luis and Kmart are not going to get any better - but Dragic, Morris, Parsons, Cbud, CLee, Ppat - will....and if you find out they are not progressing as fast as you would like, their improved statistics due to playing time will net you a better pick or player than if they sat and degraded on the bench - like TWill. DD
DD, you always overlook the thing that needs to be trained more than anything in young prospects, and that is their work ethic. Gifting players who do not compete in practice with game time will not inspire them to work on their games in the offseason, and then we will be playing players meaningful minutes in games when they do not have the desire to get better.
DD - we have different opinions and I do respect yours. But honestly I really don't think Morris or CBud or PPat fit in that category. The best judges of talent sit in the FO of NBA teams and playing time just exposes players weaknesses. Players only develop into starters if they are mentally prepared to take whatever steps are necessary, and I outlined above why that is so difficult for many new players in the NBA. A life in high school and college where you really do not have to try to be better to dominate is tough to shake off. Parson's is the prototypical player who made the mental changes needed to succeed in the NBA. And so he just blew by Morris who has arguably equivalent or better natural tools. That is the mental aspect, and the most difficult thing to pin down on draft day. And that is the reason the Spurs are the best franchise in BB today. They have a huge success rate in identifying intangibles - the dreaded intangibles.
for the most part they're all young players with the exception of luifa. would you have really enjoyed 2011 pat pat getting more minutes this year? he wasn't going to develop anything this season. It was quite obvious that ppat was still recovering from surgery. who should they have developed? big lips? the second coming of the dream in hasheem? Morris instead of that old man Parsons? I would have loved to seen morris at the four since he can jump over a phone book and a little more greg smith but that's about it.
DD's philosophy is that you dont really see what they are made of until you throw them in the fire during gametime. There is some relevance to that, but my opinion is that this was just a bad season to view what the Rockets do normally vs. what happened this year. No offseason workouts, no summer league, no training camp, no practices = No way for the Rockets to make them truely "earn it" in practice & offseason work. I personally think the drive and work ethic they exude over the process the Rockets normally go through with young players works on an old school and new school level. However, this past season, the only way to truely guage what they had in players like T-Will, Thabeet, and maybe even Morris in some respects was to throw them in the fire to see if DD's philosophy is a true way to measure whether that drive, and competition level brings out a different level in these players that you dont see just in practice. If you look at past seasons, the Rockets had much greater success doing it their way. Lets see what kind of results come after this Summer.
So you just throw a player out to be burned to the ground against NBA starters when they cannot dominate against the opponents bench? I fail to see any logic in that approach. Crushing Morris's ego playing him against Kobe or KD seems totally counter-productive to me when he fails to shine against the opposing team's bench. Parson just goes out there and goes to work against KD, Kobe etc. and does a great job. I don't think Morris is ready for that at all. Maybe I am just not getting it.
Noticed that I said "DD's philosophy" not mine. I personally like the way the Rockets have developed players over past summers, and in camp in the past. You've seen them get great production out of players that consistently overachieve, and alot of that IMO has to do with their preparation to the game, and the skills they developed before they were thrown into the fire so to speak. This past season with no summer league, no offseason training, no preseason, no practice time, and most importantly... heavy duplication on the roster really lead to their normal development plan having a short term flaw. That short term flaw and the timing of everything really hurt the development of Morris/T-Will & co. I do not think the "Trial by Fire" philosophy is the right way to go, but this past season alot of fans preached that short sighted philosophy as a talking point of an armchair GM.
A lot of this also had to do with the fact that many thought a shortened season was a chance to take advantage of this method. Especially with the Rockets not having anything to realistically play for except a possible 1st round exit. I agree with dobro that with the shortened season the Rockets lost much of the time needed to develop those players. Sure you can throw them out there in the fire. But with no practice time to work on flaws that the coaches see , they're just going to continue to get burned. Playing one rookie, i.e. Parsons, is fine, especially when he is fairly mature and has good instincts. However, playing immature guys like twill or guys that dont care like Thabeet will get you nowhere. As far as Morris, it almost doubles with him attempting to transition from a pf to sf. I hope that the summer, training camp, and a full reg season will do wonders for Morris and also Motiejunas.
I was under the impression that DD's philosophy was unrelated to a lockout season or not, because he's constantly been all for throwing our young players into the fire, even before this season, IIRC. I guess with less practice time it becomes harder to judge our players, but even with these special circumstances considered, McHale saw enough in practice to put Parsons into the starting line-up, and enough to bench T-Will once again. With that being said, throwing our players into the game in a lock-out shortened season makes more sense than in a normal year, but I still don't think it would have drastically altered our group of 09ers development. I mean, look at the reactions of the board when McHale tried to play Flynn meaningful minutes.
I don't overlook that, but I also know, and it seems more than a few miss this point, is that there are HARDLY ANY PRACTICES DURING THE SEASON ! So, once the season starts it is shoot arounds, and very few practices to show that work ethic of which you speak of. And, young players need to LEARN, learning in practice is not 1/10th of what you learn by playing in the games. Sometimes you just have to let the young bucks sink or swim. DD
I beleive that Donuts is going to be great. I'm praying that we can also Draft Beal and Zeller some how. That will be a great young nucleas to build around of in OKC fashion. We'll have PG-Dragic/Llull SG-Beal/Lee SF-Parsons/Morris PF-Motie/PatPat c-Zeller/Camby
That is legitimate. However, the offseason is where rookies and young players make their marks. The ones that stay in town, and go to the Rockets facility and put in a day's work with the coaching staff, practicing moves and shots, learning the offense, how to run plays, playing pickup games down there with other pros, running the Rox system, those are the guys that stand out once the regular season starts and the coach has more confidence to run them out there for extended minutes when the opportunity presents itself. Remember Carl Landry. Dude is a baller. They pretty much locked him down to the bench until the trading deadline was past and then they turned him loose. They knew he could ball. He had already proven it in practices. Yes, practices. He was dominating the starters in practice. And after the deadline past his rookie season, they gave him minutes and he responded like a monster.
