The Rockets' Approach This Offseason Might Not Involve Using Cap Space

1. Because he wants to win.

2. Because he will allow his front office to make the big trade.

3. Because he is willing to pay the luxury tax to win championships.



Les is doing his best to change the modus operandi around here to one like the Lakers and Celtics, just a constant reloading process. The Lakers and Celtics are either winning championships or they are retooling to win more championships.

The Lakers have missed the playoff 5 times since 1949. That means they've made the playoffs 92% of the time (58/63). They've gone to the Finals 31 times and won 16 titles. Yet they've still traded their way to a lottery pick (Magic) while they were winning. And yet they haven't failed to trade away superstars for younger talent as those superstars aged and showed cracks.


The Celtics have missed more playoff seasons than the Lakers but they have won 17 championships in 66 seasons since their inception. That's 25% of the championship won by Boston. They've went to the Finals 20 times. That's 30% of the Finals they've played in. They've went to the playoffs 50 times. That's 75% of the time.


This is what Les is trying to achieve for our franchise.


Right now, in our 44-year history, we have made the playoffs 25 times. That's a little under 57% of the time. And we've won 2 titles. That's 4.5% of our years. And we've played in 4 Finals with a 2-2 record. That's 9%.

Les has won 2 championships in 19 seasons as owner. Hasn't accomplished anything?? So, he wasn't responsible for the first one? Perhaps? But the second one? Who do you think signed off on the Drexler trade that took us to a second championship?

These are the kinds of numbers Les is looking at and wanting to surpass. He wants to win and he wants to win all the time. Can't say I blame him. And for those reasons, he is a great owner. He tries to hire the best people to draft and trade for the best players and win more than anybody else. He's one of the best owners in the NBA.

I'm not saying I agree with everything he does or has Morey and the front office do. For instance, in this lockout-shortened season, in a year where the draft is deeper than normal because of players staying in, when I could see in January that we were not a playoff team, I felt like we should tank out and go for a big draft. It was a compressed shortened season and we had the opportunity to capitalize on a deep draft and still be able to come right back rebuilt younger and better than this season. I would have asked Morey and the coaches to tank it out, play young guys like Morris, Patterson, Dragic, and let the other vets ride out the season with minimal minutes and risk to injuries, maybe even trade some of them away at the deadline for the right deal to get even more picks and young talent back. Then in this key offseason with loads of picks, cap space, and young talent, go for a top-notch free agent and a quick rebuild. But instead, they were competing all season long, they went and got Camby and made a huge push to get up off the mat and stagger into the playoffs. In hindsight, it didn't work so well. But we don't know all the story yet. Perhaps our vets showed enough resiliancy and value that we can trade them for a legit superstar? That chapter hasn't been written yet, has it?

So, although I don't agree with the approach that Les took this season, I still have to say he's a great owner. Because he wants to win all the time.

 

Wake me up when the Rockets make a move worth getting excited about. The failed pursuits of free agents and hearing after the fact that we were oh so close to getting that higher draft pick or making the big trade all gets old. I've loved the Rockets for the last 25 years but they have become very uninteresting.

 

The houston rockets; not bad enough to be interesting, not good enough to be interesting.

 

DITTO most posts in this thread. Good Post jopatmc!!

 

Thank you. Can't say I agree with all your conclusions, but I better understand your perspective. My view is summarized by my signature. Les bought a championship team and has done little since. He has not, in my opinion, demonstrated that he can build a winner. Other franchises have retooled several times while the Rockets seem to run in place. Let's face the facts; if Les wants to win all the time, he has failed.

 

One thing I see right now is Les doesn't totally trust morey's decision making yet. And Morey hasn't been around long enough and proven himself like Jerry West and Red Auerbach did for their franchises. IF Morey is ever able to trade for a couple superstars and it produces a championship, I would expect Les' view of him to change somewhat and come to more trusting Morey's talent, his ability to evaluate and value players and coaches, and his ability to trade and/or draft for a winner.

 

Les more or less has a direction and leave the details to his basketball people. So really, you can say his fault is in trusting Carroll Dawson and Rudy T, both of whom were thought of as heroes for years following the championship. Morey is 2 years into his own plan. Dawson was around for 10 years and Rudy 6 since the championship.

If you were the owner of the Rockets after the Pippen debacle, would you have kept Rudy and CD for the rebuilding? Or would you have fired them? Because the course of the Rockets during Les' tenure mostly revolved around those two.

 

Les merely pays lip service to wanting to win. If you go by results, he's done squat.

 

Im not saying Morey has been successful at accomplishing his goals (short or long term). What I was commenting on was the posters opinion that Morey's moves such as -

09ers, Adelman vs. McHale, Dalembert vs. Hayes, etc.

have not affected their long term goals in a negative manner. If anything they have slightly helped put them in a better position to potentially get to one of those goals.

Yes, Morey & the Rockets Org.(players, coaches, owner, GM all combined) have failed at accomplishing their 3 main goals that were set since last year.(trade for superstar, make the playoffs, develop all-star player already on roster or drafted)

That being said, I personally believe the moves that were made did not put the team in a WORSE situation moving forward. If anything they slightly helped. I see those moves as doing something to try, but they have yet to succeed.

-I dont know, maybe you seem to think that this team as stands would have been a contended if only Adelman was still the coach. My opinion on that is it wouldn't have made a bit of a difference. Martin would still be butt-hurt over the trade, Lowry still would have got sick, Dragic still would have been awesome, and T-Will would still be T-Will. I think Adelman is a better coach than McHale, as do I like Chuck more than Dalembert, but that doesn't mean that it would have made a bit of difference to the longrun sucess of the organization.-

Its fair for the fans to note though that the bar of success-

-Young team to make playoffs with no all-stars
-Trade for a superstar
-Young player or multiple players to take the next step to become an all-star

Is very high, and the likelihood for success is not very good for a team that was in the situation the Rockets were in the last two years. So if your measuring the success of Morey based on those 3 big goals alone, then your likely going to be dissapointed and disgruntled as a fan to begin with. As it seems like a good deal of former fans of the Rockets are on this site.

I think its perfectly fair to judge Morey and the rest of the organization for those 3 goals they have set in place. Morey himself has said in interviews that its fair to judge that.

However, I would like to see more compelling solutions being discussed rather than just b****y problems being cycled over and over again. Thats just me. Carry on.

 

If you go by results, Robert Sarver is one of the best owners of the past decade.

 

You bring up some good points. For one, I love Rudy, we all do. He may not have been the best at drafting for talent, I am not sure. CD was a great assistant coach, but an awful GM. Some horrible contracts. I think it is fair to assume that Les isn't really a basketball expert. I am starting to wonder if Morey is either. Somebody better pull a rabbit out of hat, and quick.

 

Hillboy, you and I always seem to be on the same page. Obviously, all of us on this site are serious Rockets fans. We just have different perspectives on how the team should proceed. Do you personally see anyway out of this mess? I think they are going to have to get lucky, because I don't think they have a lot else going for them.

 

I don't like the position the Rockets have in for the past decade and a half- but Les isn't entirely held to blame. The man paid the luxury tax, and bought 2nd round picks. So it's not like we're the Phoenix Suns who just refuse to spend money at all.

Plus, the only owners with rings since Les took over were:
Mark Cuban
Jerry Reinsdorf
Jerry Buss
Mickey Arison
Peter Holt

Not exactly a broad range there. I'm unhappy with the way things are to, but there's no reason to hold Les to a ridiculous standard.

 

It's hard to accuse Leslie of not trying. In his tenure, the team has acquired Drexler, Barkley, Pippen, Francis, McGrady and Ron Artest. He even traded 3 picks to move up for Eddie Griffin. Some of his moves didn't work well, and the team hasn't won a title since the 1995, but it's not for a lack of trying.

 

Haha, so in other words, you can't have common sense conjecture, the words oppose each other. lol. Always fun to see people try and use big terminology, in completely the wrong manner. I, myself, have been guilty of this in the past.

 

By results, I was referring to the organization he's put into place as owner. Do not forget that it was Steve Patterson that built those championship teams under the previous ownership. Under Les, since that time, the scouting, player moves and drafting have average to below average. Worse, the organization has drifted alone with no clear or coherent philosophy or strategy - it's been one failed gamble after another. The mantra that we keep hearing here is that Les wants to win yet if that were really the case then why has he allowed his organization to slide off into irrelevancy? If Les was so committed to winning, then why hasn't he demanded more accountability from his organization over the past 15 years?

Now, I read jopatmc's thoughtful post and while I accept his viewpoint, I also feel that he is being far too kind. It's as if he's going out of his way to give Les & friends the benefit of the doubt and they have come to depend on that happening. So, when they offer up excuses and rationalizations for the lack of on the court success year in and year out, they know the fanbase will buy into it because that's what they have done for the past 15 years. There has been no pressure on Les and the organization to get their act together up until now when they have suddenly realized that the Rockets have become an afterthought in the city (they have long been an afterthought in the Western Conference). To an owner who was truly committed to winning, 8 trips to the NBA lotto in the past 12 years would have been intolerable yet I fail to see any indication that Les was even mildly annoyed. Perhaps it was because that during the Yao Ming years, there was all that money to be made by tapping the Chinese market and that was more important to Les than winning in the NBA. During that time, just where exactly was Les as things went from average to whatever we have now?

I happen to believe that the commitment to excellence starts at the top - that it is the owner who sets the tone for the organization in this regard. And all we've gotten from Les is PR sound bites about the goal every year is to win a championship. Well duh! That's the slogan of EVERY team in the NBA every year only, unlike the case here, some of those owners are actually serious about it.

 

Dude, your once in a generation shot at a hall of famer and your big trade of a decade both went down to injury. That's once in a generation and once in a decade . Maybe you should accept that fate can crush your plans and dreams and give it rest on the ownership thing.

 

Amen!!

 

There is a way out but it is not going to be an easy one. Obviously they have to rebuild but unless they address fundamental flaws in their approach, nothing will change. First of all, the Rockets' organization as well as the folks here have to accept the fact that there are no silver bullets, no quick fixes or easy moves that can be made that will magically solve their problems. Stockpiling players as "assets", gambling on draft busts and NBADLs is not the answer. Secondly, this organization has to decide on what type of basketball team it wants to be and then craft a strategy that will realize that goal. Only then do they have a chance to succeed. They need to pick a direction, stick with it and (this is important) trust in the decision.

After all, if you don't know what type of team you want to be, then how can you know what direction to take? And, if you don't know these two things, then how can you know which players to acquire? What is the point of constantly shooting for that star player when you have no idea what you'll do if you get him? And that has been the biggest problem with the Rockets - the endless reworking of the roster with no idea or plan for how said players will be used. It goes without saying that they also have no clue if what they are doing will actually work because there is no stability in the coaching ranks.

Since 2000, they have gone through four head coaches yet the results are sadly the same. So in addition to not knowing what type of team they want to be, they don't know what coaching philosophy (system) they want to adopt. And, because the style of basketball they put on the court changes every few years when they change coaches so they are constantly shuffling through players because their rosters don't quite mesh with the coaching philosophy of the moment. It just becomes an endless loop.

Finally, there has to be some sense of accountability in the organization and that has to come from ownership. Les has to set the goal of excellence and back this up with deeds and not just words. This means holding the organization responsible for the lack of results. It's his team and only he can set the standard for success. If he keeps accepting the same thing year in and year out then things will never change for the Rockets.

 

Do give us your plan.