I'm sure there is more but that can't be found at this time. ~36:00 <iframe width="658" height="371" scrolling="no" src="http://www.sports790.com/player/embed.html?autoStart=false&useFullScreen=true&mid=23007007&osu=null&startButtonColor=0xffffff" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" ></iframe> Daryl, where are you in the world this morning? Today, Madrid. Madrid, running with the bulls! No, come on!(laughing) You sound like a complete US idiot! Pamplona is the bulls. I'm sorry. My bad. What's going on? Are they in the playoff stages yet or where are they right now? Different overlapping leagues over here. Some are in the early stages of playoffs, some are in the very end of their league play like we are. I caught Valencia yesterday and Real Madrid today. Nice win for your team last night. What did you make of the defensive effort? I tried to download the game. I've only caught highlights so I can't comment in too much detail. That game was massive. The difference of waking up over here in Spain with a win vs a loss was huge for our playoff chances. Now we've put ourselves in a good position and we're gonna have to get our work done and close it out here. Do you think it would be helpful or irrelevant for McHale if he's able to find this team in position with a couple games to play, kinda knowing where they're headed or being clinched in the playoffs, if it's helpful or irrelevant for him to have his rotation set in place. Last night seemed like a real good example of what I bet he wants. 9 guys played, 4 guys off the bench all get reasonable minutes, 10-20 each, and that seemed like this is our team kinda game that we'd like to take the playoffs. Yeah, I'd think he'd to get down to a set nine. We pretty much have our rotation set except for the big spot. We're still feeling out who will give us consistent minutes among Donatas, Greg, and Thomas and how much we'll go small vs not. Those things are still to be worked out. Obviously not ideal but we're still working those out. The traded sorta created the situation that we felt was a good one for the future but probably made things challenging here in the present. I heard Matt Bullard talking about the evolution of the 3 pt shot and where it was shot. He mentioned he hated the corners. He and other 3 pt shooters felt like the top of the key is where you wanted to be. Is it specifically it's a shorter shot why a lot of the guys prefer the corner now or anything else you've seen why it's become the sweet spot? Certainly on your team that's the sweet spot. It's significantly shorter. It's not just shorter. It's a foot and half shorter. It's a significant difference. If I went back and charted Matt, I bet he shot better in the corners. He's probably not remembering that too well. Almost every player in NBA history shoots better....a foot and a half makes a big difference. It's just closer. It's not rocket science. A player like Motiejunas, who is getting regular starter minutes and is part of this team, the way he is built mentally, do you think he is okay with the inconsistent play he has delivered and it won't affect the way he plays or his confidence? He's a confidence player. Really our whole team is up and down in their confidence except for James and Delfino. Those two are probably the only guys on a given night you know what you'll get almost always. The rest of the team, yeah they make some early shots, their demeanor will change. Jeremy, Donatas, even Chandler, up and down the roster and it's natural for young players and guys early in their career. I think that will be part of how it is. Donatas isn't shy. He's in a slump but his efficiency is good for the year. He started off hot. He's played long enough. He's played starter minutes his whole career until he got to our team. He won't be one who goes into a complete tailspin. We feel good about him. The team is functioning well with him out there, even though he can obviously play better but the team is fine with him at the 4 spot. [Caller]: Matt Bullard was talking about how difficult it is for the NBA and especially back to backs. He said if he was the commissioner, he would get rid of back to backs, especially on the road. He says it compromises the integrity of the game. ... How difficult is it when you're drafting a player who is 19, one year out of college, compared to someone who is 21/22, played 3-4 years of college or maybe overseas. How do you judge that? How difficult is that? On the first one, I definitely prefer shorter seasons for a lot of the reasons Matt mentioned. The reason that is hard to do is there would be a drop in revenue league wide in the short run. I think the league would make the money back in the long run. I would definitely be for a shorter season. One of the reasons we've had success this year is our relative youth gives us an advantage in a longer season but I'd be for shorter. On the draft, every draft pick comes down to what is their likelihood to hit and help you get closer to a championship and contribute at a significant level and what's the variance or risks around that. As you get farther into their college career, generally the variance goes down but so does their chance of being an all-star. Generally all-stars or guys at a high level, which are the real difference makers in the league, they generally are playing at a high level early at 18/19 years old and dominating whatever competition they're playing. The reality is you're always making that trade-off. That's why you see younger players go early because the difference makers are generally productive at a young age. You see the older guys who can help you and people wonder why they are passed up but it is rational that teams sometimes pass those guys up...as you get later in the draft, you're generally looking at guys who won't be big time difference makers even though they can help your team in the rotation.
I'm curious if Morey had a chance to meet with Sergio Llull today? Llull is said to not be interested in the NBA and he isn't getting any younger (will be 26 next season) How much longer can we hope that he comes over before we give up on that idea?
<iframe width="658" height="371" scrolling="no" src="http://www.sports790.com/player/embed.html?autoStart=false&useFullScreen=true&mid=23032326&osu=null&startButtonColor=0xffffff" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" ></iframe> Spoiler Your passport must be loaded right now? It is. I get all these strange looks from the passport folks. I even got into an argument with one of them. They were like "What city did you start in Europe?" I said "Moscow". They said "Moscow is not in Europe." I was like "Some people consider it in Europe." What is it considered if it's not Europe? Uhhh I don't know. Asia I guess. Most considered it Europe. I'm not sure. By the time you're done with basketball in 15-20 years, you'll be able to create your own travel guide. Yeah, it'll be how to find a pillow and an internet connection in as many places as possible. Tough game last night against Indiana. Roy Hibbert probably had the best game of this life last night. Asik got quick early fouls and Motiejunas did not play well. Outside of Greg Smith, nobody on the team played well. We've been having a conversation about the PF position and how guys play and how guys earn minutes. Let me know if you agree: you're gonna get production some nights out of your PF position and some nights you're not but is the PF position secondary to the overall success of the team this year? While the PFs were not good last night until Smith got moved over to some 4 minutes, the reason you lost last night because Harden & Lin didn't play well. Would that be fair? I would start with...I did download the game after I got up here...I'd start with they played well. They do a best job as any team in the league taking away the easy looks we get through transition and through our read and react offense. I give them credit. Then I think, yeah, the four spot, we've had probably below average production there all year. You won't get above average production from every position or we'd be in the discussion for Western Conference Finals, which we're not right now. Patrick was giving us the best minutes. We've had good moments with Donatas, Thomas, Greg and playing small with Carlos but we haven't had any consistency and overall, probably our worst spot for the year for the team. Handful of a games left in the RGV. Jones back as a part of that. My thought though was, are there nights, last night a great example, where there would be benefits of even having him available when one of the four's so ineffective and unable to stay out of foul trouble? Is there a benefit at this point in his season having him available here rather than there and unavailable? Our guys were out-hustled and competed by Tyler Hansbrough. Frankly, he's legendary. Maybe only Faried and a couple others have a motor like his. Terrence Jones I have been closely tracking and watching his minutes in the D-League. Frankly, it's a tough situation for the coaches. I don't know who the best four is. Terrence Jones could be the best four on the whole team. He's had issues with consistency and why the coaches gave Donatas, Thomas, and Greg the first shot. Terrence is very talented. I don't think we'd benefit from having Terrence up. Frankly the coaches gotta go with...we made our first bets that it would be Donatas, Greg, and Thomas who will give us minutes there. It's hard as a coaching staff to work in 5 and 6 guys and give them all minutes. You gotta give the guys we're going with a good long look and long run, if they make the most of it like Greg hopefully is taking a step forward, then great. If they don't, maybe we mix and match but not until next year. More often than not, players won't give the other team too much credit like when we asked last night what went on, in your mind, and Vogel certainly said so, that was a well-executed defensive game-plan on Harden and on the Rockets last night. Not good, great. Vogel is a great coach. We interviewed him for our spot but he was tied up with Indiana by the time we interviewed him. Obviously we've done very well but long way of saying coach Vogel, who I worked closely with in Boston when I was first in the league, is doing a tremendous job. They got personnel to do it but are also executing it. They're intensity on D was maybe the best we've faced all year. Hibbert is a bit of a Rockets killer. I like us single guarding him. I generally don't like doubling the post and I think the coaching staff usually agrees. Yesterday Hibbert hurt us obviously. We don't know if we doubled him the whole game if they might hurt us with spot shots, which happens as well. I was very impressed with that Indiana team and the win. I don't think we played well either. We were probably closer than we deserved relative to how well we played and how well they played. You were asked a couple of rule changes you'd like to see. One was, you wanted an alternate possession instead of a jump ball. The other was, you thought there should be no fouling out in the NBA. Why do you think that would be beneficial or why would you like that? Yeah I think coach Van Gundy and I talked about this one quite a bit. I think it's silly...no other sport takes your best player and removes them from the the field for the fans. You can commit an infinite number of penalties as a defensive linemen and Lawrence Taylor is going to stay on the field. I think what you want to do is ratchet up the penalties for fouling as you go. There are multiple proposals out there. You can pick and choose which one you like. Generally, increased penalty of the foul(s) vs remove the stars from the game, which fans don't like. Like additional free throws, get the ball back after a free throw....? Yeah, additional free throws, a free throw and the ball side out, that would kill it pretty quick. You just ratchet up the penalty for fouling. That would be something I look to move to. Again, those are twitter questions and after 15 seconds of thought. If I sat down, I'd think of 4 others that'd be more important than that. ... What about the idea that it is basic basketball strategy? I see the counter-argument but at the end of the day, there is one win and one loss every night. Their main goal is to ratchet up people tuning in and the entertainment value of a product and if your focus is that, removing stars from the game doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We know superstars don't foul. Yeah, they don't normally foul out but why even have it? Why not ratchet up the penalties to the point, if your 7th foul was 2 shots and the ball back, the coach might remove him anyways. Make it a strategic choice vs removing him automatically. And the jump ball...? A lot of wasted time. We don't set rules of who has to stand where. A big fire drill that makes a waste of time and no one cares about. The college guys argue they want to get rid of the alternate possession because it penalizes the defense. Yeah, I don't understand that. Because the defenses force the jump ball and you give it back to the offense. The only difference you have is, rather than being 50/50 at the NBA level, you're going to favor more athletes than taller players, which is fine but I don't know why we need to reward that more. Then, you're wasting time lining up. Otherwise, I don't see how it penalizes the defense. I wouldn't agree with that. What level of surprise that the Heat streak ends at 27? None. It was an amazing thing. It's hard to win 10 games in a row at any point. I finally sent Shane a note, I was holding off, I didn't want to jinx him. I didn't want him to break the streak. I told him that but if it was going to be broken, having it broken by Shane was pretty cool. From a Western Conference perspective, not knowing where you'll finish, where 3-4-5 will finish, if OKC/SA could flip flop, nothing has been decided. Are there things you have seen from the way this team has played? The consistency factor, is that the nature of how this team is built? Being inconsistent bodes well for the playoffs frankly. If we were very consistent and only a team winning 30...37 and 32 I think we are, if we were consistent at doing that, we'd have almost no chance at a 7 game series. The fact we can often play at this high level and beat teams by 20, 30, 40 points says we won't be favored but we might catch lightning in a bottle and a young player steps up....like Daniel Gibson a few years ago went on a magical run that he probably hasn't replicated since. Things happen in the playoffs. You might get an injury. You never know. Most likely right now we're facing the Clippers or Thunder at this point when you map it all out. What city are you in? I am in Munich. A German basketball league game to take in or on your way back to the states? Caught a couple German basketball games, we're heading to France, then back to the states. We talked to Patrick Beverley about his travels and some of the ins and outs of the languages he had, Russian being one of them. He said he talks to Donatas on the court every now and then, knows no one else can understand them. How are you able to do that? Your tour guide or yourself? Very poorly. I'm very American and only know one language. I know quite a few programming languages but other languages I'm pretty bad at. So you speak to people in like Pascal or something like that? It doesn't work for speaking to people. I'm just trying not to feel quite as inadequate as with our tourist who is here with me, who speaks like 25 languages. It would be very excruciating painful and boring to try and see you communicate with zeroes and ones. (Laughing) Yeah, it would be not the best for anyone. Without getting specific on names in the NCAA tournament, are there enough players available that there are some you are watching? Are there players we might select? Yes. There are people we would still select still playing. What's your perception about the class of players you expect to be in it? I find it really hard. You still don't know who will declare from international or domestic. I think in general because we don't have a high pick very likely, you psychologically start to dislike some of the players. I do think there are always good players 30-40 because generally there is a usually wide mid-tier talent pool that even goes into undrafted like Hayes, Lin, Wes Matthews, Brad Millers. There is definitely always going to be at least one player in the 30s where we're picking that you might unearth. All the young guys you have on the team, would it make it less likely you're looking to buy a first round pick? Is this a year where you would draft and stash? It's very hard to buy first round picks. We always buy second round picks. We've traded into the first round. I think we'd do that again if someone was good enough and we thought it was good. We're not in a huge need for young players but with that said, you gotta be opportunistic. I do agree strategically, trading that pick into the future or using it international makes sense strategically but if a good enough player is there, you can't make the mistake of using your current circumstances to make you do something that isn't smart. While on Europe and your efforts over there, the guy you got in a small deal, late in the draft. Kid from Turkey. What has he done? Yeah, Furkan Aldemir. He's been fabulous. Good chance he might come over, which would add more pressure, to your point, we don't need a ton of young players at this point. Aldemir has a good chance to be in Houston next year. Can you describe his game? Basically Omer Asik but 3 inches shorter. The PF version of Omer Asik? He can probably play more C. He's strong and thick enough. He just won't be 7'1. He'll be 6'10/6'11. He can screen. He can roll on offense. Pretty limited offensively. Elite rebounder, one of the best Europe has ever seen. [Caller]: Royce White, I feel he is a special talent and if he gets to the NBA, he won't go back down. What do you feel about Royce White? He's come back. He had 2 very good games, helped the Vipers clinch the top of their division. He'll likely play the next 4 we have there and we'll see where it goes from there. For Royce, even if there wasn't bumps in the road, was probably challenged to get playing time, given the number of young bigs we're trying to work in. Terrence Jones has probably outplayed Royce and he can't get minutes. It was going to be a developmental year for Royce no matter what. It's good we addressed a lot of the issues with him this year and I think it will set the table for success going forward. Can you address the plan for 4 regular season games remaining. There will be playoffs for the Vipers. His role over the rest of the regular season and playoffs. Is he included in those plans? Yeah, I think it's very likely, barring injury and we need him with the Rockets, that he'll play the remaining regular season games and then play it by ear. See what's the best plan at that point once we reach the end. All these guys, are these all summer league guys? All your PFs basically. Is Robinson a SL guy? Royce and Terrence Jones. How many guys would you like to see? Seems like you could almost field two SL rosters. Yeah, we looked at doing two. We may not. Logistically, it's very challenging. I agree, doing two makes some sense. I think all our first and second year players generally play SL so I'd expect that's what we do this year. 5-2 home stand. Challenging schedule ahead. Still sticking with the Gators to get to the final four? Yeah. I had good inside info from Chandler on picking Florida. If we can get one of these next two, two would be fabulous, if we get one of the next two, we will have continued to set ourselves up well for both the 6th seed and the playoffs. ... I'm gonna have such a party when we get the X. It's feels special if we can get this done, in the playoffs this year. It's frustrating when you're out of it for awhile. Are we invited? Of course you're invited.
lol I hate it when people from EU confuse it with Europe. Good for Morey to teach the border control some geography lessons :grin: (although he wasn't really sure).
Interesting they think Terence Jones has "consistency" issues and that's why coaches are giving Thomas Robinson the first chance. Robinson looks like garbage out there. Much rather see Terence Jones. In a few years, if Jones gets his shot he'll be a much better NBA player than Robinson. Like I've said in prior posts. Undersized 4s like Robinson that become starters (Millsap, Landry, Bass, West) enter the NBA their rookie season with offensive skills Robinson just doesn't possess. Robinson might end up a Chuck Hayes, Jones though looks like a guy that has Landry type skill.
Yeah, that is great Aldemir news. Wow, that just not have the same ring to it. If Furkan comes over and is playing with Harden, we can have a thread before each game guessing how many days the other teams play by play guys will be suspended after each game.
Thanks, JR! If Firkan comes over is it because the team wants it - - or because the player is forcing it? Also, sounds like GSmithGSmith rather than 6'10" OmerOmer.
- Basketball isnt the only sport that removes a star for penalties/fouls, i.e. Soccer - I hate the sentiment that we have basically hitched our wagon to trob and dmo, and that it is too late to insert Tjones. If he is the better player, just play him, there are still 12? games left.
Wrong. Soccer removes players for unsportsmanlike offenses, not penalties. Essentially the same as 2 Flagrant 1s(Yellow Cards) or a Flagrant 2(Red Card) in basketball. Basketball is the only sport that you can foul out in.
Soccer differs from basketball in that soccer fouls tend to be vary dangerous to the victim's health. At least mroe so then basketball fouls. If a basketball player continually got flagrants for throwing elbows and such, I think Morey would support removing them from the game. Or better yet, ignore my post and read crose's
