Sources: Morey wanted Dragic over Lin, Les forced him to get Lin.

Now you're being ridiculous. What good would Aaron Brooks do in a playoff series against the Portland Trail....oh wait.

 

sure it is.. If Howard didnt get the technical this play wouldnt have mattered.

 

Who says I think harden is the best player on the team.

Also I know why you are asking. Go watch that skeeter player if you care so much

 

That's one thing I'll never understand, no one seems to care about the bone headed plays by parsons bev and harden that led us to being in another tight game in the first place. Baskets scored/given up in the first qt count for the same amount in the 4th. I recall batum crossing parsons so hard parsons literally spun, or the backbreaking 3s lillard drilled in bev's face (none bigger than the end of the 3rd, although bev was hustling hard) or harden's overall garbage play this playoffs.

 

What if Dragic agreed to the contract Morey offered him. It's not totally inconceivable, is it? Were they going to have both Dragic and Lin?

 

Yes I do think the player option was a HUGE DEAL at the time, and Morey was more than willing to walk away from a player that at the time was going into his 6th year in the league and had never averaged over 11PPG and 5APG and the team was essentially looking to tank or trade their way to a franchise piece. Dragic was obviously NOT viewed as a franchise piece, and if he was to be retained, he would HAVE TO be a TRADE ASSET.

-You do realize that the worst contracts in the league are typically the ones that end up having player options on the last years of them right?

-You do realize that at that point NOBODY knew that Dragic would blow up this late in his career?

-You do realize that at that point, Morey could probably give a rats a#$ what the fans thought of the Rockets going for Lin instead of Dragic right?

There was no reason to "cover up" for anything if that was the case. Actually at THAT TIME, if they did choose to go after Lin instead of Dragic, most fans here would and DID support the outcome of that decision anyways given the state of the franchise, the need for a "face of the franchise", and the perceived upside of Lin vs. Dragic's again.... AT THE TIME.

That's all good and well, but The FACT is, the Rockets decided to let Dragic go before they ever go after Lin. It was all but a known FACT that New York would match "Any offer up to a Billion Dollars". Signing Lin was no guarantee at all for Morey or Les, and the only reason the Rockets got Lin was because Dolan got his feelings hurt by the way Lin went about agreeing and re-negotiating behind the Knicks back.

The Rockets signing Lin ended up being a freakish(lucky then, and unlucky now) occurrence, and was probably never something Morey & Les were banking on happening. Asik was much more realistic to see happen.

The Dragic non-signing, and the Lin signing are too different mutually-exclusive signing situations. There was never a this guy over that guy conversation I'm almost positive. The only thing those two have in common was playing the same position.

Folks around here sure have a terrible memory.

 

You don't understand the concept of a game-winning shot or a game-losing play?

First, think in terms of probability. If a player turns the ball over in the first quarter, what are the chances it will lead to a loss? If a player turns the ball over like Lin did, what are the chances it will lead to a loss? The probabilities are different.

Also, the urgency is a lot different in the final moments of a game. Consider making free throws when the game is tied 0-0 vs. making free throws when the game is tied with one second left to play.

Great players make clutch plays. Other players fail to make clutch plays.

 

Everyone blames Lin for the lose and he did make a bad play to lose us the game, but so did Beverley by dribbling into a corner and Harden by running into that corner. The problem with Houston is that they lose for stupid reasons. An end of game play should be coached to be executed way better than that! A missed shot at the end of a game is disappointing but understandable if the play is executed correctly. For me the blame belongs to Morey and Mc Hale for these loses and not the players. We do not have a point guard on this team and Morey knows this! We HAD to get one at the trade deadline and instead you can argue we gave our closing thing to a pg away. Mc Hale with his stubborn and hard nosed but non systematic coaching is now showing its true colors and as a result Houston has to win this series despite his coaching instead of with it.

 

Lin isn't a good player, but I put most of the blame on McHale. He's just a poor head coach.

 

QFT. ^^

I just don't see how Les wanting Lin transpired given the timing of what actually happened. Why did Morey even offer Dragic a decent contract if he was instructed to let Dragic go and get Lin?

 

You see how people are commenting about this, and it leads me to believe that they simply weren't following the team around the time this happened. I took this pretty blatantly as two separate occurrences that weren't mutually exclusive, and it certainly was reported as very obviously that way.

However the Lin signing did feel a bit reactionary to the lack of a deal being made with Dragic, and the fact that they literally didn't have a PG on the roster(Toney Douglas, and Machado were acquired later). I do think there was some panic behind the scenes with either with Les and/or McHale that did push Morey to go harder after Lin than maybe he was wanting to.

That makes a ton of sense to me, and it makes sense that the contract that was given was a product of internal negotiations between Morey and Les/McHale. Ultimately it looks like Morey conceded and that's why he went OVER his initial desired contract to give Lin the larger deal that I'm sure he regrets now even though I KNOW he actually liked Lin as a player(reason why he went after him back in 2011 for their training camp roster).

You said you didn't know why Morey would offer Dragic a contract, well I think he wanted a quality PG on THAT particular contract (19 mil over 3 years with a TEAM option in year 4) to get another asset in his quiver he can later trade. Dragic would have been an asset on that contract for sure, and even Jeremy Lin on a 6.3 mil contract next year with a team option in the final year would have been a much better trade asset right now. Had Morey not went back and bumped up the offer, we'd have a completely different viewpoint on the contract Morey was really wanting to give in the beginning and the player on that deal (Lin).

 

so, neither Mcfail nor Daryl wanna take the responsibility so it finally and inevitably slipped to the owner?
quite revealing how this team fail.

 

Everybody makes mistakes during the course of the game. But when a team fights all game, finally gets in a position to win, and all it has to do is run the clock out. The LAST thing a team needs is Jeremy Lin not knowing the clock situation, Jeremy Lin running across the baseline instead of calling a timeout, or Jeremy Lin committing a r****d foul giving Portland to ft's. This guy is a liability and has cost us at the end of almost every game this series. He's basically getting paid starters $$$ to come off the bench and F-up every playoff game he plays in. Great job Jeremy

 

I think anybody with a basic basketball understanding would know that Dragic was a better player than Lin. If Les forced Morey to overpay Lin he is just stupid.

This team had Lowry and Dragic in our hands, two very capable PGs who became borderline all-stars, yet we chose to let both go. Now we are stuck with Lin and Beverly, two players with obvious holes in their games. That is just bad basketball management.

 

What are you talking about?

-OP said it was a playful jab
-Morey WANTED Lin (brought him in before Les and McHale even knew who Lin was) and has been his biggest advocate publicly

-Anyone who has followed the Rockets and the NBA GM game for longer than a day knows that giving a Player Option to a VETERAN player who has NEVER shown that he can play at an all-star level when you are OPENLY trying to rebuild your roster through young talent and trade assets is a bad GM move TYPICALLY. NOBODY could have seen the jump Dragic would take this late in his NBA career.

-The contract Morey originally offered Lin would have made Lin a much better trade asset
-The going back and bumping the offer was most likely where they messed up, but that's on everyone involved. The structure of the contract makes me believe it was a group effort to appease everyone (Morey, Les, and McHale).

I'm 100% positive that Morey will take ownership of letting Dragic slip away at some point in the future just like he took ownership for letting Lin slip away MULTIPLE times.

However right now it would not be appropriate because it speaks negatively about a CURRENT player Jeremy Lin. It would be highly inappropriate for Morey to comment on Goran Dragic publicly right now because pretty much anything would be taken as a jab at Lin.

 

Tell yourself whatever you need to but we have an insider here telling us different.

 

What a ****ty organization!!!

Cant believe Morey and Les would consider this scrub at all.

Do you trust the Rockets front office for player assessment and analytics.

HELL NO... not with this championship breaking decision!

 

I don't know. Ask Les. He was the one trumpeting his determination to sign Lin. The articles I linked to provide the context.

And I wouldn't have been surprised if they would have signed both guys, so long as the numbers made sense in Morey's spreadsheet.

 

Different than what? There is literally nothing different than what I said, I'm just putting more things into context a little more based on the timeline of how things went.

"Morey wanted Dragic over Lin"

Well Duh... he tried to sign Dragic before he tried to sign Lin so .... um yeah. However it wasn't either or if you were around back then to see. Dragic was signed by Phoenix first, and THEN the Rockets went after Lin with the same contract they wanted Dragic to sign.

"Les forced Morey to sign Lin"

Well yeah.... that's exactly what I said if you actually read what I said. However that doesn't mean that Morey didn't want Lin on a BETTER, more TEAM FRIENDLY contract.

Morey originally signed Lin to the contract that he wanted to sign Dragic to but couldn't get him to agree to, and then once they found out the Knicks were going to match, SOMETHING made Morey go back and offer him more than the original offer, and with a different contract structure.

That SOMETHING obviously was pressure from either one of or both Les and McHale.

and in no way would I think that Morey wouldn't jokingly throw a jab at Les around the office about how they could have had Dragic. However he'd be ill advised to even talk about Dragic out in public or it could be seen as a slight to Jeremy.

 

Lin's TO lead to an overtime, it did not lead to a loss. The team's in ability to out score the Blazers in overtime lead to the loss.