Constant pursuit of flexibility— How we lost our chance to contend

We lost our chance to contend?

Please explain what team has vastly improved so far this offseason not named Cleveland.

Are we flawed? Sure, just as flawed as every other team outside of San Antonio.

Are we worse than we were last year? Maybe RIGHT NOW, but there is alot of offseason left for Morey to add some depth without hurting future flexibilty.

We essentially have the same team that should have advanced to the 2nd round meeting against a Spurs team that we had dominated in the regular season. We were historically screwed over in 2 games by the refs and a miracle shot robbed us of a 3rd.

Maybe I am a biased homer, but I like our chances just as much as I did last year, considering we have not lost either of our 2 stars.

Morey said it best in that we find CPs, we don't give max contracts to CPs. Take a look at Nick Johnson as a reminder of how true that is. Dallas just paid a 3rd option max money for what he already did for us. Thanks, Dallas!


My god how we have become an entitled fanbase.

 

I think the original post hits the nail on the head. The team's trade strategies must change according to the situation. Morey's strategy of maintaining cap flexibility and obtaining risky assets was appropriate when the team was perpetually slightly out of playoff contention. Back then, there was nothing much to lose if we struck out since we were already at square one. Now that we have two stars, however, such a risky strategy is no longer appropriate. If a trade does not work out, then we lose all the progress that has built up.

Sure, Morey can say that the tri-core of the previous roster was not championship calibre, and that he would rather swing for the fences and strike out than to simply get to second base. But will Dwight accept that? Will Dwight be willing to accept a legacy of repeatedly getting eliminated in the first round? We only have two more years to show Dwight that we can contend. Otherwise, forget getting a third star because we will be back to only having one in 2016!

 

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So,what's the difference between losing parsons this yr or next. Next yr the rockets wouldn't have had any chance to match. The market was set and blown out of proportion when a team offered gordon hayword 15m per. The only fault I see was mybe morey not setting the market on parsons. Either way,fans would've said he should've done the opposite.

 

Agreed. At least the Rockets had the right to match if they wanted to. If Dallas offered the same contract next summer to Parsons as an unrestricted free agent 99% of the fans here would be saying "Goodbye Parsons!"

 

That summarizes the off-season.

Rockets could have kept Parson's at a paltry 1 milllion for next year.

 

It's amazing how everyone thinks they are smarter than Count D-Morry.....

wait for it...


DeMorrayyy.

 

Then why did you reply?

 

As a fellow STEMmer, your way of thinking is refreshing. You didn't just say that Morey has insufficient urgency, did you?

 

Thanks for the thought you put into this. That said, it's almost impossible to move as fast as you seem to want to. If you sign a Dwight with cap space, you are essentially barred from signing anyone else outright that summer except the ~$3M room exception which isn't going to make or break your team. That means we were essentially locked into that team until this summer, unless Asik is traded. The suggestions you brought up for an Asik trade were all possibilities, but the problem wasn't that Morey passed on Anderson or Millsap, but that those teams were unwilling to do that. The only offer we know that Morey passed on was Brandon Bass + Courtney Lee, which I'd argue does very little to improve the team.

The goal this year was to make one more cap space acquisition, get CP25 locked up long term, and then for all future years we have the full MLE and an attractive team for ringchasing veterans to polish the bench.

You can't just arbitrarily decide "I'm going to NOT pursue flexibility, let's go into luxury tax now and get everyone we can" because you really can't sign players or trade for players that are going to increase your payroll thanks to the salary rules. The mechanism for going from flexible to loaded/taxpaying is basically 80% Bird rights, 20% MLE and 0% anything else.

 

Upgrades to win a championship and flexibility are indeed a must. But there is also something to be said for stability.

You score 2 big homeruns so to speak by nabbing Howard and Harden in 2 successive years. You know that the team average age is way below the NBA median and where typically, ages 27-29 are the prime years.
The team may not look like title contenders as is, especially looking at the way they played in the last 2 playoff series, but who is to say that these players will not get better? Maturity, experience, these are not just buzzwords, these are actually key ingredients to a player's development, and consequently, the teams they play for. Having some stability and letting the players grow together, building chemistry and experience might have been the better way, albeit less sexier than going after the like of Melo and Bosh (which failed in hindsight).

You have the 90s Bulls, the late 80s Pistons, and the current Spurs as examples of building through experience and/or having stability, and resulting in multiple titles.

 

Morey is absolutely a smart guy, smarter than everyone here combined, but smart guys overplay, so did Morey. We were in a too good position to take that gamle, hopefylly he learnt his lession.

 

List of players we "should of" kept:

Landry
Scola
Hayes
Spanoulis
Langhi
Lin (pre-Linsanity)
Von Wafer
Budinger
PPatt


Definitely a championship roster if we signed them all to long term deals.

 

Flexibility is a good thing. Only time u should lost it is when it adds a superstar or a player that put u over the top.

 

Morey is a genius at scouting second rounders... he'll eventually find a few role players, super stars in disguise. Keep calm... morey's got this. It's just good off season drama. NBA's fixed anyway.

 

OP, something's wrong with your premise

The flexibility was what got us H and H in the first place. Then if we had gotten out 3rd star (Bosh), we would have been set and run with this team.

Well, without Bosh, what did you want to do? Go forward without flexibility and keep losing in the 1st round? Nah, you do a little do-over. We already have 2 out of 3. We create value again for our role players. If they do better than expected, great. But we don't stop turning the roster until we get the right combination.

 

1) There is no argument for stability with a roster not good enough to win it all. Stability is for rosters that are "there". We would not be there by matching Parsons. The Pistons and the Spurs, btw, would never pay a Parsons $15m. Also, they dealt parts of their roster all the time - how long did they let Billups develop? Who have the Spurs kept for long other than Ginobili Duncan Parker? The rest are dropped and picked up as soon as something better becomes available.

2) We don't have a year or two. Dwight will leave, and then Harden will not stick around on his own in his prime. Look at the FA market these days, stars go where they want when they want. A top-level roster would convince Dwight to stay even if we lose. A next level roster would not convince Dwight to stay even if we made it to the second round. This is NOT a team looking to allow its players time to mature. I like those kinds of teams. I see you like that method. But that's irrelevant. The fact is this organization is implementing a strategy and that strategy is to get the OVERALL ROSTER capable of winning a championship ASAP. The organization should not flip flop between strategies, that's how teams get buried into mediocrity. We know that people are not dying to live in Houston, and we know that we don't have unlimited money to spend. So we have to take greater risks than other teams, or accept profitable above average teams for a long time like the Bulls or Jazz.

Also, luxury tax territory is an unacceptable amount of money for a team that's letting its young guys develop. It's not even my money, but I would be furious if this team was hoping for internal improvement at the price we would be paying with Parsons.

We can see from everything that's happened, Parsons wanted to join the Mavs because Carlisle and Cuban sweet talked him out of his panties and actually made him believe that he is worthy of a max level contract. Which is a sham, Cuban and Carlisle know full well you have to overpay a restricted free agent to get them, and they did. The idea that Parsons is worth his contract goes against the history of RFA's in the NBA.

If you want a team that can slowly get to the title, then why do it with Parsons? Let's let a roster of Howard, Jones, D-Mo, Ariza, Harden, Beverley, Canaan, Daniels, the Greek guy and Capela develop together plus a few vets signed cheap. How much better is Parsons going to get anyway? Not much, and never worth $15m. The big leaps we can make are with the players we still have.

 

Could not agree any harder with this. we coulda had ariza hawes and still a decent amount of change left over for a veteran PG. Someone is going to tell me that a bench of hawes, ariza, and quality vet pg wouldnt have been an improvement? Bosh would have been nice but he was a home run when we really just needed a single to drive in the winning run.

 

This makes it harder to contend but not impossible....

You have grumpy Jewish owner. I'd love to see an owner giving full control to the GM and what happens there.

It would be all on Morey. If he fails, he will be let go.

 

Looks like i found dwight howards cf account #freepalestine