Shaun Livingston was the difference in tonight's game. He haunted us. However, I remember the coaches wanted to keep him back in 2012, but he was cut on the last day of training camp for scrubs like Scott Machado (PG), Daequan Cook, and Royce White. They cut him because he would've cost $3 million a year, but he would've been worth it. I think Morey and his staff are great at finding talent, but they kind of blew it on this one (along with Demarre Carroll). Livingston might've probably risen to starter since Toney Douglas and Jeremy Lin were ultimately disposed of. I actually liked him in Brooklyn last year and thought Morey would make a run at him, but instead we got Jet Terry. Golden State got him for 3 years at $16 million. A bargain considering how great he's been in the Memphis series, and now.
http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterockets/2012/10/rockets-waive-shaun-livingston-to-get-roster-to-15/ $2.5m and he was hardly the talent he is now during that training camp. Look at his wiki, he was cut by two more teams that year until his breakout season the FOLLOWING season with Brooklyn. By that time he had fully recovered. As for Demarre Carrol, we had him in 2010-11 and he didn't have any semblance of being a rotation player. It wasn't until the 2013-14 season that finally made strides towards being the player he is now with Atlanta. Are we going to do this for every guy we "could" have had? Such revisionist BS
i thought he played well in preseason with us and remember being pissed and posting about it (along with several others here) when he was cut
Sure some folks liked him, but did anyone complain about not having him for the rest of the year? It took him that entire time to recover and get up to NBA speed before he could show up for BKN the following year.
Idiotic statement. We HAD him in camp (not "could" have had him), the coaches liked him, but they went cheap-o and kept scrubs. Screw what other teams also thought of players we cut. We're supposed to be better at evaluating talent than any other team using Morey's analytics. It's not like these players get "better" after we cut them. That's a cop-out. The coaches liked him, like I originally said. Morey's right a lot of the time, but I remember when we cut a tall PG like that who was productive, I knew it would come back to haunt us. You just didn't know it because he played in the East until this year.
That's B.S. There's some revisionist history going on here. Livingston was fully healthy when he was with us. The media loves to hype the recovery from his knee injury ad nauseum, but if he was good enough for the coaches to keep, he was healthy. He was cut because Morey didn't want to spend $3 million to keep him. Hell, we spent $4.5m on Papanikolau and he hardly played. We've spent more on worse players than Livingston at the time.
16 points at the half. Career high for that scrub who looks like an all star against our super scrubs.
i complained at least once during 2nd half of that season, probably a few times. i remember him having a bunch of good games, for CLE?
Like I said, he had a full season in between when we cut him and when signed and emerged with BKN. Show me ONE thread, post, article, whatever that expresses discontent at our decision from that year. Are you going to give Morey credit or shred Miami or Chicago for cutting Bev? The former was partially only because we saved that money from Livingston
He was decent and showed some solid play after March or so even though he received good minutes on a horrific Cavs team http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/livinsh01/gamelog/2013/ Would he have performed the same with Lin, Bev and Harden?
i was quite pissed we dumped him in preseason b/c at the time he seemed like the perfect fit with us at the backup PG……savvy veteran who could run the team, D up, make his shots, and rebound + play above the rim in + post up in certain matchups…..i was even more pissed when i saw tony douglas play like utter crap the first couple months…. it's similar to the tarik black situation now…….i don't think anyone would prefer dorsey over him either
We still talking about Tarik Black!!???? He wouldn't be playing just like Dorsey... what the hell? The way you guys talk about Black you think he is Zbo 2.0
You want to complain about Morey's talent evaluation, Livingston or Carrol are not the examples you should use. Dorsey over Deandre and Asik (maybe even Mozgov and Dragic, but that's a stretch), a 1st rd pick for the squid, etc. That is much more embarrassing.
I hope we can get a PG with some height and wingspan this off-season, after we win our championship. Really happy for Livingston. Never thought he'd get to this level. So much courage and drive.
He had his "Austin Rivers" night. That was it. He will go back to being a scrub soon enough just like Rivers did.
