Cap Flexibility and Asset Collection have to go!

I think you're going to move the goal post away from any place I put it that tries to establish the Rockets as a good franchise. Yes, the Rockets have missed the playoffs a lot, but a lot of that had to do with

A) Injuries on an otherwise VERY good roster
B) The fact that the west has been *stupid* good for the last 15 years. We've seen some of the most unbalanced conferences in sports history during that time.

I'm not saying I'm satisfied with what the Rockets have accomplished lately, and there have been some incredibly frustrating times, but I would take our last 15 years over the VAST majority of NBA teams' last 15 years, including several who won a few more playoff series than we did.

We've had some great teams, great players, and a lot of heart in injury-ridden years. And I'm proud of the fact that we have managed to rebuild several times without ever doing anything that even resembled tanking. I'm just saying let's keep things in perspective. Yes, no fan is or should be happy with anything less than a championship [usually], but we have had some damn good teams in Houston that kept things interesting. We've come up short mostly because of bad luck than because of poor management. (Again, not saying that Morey and co haven't made mistakes, but he's done far more good than harm)

 

Except I think this season and next we are fielding a team that has no real chance at a Championship and instead are fine with being good in the regular season and poised to be bounced in the playoffs. Instead of cashing in some assets to make us much improved the next two years, we held for flexibility and didn't make some big deals.

 

Move the goalpost wherever you want...it's a really long time regardless. If I were mocking them for not making the playoffs a couple of years out of the last 5 or so, I'd agree with you. But when you take it back to the time we were truly a contender and go from there, you're talking about looking back about 18 years....and since then, there's been one playoff series victory. I don't think that's moving the goalpost. It's a logical point to pick, because it's the years after Hakeem's deterioration and, ultimately, his retirement. It's the post-Hakeem Rockets..and it's been bad.

I'm not happy about what this franchise has done over the last 18 years. I'm just not. Yes, there have been injuries...lots of teams have had injuries. Only 3 or so in the league have gone that span winning only one playoff series.

And, I'm not one of those guys who is only happy if my team is winning championships...that's not what I'm saying at all. In a league where more teams make the playoffs than miss the playoffs, one playoff series win in nearly 2 decades is bottom of the league bad.

 

I wasn't suggesting that...I was responding to a post that seemed to be mocking what they did because now their bandwagon was emptying.

 

For one, Morey was not GM for most of that time, so it's not at all fair to put it all on him.

For another, again, I'm not saying that I'm happy with what the Rockets have accomplished. I'm just saying it's not at all fair to just judge us by playoff victories alone since there have been so many other factors in our success (or lack thereof).

Also, again, I really don't think there's much difference between winning one playoff series and winning three. Either you go all the way, or you don't. In fact, the further your team goes, the more painful it is when they ultimately lose.

I mean I get what you're saying, but you don't seem to be hearing me at all. Can you not agree that things could have gone WAY WAY WAY worse for us over the past 15 years? Even by your only-playoff-success-matters metric, there are a lot of teams that have done "better" than us that are still worse franchises. I'd much rather have a team that is always in the mix than a team that has several complete garbage years, and rarely has a team anyone takes seriously even when healthy. Teams like the Cavs, Magic, Nuggets, Raptors, Wizards, Warriors, Clippers, and a few others have had as much or more playoff "success" than we have in the last 15 years, but would you really rather have had the Rockets follow their timelines instead of ours? I sure wouldn't... (Maybe you could make a case for Cleveland now that Lebron is back, and obviously GS looks really good this year, but they didn't before. You get the point)

 

To add to that, then there's the Clippers, Hornets, Bulls, Hawks, Bucks, Nets, Suns... The list goes on. I think our last-15-years has been better than or at least as good as almost every team that hasn't won a championship during that time. Only exceptions I'd make are the Thunder and *maybe* the Grizzlies.

I'd rather have a consistently good team that at least gave me *hope* for playoff success than a team that won 1 or 2 playoff series and fell short, and then was hopeless lottery earners for the next 1-5 years.

 

Even the regular journalists recognise Morey failed by not getting another playmaker / PG. The funny thing is, it would not even have cost us that much since there's plenty of affordable PGs who switched teams and were available. Sometimes you have to overpay a bit, that's fine too. Morey & Leslie were fine with us losing in the 1st round, so they went the future route. Basically, Morey giving our team, the fans and Harden a big **** YOU!

 

Who would you have wanted and what would you have given up for it. I want a concrete answer.

 

Any combination of NOP Pick, Papa, Canaan, Shved, Beverley for the right player. I don't have time to do the math.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing the other direction. All good. This is a poor medium for communication, ultimately.

That's awesome! Can I get that on a Tshirt!!???

HOUSTON ROCKETS: IT COULD BE WORSE!! :grin:

Of course it could be worse. But it's far from being good in my view.

 

Terry, NOP pick, 2017 pick (with the same protection Miami gave), Shved for the Dragic brothers. Ideally I'd hedge my bets and keep the 2017 pick and trade Terrance Jones instead, but I'd still pull the trigger on that deal. I take the chance that Dragic is not so wary of being an "asset" that he passes on $25M and the chance to play with his brother on a legitimate championship contender. I don't think (for a second) he walks away from that for much, much less money from LA or NY and hopes they get much better via 2016 free agency. It would be a monumentally stupid decision for him to pass up what Houston could have offered in that situation.

Or I would have tried to be involved in the Knight-MCW trade with Philly, although that would be more complicated to understand exactly what else Philly and Milwaukee would want.

 

Le$ Alexander did go on record and say that this season is already a success no matter what happens, including losing in the 1st rd of the playoffs once again.

 

Personally, I could not risk mortgaging so many future assets and players on the gamble of Dragic re-signing with us when he is insisting he won't. Sometimes the cookie just doesn't crumble our way. It's not the end of the world. We simply have to work with who we have now.

 

Thanks for answering. It's tough. The Dragic rental is something that I would have really loved to have seen, even with the potential that it ends horribly for us (seriously that would have actually been something that could have made Morey a laughingstock). Ultimately I think Dragon's agent was going to make it hard for any team to accept the trade unless they were on his list.

 

You're again ignoring 90% of what I'm saying and cherry picking what you want to reply to, but fine.

I guess part of what I consider being rational is being a silver-lining kind of guy... And again, I want us to do better -- I'm not saying I'm happy with what we've accomplished, but we are still a damn good franchise, and we've made a lot of smart and exciting moves.

We've had four different players who are/were top 10 during their prime in the last decade. There are literally zero other teams I can think of off the top of my head that can say that. And anyone who tries to say that going for any of those guys wasn't a smart move just because we didn't win more is clearly suffering from severe hindsight bias.

You cannot judge management strictly on results. It's illogical.

 

Good that you bumped your own thread!!:grin:

I'd say both Cap and Asset developed nicely and did pretty well during the season and especially so, during the playoffs. The Rockets made it much further than you anticipated.

Probably one of your worst threads - might be a close second after the ''Trade Harden for KLove thread''

 

I'm going to be a little pissed if we go into the season with Beverley starting, and i'm going to be really pissed if Beverley is starting with Johnson, Terry or Prigs being his backups.

Were trying to contend, we made the WCF's last season, won the division title and landed the 2nd seed in the west. There is absolutely no reason our PG position should be as bad as it is right now going into next season

Morey has no excuse not to fix the PG situation, we have had a full MLE and have plenty of assets (Papa/Prigs, Jones, Dekker, Harrell, future 1st & 2nd's) to trade for a decent one as well.

I really hope Morey passed up on all the PG's in free agency (Stuckey, Williams, Lin, Brooks, Barea etc) that we could of signed with our MLE because he has a trade in line for a PG. There's still lots of off season to go so we will see.

 

Beverly will be our starting PG. Morey isn't going to make a move that will hamper his attempt to get a 3rd star next year. Love it or hate it this is More he has an obsession with having 3 stars. Much prefer the GSW route but to each his own