Morey was named Assistant General Manager on April 3, 2006. Here was the 2005/2006 roster. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/HOU/2006.html Here is the current roster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Rockets#Current_roster Yao Ming Kevin Martin Aaron Brooks Shane Battier Luis Scola Trevor Ariza Chase Budinger Kyle Lowry Jordan Hill Patrick Patterson Chuck Hayes David Anderson Mike Harris Jared Jeffries Alexander Johnson Jermaine Taylor It's amazing how quickly Morey rebuilt the roster, while staying under the cap. Les should be proud of himself for thinking outside the box and hiring this guy. Next to purchasing the team, it was his smartest basketball decision. .
He certainly has done extremely well to gather good basketball assets. I think he values certain qualities of players more than other GMs, and that is one of the reasons he does so well. I think he has really changed the Rox culture over this time. Looking for quality locker room players with solid character. I really think Patpat is the essence of what DM is looking for. Hard working, great in character and a player willing to contribute to the team that helps to get the win.
Aren't you forgetting something? Morey caused Yao's foot break, and worsened T-Mac's back. He also turned T-Mac from a p***y to quitter.
He drafts above average, but he is awful on making big trades. He waited too long to trade T-Mac. T-Mac should have been traded in 2008 off season. He tried to trade T-Mac by February 2009 deadline. T-Mac finds out about a possible trade, so he decides to take surgery and kill the trade. Morey is left with only Jordan Hill, a high risk/reward draft swap with NY, and a high risk/reward draft pick NY. T-Mac outsmarts Morey.
He also used T-Mac's contract to make the Landry/Martin trade work under the cap rules. Also, 1st round draft picks are good. I'm not sure what risk you're referring to.
Looking at that old roster... I don't remember having Rick Brunson and have never heard of Josh Davis and Richie Frahm. Man our roster looked really bad in retrospect, especially if you take away MerGady and Yao, both of which missed 20+ games each.
I've heard of Rick Brunson... he's an older player who i think played under JVG for some time... My expression was "WTF is that?!?!" when i saw Lonny Baxter, Josh Davis, and Richie Frahm...
He's a statistician, not a talent scout, so beyond the obvious 'superstars', "young talent" is pretty much outside his expertise, hence why he typically goes for later players.
Why? what else could we have gotten? I remember back in 2009 deadline, we almost landed vince carter which I sure wouldn't want, especially because yao was injured this year, which would be a waste of a trade. and you also forgot to add in Kevin Martin, i'm pretty sure Kings held on to him for a reason untill the very last minute deadline last year, the move he made was perfect and couldn't come out better.
Just FYI, we were not under the cap. Almost every team in the league was over it. Before the TMAC trade, we had one of the highest payrolls (top 5). We were under the luxury tax though.
It's amazing really when you look at the players we've had since JVG was named the coach up until today. So many marginal NBA players or worse filling out the rosters. Heck, David Wesley was a starter for us. I don't mean to insult the man because I liked his fire, but how did we ever expect to compete with guys of that caliber playing quality minutes for us. The only player I really "miss" from the pre-Morey days is Bob Sura. Sura faints.
The nice thing is we don't have any real bad contracts on our roster. We do have a couple of overpaid player (Battier, Jeffries, Andersen and an injured Yao) but all those contracts expire (except a tiny amount remaining on Andersen's) after this year. We're not in a good position to win it all but we are in a good position to do something. Getting that stud is going to take some skill and luck though.
Wow. Just wow. Yeah. Two first round picks from a perennial lottery bound team plus Jordan Hill plus Kevin Martin for T-Mac and Landry. Yeah. That's an awful, awful trade. And Vassillis Spanoulis for Luis Scola? Man, Morey sucks at trades. And Rafer Alston for Kyle Lowry? God. Fire Morey now.
