serves me right for listening to nbaddraft.net. There are only so many teams that take a risk on an inknown commodity and manage to luck out so huge, I'm very happy that I was wrong and that our scouts saw the hustle player that no one saw ten months ago.
I'm not on that list, but I'll admit I was wrong in nmy assessment of Landry and I'm a Boilermaker. He never showed this much power at Purdue. Glad we got himnow though. Get him and Scola signed long term.
This thread was funny. A+ For the record, I thought Landry was a solid pick-up but had no idea he'd turn out like this!
I can't believe how many of you are completely unable to laugh at yourselves in this thread. That Carl Landry is turning out so well is reason enough to sit back and enjoy our collective ignorance before the season started. Lighten up, folks.
It shows that people tend to be overly opinionated on draft night, despite having a lack of information. We all assume we know as much if not more than the teams that have put in all the time scouting, interviewing, and analyzing the available players. That's just how fans are. Not necessarily a bad thing ... it would be a pretty boring offseason if we weren't allowed to jump to conclusions!
How about the people who supported the pick? As I recall, there was a lot of curiosity about how Morey would handle his first draft, and so, if anything, there was even more speculation and expectation regarding how this new 'moneyball' approach would work out. Prior to the draft, I do remember going to several stats-and-scouting sites and looking at the various opinions and rankings/ratings of the big men. It seemed to be the general consensus that the Rockets' biggest need was a Power Forward, and maybe Shooting Guard. So naturally we were all dreaming of which player we would take with our first pick, as so little attention is ever really reserved for 2nd-rounders anyway. Dreams of guys like Almond from Rice, Glen Davis, trading up for Noah, Horford, even Jianlin, and more 'on-down-the-line' picks like McRoberts and Fazekas were garnering all the attention. But I distinctly remember looking at the rankings of the 4's, mostly because I had been hearing the rumors that the Rox were high on Fazekas (yeah, maybe pick that guy up for camp next year? ), and seeing some guy named Carl Landry being ranked at the very top in several categories, and the scouts and ratings people almost seeming to be surprised at how well he kept performing. I don't remember which specific sites, there were a lot, maybe it was DraftExpress, I don't know.. but the kid was grading out right at the top in several categories. Anyway, on draft night, we swung the deal for the guy, and to me, it made perfect sense.. after shocking the world by taking Brooks instead of a big, and then Morey seeing enough value in Landry to actually move back up to get him, well, it fit perfectly with the notion that 'whatever Morey is going to do, it won't be what we expect him to do'. Even still, I, like everyone else, was more familiar with, and still hoping for, a 'big name' guy, ESPECIALLY with Davis still on the board. However, it seemed foolish to lash out at Morey and the Rockets for 'screwing up' by taking Landry just because he was not the more well-known pick, because I remembered the kid's name as being extremely highly-rated, just not as widely known. I count myself as one of the people who generally supported the pick, even though it's probably not the pick I myself would have made at the time. Hey, that's why Morey sits in the big chair, and I am down here with the rest of the unwashed masses.
Exactly Durvasa, alot of people jumped to conclusions without watching Landry play one minute during college and even more so after the Summer League games when some very popular posters on here wanted Landry waived in favor of Butler and especially the highly coveted Harris. Landry had the highest offensive effeciency rating of any PF in the draft and that was while playing in one of the toughest NCAA conferences in the nation. Top 5 athlete in the pre-draft combine to boot. Davis and Fazekas were popular picks, but Morey and staff new that they needed a premiere athlete to compliment the slow footed (no pun intended) Yao.
Hooroo's comments on that "Rockets Acquire Carl Landry" thread are right on. Almost prophetical. Well done!
