Why MoneyBall doesn't work & other lessons learned

I think it went like this: Morey wanted Battier at all costs,...and CD went to get the trade done. No one on our roster was good enough to get Battier, so the only thing we had to trade was Rudy Gay. So we traded Rudy Gay for Battier. The idea was Morey's, and the execution was Dawson's.

 

I can only shake my head at this post. Because its an internet fansite, its ok to pass off speculation as fact. I think that's totally wrong and fundamentally dishonest, but whatever. Do as you please, Silverback.

 

Here is what went down with the 8th pick. If the Rockets were going after Battier no matter what, they wouldn't have had a trade for Brandon Roy as their 1st option. Battier was a "Damn, we got Pritchslapped" option.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/po...rom-minnesota-how-brandon-roy-got-to-portland

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/2006-NBA-Draft-Report-Card--Part-One-1-10--1389/

 

^ Nice stuff, BetterThanEver. Here's the description from that NYT Battier piece on what went down, from Les Alexander's account:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

[rquoter]
...


When Morey came to the Rockets, a huge chunk of the team’s allotted payroll — the N.B.A. caps payrolls and taxes teams that exceed them — was committed, for many years to come, to two superstars: Tracy *McGrady and Yao Ming. Morey had to find ways to improve the Rockets without spending money. “We couldn’t afford another superstar,” he says, “so we went looking for nonsuperstars that we thought were undervalued.” He went looking, essentially, for underpaid players. “That’s the scarce resource in the N.B.A.,” he says. “Not the superstar but the undervalued player.” Sifting the population of midlevel N.B.A. players, he came up with a list of 15, near the top of which was the Memphis Grizzlies’ forward Shane Battier. This perplexed even the man who hired Morey to rethink basketball. “All I knew was Shane’s stats,” Alexander says, “and obviously they weren’t great. He had to sell me. It was hard for me to see it.”

Alexander wasn’t alone. It was, and is, far easier to spot what Battier doesn’t do than what he does. His conventional statistics are unremarkable: he doesn’t score many points, snag many rebounds, block many shots, steal many balls or dish out many assists. On top of that, it is easy to see what he can never do: what points he scores tend to come from jump shots taken immediately after receiving a pass. “That’s the telltale sign of someone who can’t ramp up his offense,” Morey says. “Because you can guard that shot with one player. And until you can’t guard someone with one player, you really haven’t created an offensive situation. Shane can’t create an offensive situation. He needs to be open.” For fun, Morey shows me video of a few rare instances of Battier scoring when he hasn’t *exactly been open. Some large percentage of them came when he was being guarded by an inferior defender — whereupon Battier backed him down and tossed in a left jump-hook. “This is probably, to be honest with you, his only offensive move,” Morey says. “But look, see how he pump fakes.” Battier indeed pump faked, several times, before he shot over a defender. “He does that because he’s worried about his shot being blocked.” Battier’s weaknesses arise from physical limitations. Or, as Morey puts it, “He can’t dribble, he’s slow and hasn’t got much body control.”

Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly *reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”

...

[/rquoter]

 

Chill Eric. You have been owned so bad here even I feel sorry for you.

Give it up.

 

Here are the Chornicle post-draft articles. I believe Clutch was chatting from the Rockets draft war room in 2006. He can confirm the details.

Justice said, there might have been another initial choice, where Portland offered the 4th pick to the Rockets to take on Darius Miles contract.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/justice/4011218.html

Feigan

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/justice/4011218.html

 

I'm with Durvasa on this one. Bill Worrell recently said during a game that the Gay-for-Battier trade was JVG's doing. Said JVG believed we were THAT close to winning it all that year and thought Battier's selfless play would be the thing that got us there.

I brought that up here, and everybody said it was "common knowledge" that acquiring Battier was solely Morey's idea. I think that common knowledge could just as well be common guessing, due to Battier's stats being supposedly unimpressive to anyone who doesn't dig really deep to find things he's good at.

Too many people here "know" things that have never been proven accurate.

 

**** can we just move this thread to d&d?

 

Actually, I ithink that Morey was the guy who was mainly behind the Battier acquisition.

A lot of the details are obscured, though. From the "No Stats All-star" piece, it seems that Morey came up with a list of undervalued players making mid-level money, and Batter was near the top. Does that mean that he made a unilateral decision to trade for Battier during the 2006 draft? I don't know, from the reporting at the time it seemed like Dawson was still running the show.

It could be that JVG was strongly in favor of it as well. He would appreciate a Shane Battier as much as anyone. I have heard from some poster that in a later interview after he was fired JVG said Battier was fully Morey's idea. I've never came across that interview or heard anyone else referencing it, though.

 

Okay, so you know more about the Rockets' inner workings than Bill Worrell. Whatever. I'm sorry I backed you up.

Kidding.

The point is, nobody on this board really knows -- we're ALL guessing.

Except JCDenton, of course.

 

True. I'll put it this way. If we didn't hire Morey and CD was still the GM, I don't think we would have acquired Battier.

 

Pippen isn't at the same level of Jordan. That's like saying Jason Richardson is about the same level as Kobe. He was pretty good in his own right but MJ was another animel entirely.One was a multiple of all star but another was legendary.

 

Of course he had an input, I explicitly said DM would probably have heard what RA said on Brooks, but I highly doubt DM would have blindly followed him like an obedient schoolboy. Even as a rookie DM wasn't lacking any balls, the Battier trade should be proof of that, he wasn't even the official GM yet and he was already "selling Battier hard to Les".

Let's not forget that RA wasn't that sold on Brooks as starter material initially. He was shocked and against the Alston trade originally, I'm sure if you dig around you'll find his quotes on the trade.

 

Ok, so if it was Morey, please post a link and show that it was reported, I mean that is your baseline right?

Just for accuracy sake....



DD

 

Durvasa already posted a quote saying DM had to sell Battier to Alexander really hard, because all Alexander could see were his stats, and battier's stats were like 5 pts and 4 rebs. What more proof do you need? He was just an assistant GM at the time, why should he be the one to sell an idea if it wasn't his in the first place?

 

DD is just messing around. I think.

 

Here is the quote that implies Morey's role in the Battier deal:

link

I think it is reasonable to believe that Morey was the one who recommended Battier. JVG obviously would love a player like Battier. And CD was the one who did the actual negotiation.

 

Ultimately, Morey should be judged on how he can manage to bring in the superstar player(s) they need without gutting the roster and ending up with a team that looks like the beginning of the Yao/T-mac era.

Easier said than done of course, especially since there are few opportunities to acquire such players under any circumstances.

 

Its not just easier said then done...has it even been done before? The Pau Gasol trade was the only I remember that brought along a superstar without requiring major pieces. Celtics had to give up like half a decade worth of lottery picks to get both KG and Allen, and if it weren't for Rondo and perkins elevating their games they wouldn't have won anything at all.

 

That poster might have been me, under a different moniker (blender). It was a long time ago but I remember it as an especially candid phone interview with JVG, on a blog I can't find anymore,

The interviewer implied that Battier must have been JVG's pick, and JVG corrected him, saying that it wasn't his idea. IIRC he did not say Morey was behind it, just that he wasn't.

I seem to be the only one who heard it though.

BTW here's a Chron article on Van Gundy's thoughts when the Gay-Battier trade went down, for those interested.