Hey guys and gals, 5 year creeper, first time poster. I used to write for ESPN Truehoop's rox blog before handin it off. I just wanted to give my 2 cents on why i think morey's strategy is actually pretty decent. IMHO, i dont think morey is tanking, but rebuilding to contend within the next few years. i know its a long read...give it a chance the fact is morey probably knew pretty early on that we were going lose our 2 offense-facilitating big men in hayes and miller, and thus wouldnt be able to effectively run the read&react offense. i know miller doesnt get a lot of love on this board, but adelman brought him in the game mainly for 2 reasons, in combination with young bigs like hill and pat for oncourt guidance, and when the offense lagged and needed a spark (why he finished so many games). fantastic-passing big men are hard to come by, so with the old offense out the window we needed a new offensive scheme and we definitely needed a new defensive mentality. i loved ricks offense but hated how he never held players accountable for not boxing out, only chuck and pat box out, scola never did. enter mchale. a highly motivating players coach with insane basketball IQ who's known for having more offensive moves than Dream and is perhaps one of the toughest SOBs to ever play the game. you can mold and refine talent, but you are limited by what you start with. mchale shouldnt be training OUR bigs, we should be BRINGING IN THE BEST BIGS WITH THE HIGHEST POTENTIAL for him to train. no one loves martin and scola more than me, but they were 1-way players. Pau and brook lopez are great offensively, but are criticized for being soft and not being able to rebound. who better than mchale to implant a rebounders mentality in their heads and teach them toughness??? who better than mchale to teach nene footwork and his myriad of offensive moves???? i know they are old, but center production doesnt drop off has steeply with age as it does with the guard position. and star centers who can avoid injuries (a big if, i know) can have some decently long careers. we could have a league-leading frontcourt for 4+ years lowry can be a star and is a two-way player. if even one of lee, pat, twill, or morris can make that jump to the next level, we could have a decent team. i know half of the board is fed up with morey, but seriously you guys need to relax. he is working hard for us, which is more than half of the league can say. hes had such unfortunate timing with injuries and finds us draft gems from the weakest 5yr talent pool the league has seen in decades, but we are in for a talent boom and the houston rox are laying the infrastructure right now to contend asap. thx
Well, for now it appears as if we've lost our opportunity at gaining talent. We're stuck with what we've got.
Nice post This strategy is our best way forward without outright tanking (from which it can be difficult to recover)
Yeah, i believe in Morey. hes like the Christopher Nolan of GMs. You have your doubts about how he will portray Bane/Rox, but in the end you know the team/movie is gonna be badass.
thx man, i just think it makes a lot of sense. right or wrong hes clearly confident in mchale, and hes trying to play to our strengths. if not for stern we would have pau, and nene is probably waiting on us to get that deal done. now hes scrambling to get the next best available, and if brook lopez just learned to freaking rebound he could easily be a 20 10 2blk guy
Hey, half the board's not really fed up with Morey. It just seems that way because the minority who are fed up are making the most noise. But isn't that almost always the case?
100% agree. Super hard to see Scola and Martin go but Morey always thinks 3 moves ahead. Most people who did not like the trade(including myself at first) only considered the absolute value of the players involved but failed to consider the future options that become available as well as the McHale factor that you mentioned, which will be significant.
Really? Our whole strategy has been dictated by not being able to hang on to Brad Miller and Chuck Hayes?
Sorry, but no. McHale was great in the pivot, but his specialty was getting defenders off-balance by using his quickness to move to multiple positions off of the established pivot and having the talent and ridiculously long arms to shoot from whatever position gave him the greatest advantage. He absolutely did not have more offensive moves than Dream and is not known for that. He's known for being a really good post player on a championship team. This is one of his best playoff games... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GESJwnqYZtU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Really good, but nowhere close to Dream. (What stands out to me in that vid is how perfect every one of Bird's passes are. Whenever McHale's in the post, Bird gets it to him in exactly the right spot to make a move based on where the defender is playing McHale. Post entry passing is a lost art these days.)
I think Morey is a double edged sword. He is great at getting players who out perform what people expect of them. He can spot talent, and gets more out of guys who are paid less. But that's part of the problem. Because he's so good at it, he doesn't seem to worry about losing players that developed into those over performing assets. So once their market goes up he isn't worried if they sign elsewhere. Also the fact that he can do that causes him to undervalue stars which are needed to be a contender in this league. The guys that he gets are great, but they need stars around them to put the whole team in contention. It isn't that he shuns stars, or doesn't want them, just that he doesn't want them bad enough. Part of that may also be Les' unwillingness to pay. But Morey's talent at bringing in players developing them beyond what was expected of them and then seeing them go elsewhere can give players the impression that the team isn't loyal to the players. Add that to the fact that we don't really have any stars Houston is a less attractive place to play free agents and the like. If Houston was a place where free agents really wanted to play it would be easier to get the stars. So Morey has plans and strategies and is successful at many things, but it seems to come at a price. I'm starting to believe we are on the losing side of that price
