Yes I agree. But it just seemed so obvious to me that Kawhi Leonard was the pick over Morris. I was ecstatic when He dropped. I was the first to post on here "With the 14th Pick the Rockets Choose Kawhi Leonard! It was a no brainer to me. Someone said on here that Morey's draft philosophy is to take a chance on star power and that explains Royce White and TWill and Joey Dorsey but it doesn't mean he is right. I don't know maybe in time these things will even out. Still I look at the players we could have had... I watched Jared Sullinger in the tourney and alot of film in the draft and people were talking about him being a top 5 pick and I said no way. Even a lottery pick I wasn't sure about but I never considered him as a 19th pick because never in my wildest dreams did I think he would drop that far. But he did and how could we choose a guy with so many issues over Sullinger. Maybe it's just me but I don't get that.
We are all armchair GMs. Morey gets paid big bucks to do his job and part of the job is being critiqued by the media and the fans. Why can't we say that sometimes we guessed better than the pros? Some people say that since we know less than the coach and the GM, we can't make criticism. That's BS. Most movie critics never make movies themselves. A lot of music critics themselves are not much of a performer. And none of us are better basketball players than any NBA player. But that doesn't mean we can't critique player performance or coach performance or GM performance. I can surely criticize the taste of Pepsi Cola even though I know nothing about making soft drinks.
Morey is very good at picking up undervalued players. But he has not shown that he is better than other GMs in deciding among obvious talents. I agree that Morey is one of the best GMs, probably top 3. He has his strengths and weaknesses.
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The problem I have is not with the criticism or opinion of Morey...it is with fans stating, "I have picked better players than X GM in a span of X years." That, to me, is ignoring the overwhelming amounts of analysis and data-collecting that goes into the draft process. Knowing what a GM knows in the few weeks prior to draft day, can you really say you would've picked the same players that you claim shows better evaluation of talent? I don't think so. Fans have the right to judge players and GM draft choices as fans. Going beyond that and judging a GM's decisions based on your own...that's what I derogatorily consider an "armchair GM".
Aaron Brooks, Chandler Parsons, Carl Landry, and Chase Budinger. He's gotten about 1 right every year, which is better than most. He's made up for a lack of good position in the draft through overseas evaluations and incremental improvements through trading.
Morris was serviceable and still got a high second for him. He was drafted 14th. There may not 13 be players better than him from that draft. Every NBA team drafted a worse player than Parsons before him. If you want to be mad about Morey drafting wrong guy with Morris, you should be using Parsons, Faried, Mirotic, and Motiejunas as the examples of his mistakes. From the 2011 draft, Rockets ended up with 4 (Morris, Parsons, Motiejunas, Smith) of the best 15 players and their highest pick was 14. Jones, White, and Lamb are stuck behind a lot of players. Give them some time. I expect Jones and Lamb will justify their picks. White is a gamble. Talent with baggage. Worth risk in my opinion when Rockets already loaded with low floor moderate ceiling guys.
@ 10:27: Murray perpetuating the story that "Jordan was out of the league those two years" when Houston was winning championships. Dammit, Derrelle. Why
bingo. He has been able to find the players people overlook such as last 1sters and 2nd rounders but he hasn't really shown he can spot great talent.
I suppose you can give credit to Morey for those picks in the sense that he was the official GM at the time but lets be clear on who really made those picks. Carl landry was CD and Dean Cooper's guy. CD was the GM and Dean Cooper reported to him and they are the ones who found Landry and did the work of evaluating him. CD said as much in an interview shortly after that draft, that Dean discovered Landry and that he did his due diligence on checking him out. All of that was on CD's watch and after Morey took over CD was still an adviser. He convinced Morey who had only been GM for a month to take him. This was Morey's first draft with the Rockets and he was much more influenced at the time than any other point. And it was arguably his most productive draft considering how late he was picking. Also Brooks was all about Adelman. he was our new coach and he like Brooks having watched him play in Portland. he requested Brooks and Morey gave him Brooks. Same thing can be said about Chase Budinger. Morey got his guy in jermaine Taylor and the LLull and they had no intention in buying another pick but Adelman went past Morey straight to Les and said this Budinger could be really good and can they get him. that was Adelman's guy and still is. Yeah Technically he gets credit but really his guys during that time were Jermaine Taylor and Sergio Llull, dorsey greene, PPat over Sander, Morris over leonard etc. That being said DMo and parsons are all his and that makes up for alot. Maybe so but Kawhi Leonard was.
One thing about the recent 1st round picks: When it became known that Yao Ming isn't coming back, the team's strategy shifted from "find players to fit around Yao (and McGrady)" to "trying to land the next star." Thus, Morey's drafts, particularly with his mid-first round picks became attempts to hit "homeruns"-- he's tried to moved up each time and, failing that, took some players they viewed as "high upside" but knew that there is a decent chance of them not panning out. I am not sure if all of them are that way, but several of them are. For example, the team's explanation for drafting Morris is that, if he works out as a SF, he could be a "Melo-lite" primary scorer. However, the issue is that the PF to SF transition is difficult to make. Motiejunas was long touted with his potential but saw his stock drop after scouts questioned his attitude and rebounding while playing in Italy. Royce White is another guy with "top 5 talent" whose stock dropped due to concerns about his mental healthy. Lamb and Jones, I think, are similarly "high upside, but also a fairly high risk of failure" guys. So, I think the team was reasonably expecting that a good number of these guys would not pan out and willingly took this risk. Meanwhile, some of the team's successful later picks have been guys with some definite NBA skills but not necessarily star potential (Budinger, Landry, Parsons, etc.).
There's no such thing as an "obvious" talent in the draft. They're only "obvious" 3 years later and have panned out. The obvious picks like Adam Morrison and Sheldon Williams or Evan Turners get ignored in hindsight like we all knew beforehand as if they'd suck. Also, aren't Patterson and Motiejunas obvious picks? I know I was ecstatic with the Motiejunas pick because he had top-5 talent just the year before. So it did seem like a no-brainer at 20. As for Patterson, Larry Sanders would've been the Morey-esque pick for super high upside. So in that sense, Morey picked safety over potential, and struck out.
OMR, drafting Leonard would have been almost as big a mistake as drafting Morris. Which is to say not much of one. Both guys are role players.
He speaks the truth. With Jordan there, it's still hard to say who would win the final. Morey just wants to make the point that one guy usually isn't enough to get the Championship.
Let's keep it real. Morey has always said they pick the best player available regardless of position. In his opinion Morris was better than Leonard.
Really ? Leonard is stepping up big time for the Spurs since Parker was injured ... Idk what their secret is, but Spurs front office is very good at recognizing talent in the college game and Euroleague. I think scouts are too deeply focused on players from powerhouse schools like Duke and Kentucky. There are a lot of solid prospects from no-name schools who put up insane numbers in their weak conference. But they get overlooked.
I think you are misunderstanding his point. CH did not mention position at all. He was talking about high risk low risk. Trading Battier for Gay was a low risk move that fits in the "win now" mode. Drafting Morris instead of Leonard was a high risk move that fits in the "find superstar" mode. So was drafting Royce White (though it seemed like Kevin McHale had more of a say than anyone else). You can't be perfect in the draft. I would say Morey is above-average in his scouting abilities. Bottom line, teams miss out on great players ALL the time. Even good drafting teams screw up. Thunders picked Jeff Green. Spurs traded away Scola. We should be satisfied with what Morey has done IMO.
