http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/justice/3796565.html April 16, 2006, 1:39AM Rockets see exec Morey as extra edge By RICHARD JUSTICE Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle He reads Bill James and admires Billy Beane. He thinks their core beliefs about baseball can be applied to any sport. He has done consulting work for the CIA and National Security Agency. He has taught at MIT and edited a collection of essays called "Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works." Yes, Rockets owner Leslie Alexander went slightly outside the box to hire his next general manager. Daryl Morey sailed through Northwestern while working at, among other places, Stats Inc. "I was notorious for not showing up to class," he said. "I'd read the book the day before a test. I never liked school. I'll be frank — it's not real. I was always working." He grew up in Ohio and still loves the Indians and Browns. He honeymooned at the Atlanta Olympics. "I was fascinated from a young age about how to forecast who is going to be good, who isn't," he said. Rolling the dice What would he have said about Stromile Swift if he had been on the job last summer? Could he have been any more wrong than the Rockets were? Around the NBA, they are whispering that Alexander is off his rocker, that he made the bonehead move of all bonehead moves by hiring a 32-year-old analyst. It's true Morey has absolutely no qualifications for the job. At least in the traditional sense. He never has scouted a player, drafted or coached. Does that mean he can't do the job? Of course not. Only if you think a brilliant mind, a creative spirit and a hunger to learn are assets for almost any job is he qualified. If you've got some questions, Alexander is OK with that. He probably has some, too. Different viewpoint Last summer when Carroll Dawson finally persuaded Alexander he was serious about retirement — "I didn't want to go from this job to the grave," Dawson said Friday — Alexander hired a headhunter. He told her to see the position of general manager in ways it hadn't been seen before. He wasn't necessarily looking for the best available assistant general manager or assistant coach. He didn't want a gym rat. "When you're a GM — or a personnel manager or assistant GM — you're already in the basketball world," Alexander said. "Which isn't the world of dealing, of business, of thinking how this fits with that. I wanted knowledge that went to another level. I wanted a statistical side other people don't have." What he won't say is this: He wanted someone who would do the job better than it now is being done. He wanted to retain the current voices in the organization while bringing in someone with a different viewpoint to oversee it all. He had seen what happened when the Boston Red Sox hired Theo Epstein, who was four years younger than Morey and never had scouted or traded, either. All he had was a great mind, a willingness to trust statistical data and an insatiable appetite to learn — and win. Alexander had read about Oakland's Beane, who does more with less than any general manager in baseball. He decided that if Beane's approach of analyzing unique data can work in one sport, it probably can work in another. Morey will spend a year working as Dawson's assistant and then take over. For the next year, he will get a lesson on the values of East Texas. Dawson has friends at every level of the NBA — from agents to peers to players — because he is honest and instantly likable. Morey will have a year to incorporate Dawson's strengths into his own. If Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming stay healthy, the Rockets will make the playoffs. Morey's bigger challenge is supplying other pieces and doing a better job than the current administration. Questions of probability The Rockets have had 11 draft choices the last six years. Only two — Yao and Luther Head — have made substantive contributions. Likewise, there have been a long list of mistakes in free agency. How will he do it? Is there statistical data that can contribute to the shaping of a championship roster? "There's no number that tells you the right answer," Morey said. "Maybe it'll raise the right question. You can't boil it down to numbers. We spend a lot of times analyzing the teams that have a probability to win (a championship). What are their components? How do we construct our roster towards that goal? What are the differ- ent scenarios that get us there?" While working on Wall Street, he was asked to do a valuation analysis for a group that wanted to buy the Boston Red Sox. His career in baseball was sidetracked when another buyer was selected. He did the same thing for Wyc Grousbeck, who was attempting to buy the Boston Celtics. When the purchase was done, Morey was his first hire. Stat-a-tat-tat Morey began his NBA career analyzing customer relations but gradually moved into basketball operations, serving as an adviser to general manager Danny Ainge. What are some of the statistics he studies? "Efficient use of possessions is an undervalued, under-appreciated thing relative to just a guy who scores," he said. "Is he using those possessions efficiently? That's a key thing that's undervalued." And? "The unit that is what I'd call 'ground truth' in the NBA is measured another way. There's a player on the floor with four other players, and he's facing an opposing group of five. While those 10 guys are on the floor, they're playing a mini-game for the time they're on the floor. Who won? "What created them winning and losing? Maybe they created extra possessions through turnovers or rebounding." Maybe it's one or two players being part of the varied lineups throughout an entire game that is more responsible for success than a box score would show. Maybe a player some people see as valuable really isn't. Morey freely admits he doesn't have all the answers. He does have a different way of looking at things. All things considered that's not a bad place for the Rockets to start.
No mention of his people skills and ability to negotiate. That's what's going to kill him. He has to have great people skills to work the trades with other GMs and to convince free agents to come to Houston. You have to have both intelligence and social skills to do well.
Well that's quick to jump to conclusions... It'll be interesting to see what type of "stats" they are talking about. It could be stuff like 82games.com, or maybe some other formulaic way to interpret them.
OUCH! I guess that's the key. Morey using a statistical approach to adding the right role players to maximize Tmac's and Yao's skillsets.
That "ground truth" he's talking about is smack dab in 82games.com's wheelhouse. It's the plus/minus player pairs that is such a big part of their stats.
I'll reserve judgement on this dude because I'm a fan. Have no idea what'll happen. Dawson has made some HORRENDOUS moves the past five or so years, & but a few decent ones. The McGrady move was great, I'll give him that ... & Yao was but a lucky ping-pong ball. Other than that, what has he done? I know ... It's been gone over a bajillion times.
Well, that's efficiency and +/- numbers. He talked as if it's some fancy approach. If Rockets based this hire on the success stories from baseball, I like this hire less. Basketball =/ baseball.
Yeah, I think he'll be using the same data. But hopefully his methods will be more sophisticated than just looking at plain +/- for players. Sounds like he'd do stuff like looking for patterns in 5-man units and how they correlate to point-differential. He'd need to take into account opponents faced, of course. Maybe he's dumbing down what his methodologies are to not sound to nerdy or pretentious when talking to the media. A guy of his background surely has some really advanced ways of looking at numbers.
Exactly. An intro stats class can more or less teach you what you need for 82games.com type analysis (it's still a great tool). I'd imagine a guy with Morey's background will be incorporating ways to account for the strength of the opposing 5, strength of the 4 teammates, and chemistry/synergy effects. The one interesting thing to me is I suspect Morey's hands won't be involved in the draft so much. There's only so much statistical analysis you can do for comparing these foreign players across leagues, and projectability of the college freshmen who may not see that much PT.
It's more than just +/- numbers. Morey has been interested in things like... points per shot (pps) points per possession (ppp) things that lead to field goal attempt differential etc. http://www.nba.com/celtics/stats/CelticsByTheNumbers_20050314.html http://www.nba.com/celtics/stats/InsideTheNumbers_20050325.html These apply to individuals on a team as well as teams as a whole. Here's an article for Morey protege on the Celtics: http://www.nba.com/celtics/stats/inside-the-numbers/032106-efficiency.html
