[ClutchFans] Morey: Asik trade fell apart at high level

Kwame Brown and his expiring contract was traded for all star Pau Gasol in his prime just to give Memphis cap/salary relief.


Don't be fooled Asik and Lin both can easily be moved. They can even get you an allstar back.

Rudy Gay has been dumped TWICE in a little over a year for salary relief and Gay is a borderline all star.

Both Asik and Lin's contract will be done by next season.

Les can also throw in 3 million cash for the trade which will reduce the cost to the new owner to just 12 million next season for a player like asik.

 

No matter how, Morey is praised to God status around here.

Poison pills created for both Lin and Asik - Morey is such a genius that found all the loopholes in the rules, the brilliant contract structure made other teams impossible to match, so that we can secure 2 important pieces of our staring five with this young team

Both Lin and Asik earning 15 million from the bench next year doesn't sound very economical, plus Asik demanded a trade internally - Morey is such a genius that blew that to the open, set a deadline for himself to trade Asik, which totally put the pressure on those teams desperately need a quality center.

Trade never happened - Morey is such a genius that he's flexible enough to make the self-imposed deadline un-dead.

It goes on and on, every single move is something to be celebrated as new chapter of business genius to rip everyone off.

I asked in the Asik trade rumor thread, how dead this deadline is, and what the contingency plan is if no acceptable trade is available. I can only laugh that people are dreaming of Rondo, even under such situation.

Morey is a smart GM, no doubt about that. But Harden fell into our laps, and we had cap room to offer Harden the max and the alpha dog role. Harden came for the situation, not Morey. Howard wanted to leave LA, and we had cap room to offer him max, and we have a young good core reached playoffs last year.

The way Morey is doing business, is purely business - everyone and everything is treated as assets, without ever considering human side. It sounds cool, and maybe matches Les' trader mentality. The problem is, most hedge funds or actively managed mutual funds under-perform index funds. If you are with the Rockets for 5 years, you probably would never have a teammate joined at the same time as you did.

GM's style affect team mentality and fans' way of thinking as well. There won't be any consistency, if we are loud and clear about trading-happy all the time. DH12 was available, of course we go after him. But the non-stop trade talks of almost every player is getting tiring and annoying. If you have a quality team (no, nobody is perfect, and no position is manned perfectly), try to build on them and let them gel. Argument can always be made that a different player will offer something different, but unless it's clear-cut upgrade, can we let the team settle and work for a year or two?

The Asik situation couldn't be handled even worse, and yet Morey gets a free pass. Someone should have claimed responsibility to have 2 poison pills sitting on the bench, especially when that's self-created poison pills.

Asik is not Howard, so he gets called names and dissed non-stop here, right after he helped the team to reach playoffs last year, as the clear No. 2 guy. Why little guys always get screwed in business? Because all the by-standing little guys side with large corporations no matter how, even after they benefited from those other little guys they now turned against.

It always goes both-ways, when players get phone calls from agents notifying them that they are traded AFTER the fact, they will surely look after their own interests. When players know that their GM is trigger-happy, they just want minutes and stats whenever they get a chance.

Hopefully we can still work Asik back into the lineup before he's really traded, instead of talking about trade.

 

arghhhh!!!

1. Lin and Asik making $15 million each doesn't matter because it doesn't count AGAINST THE CAP. The only person it impacts is Les Alexander and frankly, he's due to shell out for a quality team.

2. We could either A) offer Lin and Asik these balloon payment contracts that we knew we could afford or B) not have them on the team because these contracts everyone is b*tching and moaning about were the only way to get them in a rockets uniform. If Morey doesn't come up with that contract, Asik would still be on the Bulls and Lin would be with the Knicks because they would've easily MATCHED our offer sheet.

3. Who gives a **** if the trade didn't happen ? Are you really upset that we don't have Courtney Lee, Brandon Bass, and some high protected 2017 1st round pick ? Was that going to get us to the finals this year ? We have 2 months... TWO MONTHS to trade Asik.

4. We're not desperate, we're not backed into a corner. We can afford to pay both these players next year, and hell, Lin is worth is 8 million dollar cap hit. Asik will come back to the bench and do his job. He knows that is his only ticket out of here.

5. Pull your head out of your ass and quit with this revisionist history BS.

 

Speaking out of your experience where your head usually is? Which part of the history was in a different version?

 

You're so ignorant on a lot of stuff here.

Tell me, when "Harden fell into our laps", would we have been able to get him if Morey hadn't set it up beautifully beforehand?

Yes, I know, I know, next comes some rationale you have that it was actually blind luck, if I actually look at what happened yap yap yap.

As far as Asik, Morey whiffed on not trading him in the summer, but he and McHale took some stupid pills there. But I think they were paranoid because McHale was talking about how out of shape Dwight was last summer.

I think most of us would say we know Morey isn't infallible.

But you sound worse than The Rocket Guy. Did Morey borrow $20 off you and not pay it back?

 

we might be able to land a 3 way trade because brooklyn needs Asik. We don't really want anyone they have but a 3rd partner could.

 

"Ignorant of a lot of stuff", and all you could come up was "set it up beautifully beforehand" for Harden?

James Harden wasn't a planned or calculated move. We had Dragic and Lowry, but either they didn't want to stay, or Morey didn't want to keep them for their prices. We didn't have a point guard, until we signed Lin. To make sure we had a PG to start the season, Morey outbid himself with the poison pill. That was the plan - a young team led by Lin, to start the season. It was full tanking mode. Until Harden decided NOT to take the No. 3 role at Thunders, we had a star on our team. The team accomplished over expectation. But how was that "set up beautifully beforehand"? Please enlighten me.

 

you're trolling at this point. If you don't understand that keeping cap flexibility, having productive players on fair contracts (kmart), and amassing assets (the Toronto pick and Jeremy Lamb) isn't just "luck" but an actual skill - a sign of good management, then what team have you been following cause it hasn't been the rockets. Morey didn't put that trade package together specifically for Harden - it was for the first star to come available. and it was PLANNED.

 

You really are just trolling or being obtuse. And I'm not gonna develop carpal tunnel dissecting your posts.

 

I said it many times we had cap room, that's essential; otherwise, you wouldn't be able to sign any given star. I thought that's a given, isn't it?

As you said, it wasn't specifically planned for Harden, just a possibility for any available star. In other words, it was very likely we just ended up with cap space but no star.

Without any PG, then a poison pill on Lin to make sure there would be some recognizable name on a young tanking but fun team. That was the plan. It's like a last resort kind of contingency plan.

OTOH, going after Howard was planned, well-executed as well.

Besides, I was talking about the two poison pills, and they don't look so great at the moment. If you still want to spin that as Morey's genius work, fine by me. They were his work.

 

You can ignore my post without attacking me personally.

 

You're an idiot.

How's that?

 

And that's the smartest reply you could come up with, bright and tough kid? LOL.

 

Yikes.

 

We must be reading different boards. Yes, he has a high rep since Harden and why shouldn't he? I was initially sour on that trade. I had no idea his game had so much potential. Turns out the rest of the league didn't see it either, and that's on Morey, his staff, and Les.

Yes, Houston was not Dwight's first choice, and Kobe pushed him out, but non glamor teams have to be opportunistic, and that's the best way to describe Morey's technique - opportunistic.

Yes, Morey has made mistakes, but he's usually able to get out from under those mistakes very quickly. Since every GM makes mistakes, this is an important point. Morey is very good at mitigating a screw up.

And the point about Rudy Gay is spot on. Lin and Asik could be traded tomorrow, but Morey is picky (rightfully so) and won't make a move just to make it.

Lastly, look at how many things have gone wrong this season, yet the Rockets are still right there in the hunt for a top four seed. Remove a couple of loses because of the Asik experiment, and they'd be breathing down the Spur's neck. Are things all sunshine and rainbows down at TC, clearly not, but if this is as bad as it gets, I'd say the future's looking pretty damn good.

 

Morey is treated like a good because of how annoying it was to follow a team who would compete all year for the 8th seed then collapse in the last 6-10 games and get pick 14.

Eventually Morey's philosophy made the team relevant again. Nobody expects every decision to work out perfectly.

 

How did he "fall into our laps?"

Let me take a quote from someone who would know how he did...

No, Morey just created the situation. Funny, no other team really wanted Harden either. Good thing we were the only teams that saw him as a max player. Good thing we were the only team that wanted him, had the pieces and the cap space to make it happen.

Why were we one of the few teams considered?

Funny, most of your complaints about Morey are actually answered literally within the same sentence.

 

Didn't I say Morey is a smart GM? Have I ever discredited every single move of him?

In my original post, I was very specific. I criticized the 2 poison pills Morey created and now they are hard to move. I criticized the way he handled the Asik situation with self-imposed deadline. I questioned about his way of "treating everyone as asset".

Were those critics legit?

Did I criticize him getting Harden and going after Howard, at all? Ever? In any of my posts?

You are still discussing Morey's moves with me, although not what I held him accountable for. Then there were guys just throwing insults around, simply because I am not fond of Morey's certain moves.

So, I was right then, that Morey is enjoying the God status.

 

Ugh..your last sentence about pgs being in high supply...combined with the news about having to call up canaan. Smh this is one of the crappier starts to a season (not record wise)

 

Morey is a smart GM except for one important personnel decision: The coach. The poison pill was justified before Harden fell to Rockets, which in turn led to Howard signing. But McHale and his staff cannot really deal with the value on the roster Morey assembled there.
Lin was high risk with potential. To justify his contract, he needs to develop his PG skills, which he showed great promise for during Linsanity and occasionally in Houston. McHale has not been able to develop both Harden and Lin at the same time, the way Sloan and Popovich would. The main culprit is this so-called Read-and-React offense, which is virtually no game plan and mostly becoming "let one man create and other watch on" once they face good defense. For similar attitude, even Howard cannot get proper amount touches on offense, not to mention to further integrate Asik. The net result is that Lin and Asik's trade value plummets due to lack of development to justify the contract.
And McHale isn't capable of coaching differently. So, Morey has only himself to blame for not hiring a different coach given the unexpected positive changes in the recruiting dynamics.