Maybe I'm in the minority and I'm not saying he made all great moves, but I think if cd had these so called assets, we would have that star everyone is screaming for. I mean Indy had a better offer for mcgrady and mcgrady was traded to houston. The fact that in a 3 yr span he comes away with the #2,#8,and #1 pick in the draft. He turned the former #2, and 2nd rder, and cato into tracy in his prime is another thing. To pull off big deals for big players, you have to be a deal maker.
If CD was still here we would have never gotten these assets in the first place. CD had alot more really bad drafts than good ones. So what star would CD or any GM in the league gotten for us? I just don't see this abundance of franchise players that have hit the market in the last 2 years that we had any shot of getting regardless of who our GM was.
Morph, CD made a lot of good trades, his problem was in overpaying for players on his roster...like Cato and Maloney..... Morey's problem is that he doesn't seem to understand the ramifications of chemistry and size. I think he has finally figured out that we should be taking some risks on players with size and athleticism.....after valuing college productiond and 4 years at a school above size. Donte Green being the notable exception. DD
DD, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you about Morey's flaws. But give the guy a little credit on his first round draft pick resume. Three players: Aaron Brooks (#26) - senior PG w/out size, but was apparently best player available; worked out pretty well Donte Greene (#28) - freshman SF w/size (6'10"), pretty raw overall Patrick Patterson (#14) - junior PF with average size for the position I don't know about you, but I don't see any patterns there. Sure, he passed on some size in the second round, but so did the entire league. Perhaps his flaw was in not taking a gamble in the second round. But I wouldn't necessarily say that size in his first round selections was a flaw.
Everything is a gamble in the 2nd round. Sometimes you get a Carl Landry, other times, a Joey Dorsey. The Rockets have had an well-above-average hit rate with those in recent years.
LMAO at all you guys doing the bandwagon hokey-pokey. You put your left foot on, you take your left foot off... :grin:
Exactly. CD was not a good asset manager. In fact, when Morey took over, we pretty much had zero trade assets besides Yao and McGrady. It says a lot about Morey's skills when you look at all the assets we have now. CD's strong suit was boldness. He was not afraid to make a bold move. In other words, he gambled. The Drexler deal and the Barkley deal were epitome of his reign. His bad contracts were also his gambles. And I have to say, as a gambler, he lost more times than he won, especially towards the end of his career.
I'd say CD made a few good trades, a lot of bad drafts and a lot of bad contracts. Let's look at the Rocket's draft picks from 1993-2006 and then try to tell me Morey's drafts have been anything but a vast improvement 1993 2nd rnd 50th pick Marcelo Nicola PF Saski Baskonia (Spain) 1994 2nd rnd 41st pick Albert Burditt PF University of Texas at Austin 1995 2nd rnd 41st Erik Meek C Duke University 1996 2nd rnd 30th pick Othella Harrington PF Georgetown University 1996 2nd rnd 42nd pick Livingston, Randy USA SG Louisiana State University 1996 2nd rnd 50th pick Terrell Bell PF University of Georgia 1997 1st rnd 24th pick Rodrick Rhodes SF University of Southern California 1997 2nd rnd 29th pick Serge Zwikker C University of North Carolina 1998 1st 14th pick Michael Dickerson USA SG University of Arizona 1998 1st 16th pick Bryce Drew USA PG Valparaiso University 1998 1st 18th pick Mirsad Türkcan PF Efes Pilsen S.K. (Turkey) 1998 2nd rnd 41st pick Cuttino Mobley USA SG University of Rhode Island 1999 1st rnd 22nd pick Kenny Thomas PF University of New Mexico 1999 2nd rnd 44 pick Tyrone Washington USA PF Mississippi State University 1999 2nd rnd 50 Venson Hamilton PF University of Nebraska 2000 1st 15th pick Joel Przybilla (traded to Milwaukee) C U of Minnesota 2000 2 38 Eduardo Najera (traded to Dallas) MEX SF University of Oklahoma 2001 1st rnd 13th pick Richard Jefferson(traded to New Jersey)SF 2001 1st rnd 18th pick Jason Collins (traded to New Jersey) USA C Stanford 2001 1st rnd 23rd pick Brandon Armstrong (traded to New Jersey) SG 2002 1st rnd 1st pick Yao, Ming CHN C Shanghai Sharks (China) 2002 1st rnd 15th pick Boštjan Nachbar (from Toronto) SF (Italy) 2002 2nd rnd 37th pick Tito Maddox (from Miami) PG California State 2003 2nd rnd 44th pick Malick Badiane C Deutsche Bank Skyliners (Germany) 2004 2nd rnd 55th pick Luis Flores DOM PG Manhattan College 2005 1st rnd 24th pick Luther Head SG University of Illinois 2006 1st rnd 8th pick Rudy Gay (traded to Memphis) SF U of Connecticut 2006 2nd rnd 32nd pick Steve Novak I'd say CD had 4 reasonably good picks (and that is including Kenny Thomas and Othella Harrington as "good picks", I would say they were close to Carl Landry level) over that 13 year stretch, with a hand full of Jermaine Taylor level contributors, and a bunch of players who weren't good enough to stay in the league for long.
Oh no here we go again. He gave a shot to Gerald Green, Von Wafer, Pops Mensah Bonsu, Joey Dorsey, Justin Williams, James White, Greene, Patterson, Budinger, Hill, Jermaine Taylor etc. All have athleticism and most have plenty of size for their position, and MOST OF THEM STILL SUCK! Morey doesn't hate size and athleticism. The truth is just that quality size and athleticism goes in the lottery, where we haven't been too much. If the long athletes drop in the draft or bounce around the league, there is usually something very wrong with them I'm sure you would like us to pick the Saer Senes, Solomon Alabis, Patrick O'Bryants, Sean Williams', DeAndre Jordans and Hassan Whitesides with our few quality picks but there is a reason why those type of guys fall - picking them is more likely to cost the GM's job than even one of them developing into an impact player. We had quality size who actually could play basketball and impact games. His name was Yao. Picking a few athletic freaks instead of actual skilled basketball players wouldn't have made us any more of a contender than we were.
Look, Morey himself said he valued college production over size and potential, when they took Landry and Brooks. I think he has now realized that maybe he needs to consider both, and made a big point this year about PPat being a NORMAL SIZED player. He gets it, but when he took Dorsey instead of other bigs like Jordan, he did not. And yes, here we go again because it is the truth. DD
I believe that he has also said (at least implied) that there is no quality size and athleticism left in the Brooks-Landry-Dorsey range. What you call size and potential, I call 1 out of 100 odds of ever finding anything useful compared to, let's say, 20 out of 100 odds of finding a smaller, less athletic but NBA ready role player. The fact that he took Patterson is actually my point: Normal or supersized players with athleticism, who can actually play now or are likely to get there, go in the lottery.
Obviously if you can get both production and size and athleticism you do it, but usually in the 2nd round that is much less likely. Going size and potential can leave you with Hasheem Thabeet in the first round with the 2nd pick. If going production first gets us Landry, Brooks and a "bad pick" of Dorsey, then I will take that over CD's drafting any time.
Was there a normal sized player who became just as good as Brooks/Landry that Morey passed on that year?
Morey was wrong on his predictions about the 2010 FA summer. I understand what he was thinking and it made total sense at the time. If he could know the future, I wonder what he would have done differently. He thought the Rockets were going to be in the catbird seat because star movement centered around teams with assets, but LeBron, Bosh, Amare, Boozer...they dictated everything and that flipped the NBA world that Morey thought was going to exist. All of the Rockets moves were based on the idea of the NBA working a certain way, and now that it's changed, I guess the Rockets have to change too.
mello would probably be on this team right now if cd was still the gm. only problem is that our whole bench and starting lineup would play for another team if cd was still here.
Perhaps if he was playing for the minimum as a 2nd round or later draft pick... He is averaging 1.2 ppg, 1.5 reb and .4 blocks in 9 minutes a game for the Grizz and there is a reason he isn't getting more minutes. So far he has been less productive than Dorsey for his career.
CD's 2010 Rockets starting lineup: SF - Carmelo Anthony PF - Juwon Howard C - Malick Badiane SG - Steve Novak PG - Rafer Alston NBA Championship, here we come!
Good gosh CD was awful in the draft. I mean absolutely freaking horrible! His draft trades were terrible as well. How anyone could wish we had CD instead of Morey and thinks CD would have done more with what little we had must be smoking some good ****. I mean look at these names in the first round: Dickerson, Bryce Drew, Mirsad Türkcan, Luther Head (decent role player for one season), Steve Novak, and then the good picks he makes such as Richard Jefferson, Rudy Gay (who we wouldn't have picked anyway!), and Joel Przybilla we trade away for freaking garbage. Morey>CD there is no question about it. In fact, the two don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence.
