I would much rather have Morey to first install an empirically tested defensive system (such as a Van Gundy would implement), and only afterwards tweak it with analytics, than to hire unproven coaches who might need time to learn the NBA game. Buy Stan's defensive playbook. Hire a bunch of bright young assistant coaches for him to mentor. Let them live, breathe, and dream defensive schemes, and fine-tune the baseline system.
PLayoff teams PICK & POP PFS. clippers - griffen/big baby okc- ibaka blazers- LMA grizzlies- ZBO spurs - Duncan/diaw warriors- LEE mav - DIRK ROCKETS - ?????????? morey ball, let me see if I can get away with jones, then trade asik for two first picks & get a PF... oh I cant nobody wanted him he got hurt, so now lets start asik in playoffs because jone sisnt going to work... howard is a good signing, but he wasted a yr so far, if something is not done with asik or lin contracts to bring in a PF (doesnt have to be star) then it will be another yr wasted, we will see the same thing as last year and you guys will be blaming mchale again & loving morey.
You reply is filled with excuses. I challenge you to name one move that improved the Rockets after Dwight signing. Morey deserves every bit of criticism from fans for wasting one year of Dwight career. No cap? Lame excuse. Are you telling me if CP3 decided to join Dwight last summer, Morey can't create cap? 2 years is eternity in NBA. When you have two healthy stars who are the best at their respective positions, the time is always NOW!
Again your view of things is of a fantasy world where moves are made by simply pressing a button and it's done. What did Miami do to improve the team immediately after they picked up Lebron and Bosh? Do you realize how ridiculous this question sounds? Same thing as asking what we did to improve after signing Howard. He improved the team immensely by getting Dwight. We didn't have the means to do anything else short of wasting all of our assets to shed Asik and Lins salary, but then at that point who are we doing it for? You don't throw the rest of your ammo away for just anyone. If a CP3 caliber player was available you bet your ass he would have blown every asset we had to do what we needed to do, but that caliber player wasn't available, so why are we wasting our assets? Millsap agreed with Atlanta before we had Dwight, he wasn't an option. This is NOT a video game.
Now you are claiming there is the possibility we could create cap? So it was an excuse all along. I never said find cap to sign Millsap AFTER we signed Dwight. Go back and read my post again! I swear that some of the MOF (Morey Only Fans) are annoy as hell.
Now you are claiming there is the possibility we could create cap? So it was an excuse all along. I never said find cap to sign Millsap AFTER we signed Dwight. Go back and read my post again! I swear that some of the MOF (Morey Only Fans) are annoy as hell. Miami went to the Finals for god sake while this Rockets will NEVER sniff the WCF as they are constructed. Way too many flaws,
Creating cap and using all our assets to do so for a Paul level player is one thing. Doing it for middle of the pack depth guys is a whole different thing. You are basically advocating we pulled what GS did this last year. Shoot their entire wad for a 6th seed team and now they are essentially stuck with what they got. I don't think I'm wrong in believing we did the right thing by avoiding that situation.
Never said that. Again, you are shoveling words into me. Are you kidding me that Dubs are stuck with Iggy? Did you not know they almost beat Clips without Bogut? Dubs are one of the most talented teams in the west. Once they upgrade Lee and hire an X and O coach, they will be a force in the west. You have no idea what you are talking about. You are not wrong on your beliefs but don't come out like you are the only one who understands about cap, especially someone like you who can't even think outside the box! Rockets ranked 14th out of 16 playoff teams in cap hit and still had/have MLE. 13 teams were in worse cap situation than Rockets, but it never held other teams from improving. This team is in desperate need of veterans. I'm tired of Morey's mentality of penny pinching, looking-for-bargaining-deals and other teams recycling goods. This is what usually happens: you strike out on all deals/moves. One year wasted. How many times he struck out on PF's? 3 years and a bunch of assets wasted.
The Warriors do have a pretty good team, but after using all of their assets to get Iggy they are basically hoping that group they have now is good enough to win it all. They don't have much wiggle room anymore and to me what they got isn't good enough. Bogut was the only guy for them to miss a chunk of games, he seems to be often injured and their best player is always an injury risk. A soon to be 31 year old David Lee isn't going to be worth much in trades and since getting Iggy, Barnes has lost a ton of value. The Rockets haven't had the MLE to use yet. They will most likely get to use it THIS offseason. Again you are looking at every team like they were in the same situation as us and saying well they did something why didn't we? NONE of the other teams scrapped their team roster to make room for a 20million dollar free agent and then actually got their man like we did. It's just not the same scenario. Once we used all of our cap our only course for improvement was vet min signings and trades. Our only guys with significant salary to trade were Harden, Howard, Asik and Lin. I guarantee we tried to get something for Asik and Lin, but we weren't going to make bad moves just to make them.
I don't think finding a competent starting PF after having most of the summer and the entire season to find one means 'shooting your wad' and/or turning into GS. I also don't think using the Room Exception to shore up the roster is too much to ask. What is the downside to doing that?
But who are we talking about? The room exception is what ~2.5 million per year for 2 years. What guy was out there that would have really helped us for that amount of money. And at PF, again who are we talking about and how are we going about getting them? No cap space so that's out. I'm fairly certain moving Lin alone would have cost us assets. I think we tried to move Asik at various points, but I think we valued what he could give us this year over anything that was offered in a trade for him or else a deal would have been done. After that there was no one with any kind of salary that could have been packaged in a deal to bring in anything. So I'm left wondering who people are so outraged we didn't go after that would have made a real difference with our extremely limited means to make anything happen?
After having no resources other than a listing of NBA transactions last year - DeJuan Blair and Jermaine O'Neal. Both would have helped this team tremendously.
2 names and salaries that do fit the criteria of us actually being able to sign, but just fitting that criteria doesn't mean everything. With both guys you have to consider what they as players wanted. As we all know it's not just if you want a guy, it's also about if they want you. Would O'Neal choose us knowing he's the 3rd center on the depth chart over Gstate where he was 2nd behind a guy who has a history of getting injured. If he wants any playing time I can't see him picking us. Not to mention we also had Greg Smith at the time as well. Does Blair come to a team with 2 guys that look to be getting all the developmental time they can get? Is Morey really even considering guys of Blair's caliber over giving that developmental time to Dmo and Jones to see if they have any chance of being in our future plans? I think it's really easy after the fact to look back and say of course we should have signed these guys, but at the time they were signed there were several factors that had to be considered and I just don't see it as an egregious mistake to not get those 2 guys even if they would have signed with us.
At this stage in his career, O'Neal just wants to go where he can win. Salary and depth chart isn't a major factor. He's a ring chasing vet at this stage in his career, and those guys are picky about where they want to go. The criteria is simply: A contender.
Well there's your problem(s). Should have moved Asik and then brought in a guy like O'Neal. Should have offered time at PF, where the Rockets were inept. The fact that you mention Greg Smith is also a problem. Who cares about Greg Smith? We should have been trying to win games. Similarly, who cares about 'developmental time' for PFs when you have 2 max guys who are supposedly the best at their positions? The fact that we're worried about 'developmental time' is a problem when there's a glaring weakness in the lineup.
R. C. Buford did well by not screwing up his team in the middle of the season by bringing in team cancers Andrew Bynum and Evan Turner and getting rid of Danny Granger. I don't even understand how Larry Bird even got two second place votes.
