DeAndre Jordan, do you see DM going after him this season???

Russell Westbrook didn't look all that promising in college..

 

Jrue Holliday was underachieving in college.

 

whoa..I can't believe we are crying about this...we threw away the watermelon, and now we are having a b**** cry about the peanut?

Irrelevant players like DeAndre Jordan don't matter. Who cares about DeAndre Jordan? We threw away Rudy Gay and subsequently Yao and T-Mac's career (which is an entire decade of Rockets basketball), and now we are complaining about a small scrub DeAndre Jordan?

DeAndre Jordan don't matter.

 

One thing I've noticed about Morey - he tends to go for the undersized players. Players who talent and skill wise are very good...but the only quality is they lack height.

Problem is, when you look at our team, we're small. And think it hurts us on both ends of the court.

Obviously in rebounding...but also I see our guys get blocked a whole lot. Hayes, Scola, and pretty much everyone else get their shots blocked on a regular basis. Perhaps with the exception of Hill and Chase.

Maybe we need to start getting some taller players on our team.

 

I don't think it's that Morey favors undersized players so much as he just doesn't care how tall they are. He just values production and when your picking late in the draft as Morey often is, he probably sees production as a safer bet than upside. Considering how few late draft upside guys actually pan out, I'm sure Morey has an equation somewhere that calculates how productive he thinks a pick will be and when there are no more "production" type guys left on his board, THEN he would probably take a gamble on a high upside pick. The problem is, most teams tend to go to the high upside guys early if the sure things are off the board and that leaves guys on the board for Morey that he probably thinks will be of some value for an NBA team(albeit with a lower ceiling). Morey's strategy is just a reflection of good, but not great players being undervalued in traditional draft strategies for both good and bad teams.

 

Jordan is extremely limited offensively. He is essentially an offensive garbage man.

Defensively he is TERRIBLE. He does not understand rotations, he leaves his man open going for blocks, he does not know how to anticipate and does not follow basic spacing.

On top of all that, he does not seem to be that bright.

Overall he is a BACK UP center long term and not a major loss...

 

I think Morey's love of talented but undersized players is the result of picking late in the draft. By then, most of the players with size worth taking are gone and those that are left usually are risky for one reason or another. (Budinger's the only exception to this IIRC.) Better to take an undersized player who is more likely to contribute.

Morey's highest pick Patterson isn't tall but isn't undersized either, as Morey pointed out when he drafted him.

 

Yeah, most of the knocks on Morey's drafting - height, age, low potential, etc. - can pretty much all be explained by where we've been drafting.

And while Morey picked Patterson, it was more a conicidence than anything else. He actually projected younger players like George to be in that slot instead. It just so happened that the draft went in a way that Patterson ended up being the BP.

 

Well at least Morey was able to showcase Dorsey at the right time. Just when he was starting to play good, Bang, he is traded to Sac that involves Kevin Martin.

 

Big baby or Carl Landry

Morey chose Aaron Brooks that year

I heard many sources Rockets were very interested in Glen Davis nd one team in the league has given him a first round promice.

it did't work out

 

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=18406

 

I don't underatsnd the whole we "passed on Jordan for Dorsey" logic. The Rockets drafted Batum. Traded Batum for Donte Greene and Joey Dorsey. The Rockets then traded Greene to get Artest. The Rockets were in a "win now" mode and Artest gave us the best chance of winning.

 

Deandre went to Episcopal High School, which is the most expensive private school in Houston. I can assure you he has never been in a gang in his life. I'm sure that Astros tattoo is about representing Houston. And all of his friends are your average college kids. The questions about Deandre were about his maturity, which in high school was about the same as a middle schooler. The reason he fell is because he had no offensive skill or bball iq, which is still the case today.

 

~$20k a year for a high school tuition... I went to another SPC school, but that number still floors me.

 

Portland drafted Dorsey for us. We wanted Dorsey. And the Artest trade came about a month later, as I recall.

 

Actually (and largely reiterating what durvasa said), the Rockets' 2008 NBA Draft technically unfolded as follows:

--The Rockets selected Nicolas Batum (#25) for the Portland Trailblazers in exchange for the #27 and #33 picks.

--The Rockets had the Blazers select Darrell Arthur (#27), knowing that the Memphis Grizzlies wanted him badly.

--The Rockets agreed to swap the rights to Arthur in exchange for the #28 pick and Memphis's 2009 second round pick.

--The Rockets had the Grizzlies select Donte Greene (#28).

--The Rockets had the Blazers select Joey Dorsey (#33).

Perhaps due to the Ted Stepien Rule regarding trading future first round picks, these trades could not be announced until after Dorsey was selected and were not actually reported until shortly after the draft, leaving many (including myself) anxiously wondering who the hell the Rockets actually drafted that night.

But that's how it actually went down. No one drafted any of those players for themselves. All those guys were drafted FOR the teams on which they ended up.

THEN . . . over a month later, completely unrelated to the draft, the Rockets traded Donte Greene, Bobby Jackson and a 2009 first rounder to Sacramento for Ron Artest. (And, NO, the Rockets did not draft Greene for Sacramento. If they did, they would have done the Artest deal on draft night. Anyone who thinks that needs to get it out of their mind right now.)

 

I like jordan, but I won't go on to say it was that big of a mistake. It wasnt like a franchise changing error,but I wish they wouldve drafted him. I have my reasons.

At the time of that draft, Yao had just came off another season ending injury and deke was getting older. There couldnt have been a better support group availiable to him than that. Playing against deke and yao in practice, witnessing the professionalism of those 2 would have done wonders for his development. He could have been a hold the fort type of center. With yao missing the entire 2009 season would have given jordan alot of playing time to develop.

I was also one of the guys just wanting the rockets to add size. Adding a guy like jordan and to a certian extent mbenga, was more so to balance the team up across the frontline. When you have a team full of small offensive guys, its nothing wrong with having big defensive guys. Sure those guys are limited, but if you can get good production to equal out ok, thats good enough.

 

How many players are there who average almost 25% higher on FGs than FTs over their careers? That's way more of a spread than even Shaq. This guy makes Dwight Howard and Chuck Hayes look like Kmart from the line.

 

Well thanks for that.

Did he pay for that tuition or was he on scholarship?

DD

 

@6'11, 265lbs DeAndre Jordan has had 37rebs, 19 blocks, 34pts; 74.4% fg. Still on his rookie contract, I would like him on the team. I bet The Clippers would match offers (not sure if it's a team option or so); Chris Kaman also adds onto the equation.