The trade for Ron Artest was the type of riskier "over the top" move you described. It's just that Tmac and Yao failed last year.
I still remember some of the posts made by Clutchfans members when Brooks, Landry and Budinger were picked. Would be amusing if some of them were plucked out and displayed for all their judgemental glory Frankly, armchair GMs have no right to grade / judge Morey. And I still find it amusing that some people can't be thankful that the team has been blessed with Morey. I mean, try and imagine having Isaih Thomas as your GM...
none have been fails except for maybe Barry. Doresy was a 2nd rounder with low expectations. Francis was a great signing at the league minimum. Andersen is a decent backup center and a rookie. Taylor, again is a rookie. And all of the players drafted were 2nd rounders so none are fails.
Even these you can't really give a grade to. Barry was brought in to provide some veteran experience. His greatest contribution was probably in mentoring Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry. And bringing Dorsey in was part of the swap that gave the Rockets Greene. Greene brought Artest.
The Francis signing was pretty brutal. Anyone who thought a player paid $23 million to leave Portland and NY would pan out is obviously on crack. (Feel free to search for the comical old thread where countless SF believers actually posted that he would the starting pg for the Rox that year) However, its not like we paid him salary-cap breaking dough. I think it was just a ploy to sell season tickets to the fans who still think of the Iso-nightmare days as "the good ole days" And if he had any impact, it would have been a feel good story.
Morey's biggest problem is not the moves he made, but the moves that he failed to make. Trading up in the draft fail Trading injury prone players fail
T-Mac,so to speak,is an injury prone player since 2005-06 season.And his expiring contract is a cancer that no team would like to add his contract to the team's salary totals. Well,if Tracy could return to action and play at a high level performance,that'd look like a shocker to those skeptics.
Morey gets a A+ in my book. Only bad move was Francis and I guarantee there was more to that than Morey. Barry was not a bad move, if T-Mac/Yao/Artest would of all been healthy Barry was a terrific piece to that puzzle. I thought he could still play and with scorers could of done more than Wafer. Wafer was put in to score with T-Mac out.
If we're going to go with the baseball analogy, Morey's clearly not hitting like a lead off hitter. Lead off hitters are SUPPOSE to get on base. Morey's getting something out of nothing. In other words, Morey's basically getting Adam Everett and Brad Ausmus on base. With so many trade chips at his disposal now(expiring contracts plus valuable low paying players), we now get to see if Morey can really pull off the big one.
I'll go with leadoff hitter too because he has set the table for a major trade to go down and thats with good leadoff men do, set the table for the BIG INNING...WoW I love this baseball terminolgy
All of his moves are good, even the ones you call bad. Like Sf3 and Dorsey, how much did they cost us? Its not like he spent 50 million on someone like Steven Jackson, these moves all are low risk high reward. Sometimes, those work out and sometimes they don't and most of Morey's have worked out. Tell me who has done more with nothing than Morey?
I am actually seeing Anderson's improvement and increasing contribution, but a "poor man's gasol"? That would be a very very poor man's version. Since Gasol was also expected to be a much better player (3rd pick, ROY, all star) perhaps its not even fair to compare the two.
Going with the baseball analogy I would say Brooks, Scola and Landry have all been solo home runs, and Chase has shown the potential to be one. Getting an all star or super star level player would be more like a bases loaded home run, and Morey's ablility to do that has been extremely limited due to our stars injuries, and likely also due to turning down deals that were asking for too much. But when you look at the roster at the end of CD's tenure and compare it to now, we went from one of the worst supporting casts to one of the best extremely quickly. As others have noted, all of Morey's fails so far have been relatively inconsequential, where when CD failed it was often a long term over paid contract for Kelvin Cato or Moochie Norris or Matt Maloney. I would be willing to bet that Morey has had more draft successes in his limited tenure than CD did in his last 10 years on the job. Morey's ability to change us from an unatheletic, old supporting cast to our current state is nothing short of a miracle. It's inevitable that he will make some mistakes at some point, but he definitely deserves an A+ for his work up to this point.
Nah, what would we have gotten in return, a guy that plays the same position in nearly the exact same way as Shane and a aging scorer that got swept in the first round of the playoffs. Big loss there. I agree, Morey has been superb as a GM, helping retool a team that once had its success based solely on the performances of Yao and/or McGrady and instead helped craft a well rounded team. He didn't throw away the very good defensive players (Deke, Battier and Hayes) from Van Gundy's tenure because they didn't seem to fit but kept them around. He's added guys with legit potential to be well developed players rather then just trying to go for one dimensional role players. Both Morey and Adelman are so beyond judgment at this point it is scary. No other team before their run could be this good with their two major stars missing and still have the potential to be better in the future.
Guys, Francis WAS NOT a bad move. He made almost no money. Giving low risk high reward contracts like that is very smart. It did not work out, but it cost us absolutely nothing.
Amen, isn't Adelman great after Debbie Downer-- I mean Van Gundy? It is sort of good to have it be about the Rockets, not just JVG and his dramas.
