[HoustonPress] Rocket Science (long Morey article)

intergalactic · Nov 1, 2007

The pretentious analogies from Bline are his bread and butter! He's a color commentator, not a play-by-play man.

ghost · Nov 1, 2007

Hayesfan said:

It's the fine line between balancing the two that people don't understand. At least most casual NBA fans. There is a lot of times that you can quantify a person's contribution on the court... ie Tmac or Yao... but there are just as many times that you can't, from a box score, indicate what a player means to his team when he's on the court... ie Battier or Chuck.

The thing that I think Morey is able to do is quantify those "intangibles" that everyone hates. Hollinger also tries to find ways to make those stats that aren't visible to a person reading the stat line understandable to the common fan.

The so called "moneyball" isn't something set in stone at this point, at least it doesn't seem that way to me. I can't see a situation in which it wouldn't evolve and grow just like every other type of mathematical analysis.

The more I read about this stuff the more interested I become in the process of it Whereas someone like Kenny Smith looks at it from a "expert" point of view and says, you can't quantify what I did on the court.

Someone should do his PER or +/- to see what his projected value was during his career... maybe a years with and years without Hakeem analysis would be good. LOL
Click to expand...

The info is available online.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/smithke01.html

Scroll down to advanced stats.

durvasa · Nov 1, 2007

The article mentions a Hoopsworld piece expressing reservations over bringing in Morey as a replacement GM. I found it in Google's cache, if anyone is interested. It's by Bill Ingram, who I think posts here sometimes:

Daryl Morey? Are You Serious?
By Bill Ingram
Mar 30, 2006, 11:01

The Houston Rockets are taking the inexpensive way out. What else could explain the decision to replace GM Carroll Dawson with Boston Celtics statistical analyst Daryl Morey? Who? He did what? The Mavericks have an outstanding stats guy in Sean McClosky, but I don’t think I would turn the team over to him. With so many proven general manager prospects out there (including Houston’s own VP of basketball ops Dennis Lindsey), why do the Rockets go with a 32-year-old stats guy with no experience beyond that job? And why keep Carroll Dawson on as an adviser?

"CD is going to be with the organization for a long time," Rockets owner Alexander told the Houston Chronicle. "He will be a great adviser. He will remain an integral part of what we do." That’s a big relief, because the way Dawson has masterminded this era of mediocrity had me wondering what the Rockets would possibly do without his expertise guiding them.

Let’s do a quick review of recent draft picks:

2000: Jason Collier and Eduardo Najera

This was a nice draft, though it didn’t pan out for the Rockets at all. Collier went on to find a home in Atlanta after doing little to nothing in Houston, and of course Eduardo Najera is an impact player wherever he is. Of course, the Rockets drafted Najera and then traded him for Dan Langhi. Najera is having a nice NBA career, Langhi is . . .well, he’s not playing in the NBA. He had brief stints with the Suns, Warriors, Spurs, and the CBA’s Idaho Stampede, but failed to catch on anywhere. Last I heard he was playing in Italy.

2001: Richard Jefferson, Jason Collins, and Brandon Armstrong

WOW! Carroll Dawson really made a nice pick in Richard Jefferson. My man can ball with the best of them and would really look nice alongside Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. The only problem is that CD traded all of these guys to the New Jersey Nets for college headcase Eddie Griffin, who had his issues on the court before he fired shots at a girl who showed up at his house unannounced. The Rockets wound up waiving him. Griffin is now trying to get his life back together playing for the Timberwolves, meaning the Rockets have nothing at all to show for three draft picks.

2002: Yao Ming, Bostjan Nachbar, and Tito Maddox

Yao Ming was a no-brainer. The Rockets lucked out in getting the top pick. Nachbar has yet to find a home and didn’t really even get a shot in the Jeff Van Gundy system. Maddox is long gone.

2003: Malick Badiane

The second-round pick was a project. We have yet to see him in a Rockets jersey.

2004: Luis Flores

Chosen with the 55th pick, his rights were traded to Dallas, then Golden State, then Denver, and was last seen in Sacramento.

2005: Luther Head

This was a nice pick. Luther has been thrown into the fire with all of the injuries this season and he has responded well. He should be a player for years to come, though maybe not in Houston. He may have to be paired with someone to help unload a bad contract or two.

So – out of 11draft picks over the last six years the Rockets actually benefited from two. One was a lucky ping-pong ball that would have been hard to screw up.

Of course, the NBA has moved away from a format that allows the draft to be a significant factor for any team without a top five pick. As younger and more inexperienced players throw in the draft becomes more of a gamble than anything else. So maybe judging Dawson on his draft history isn’t entirely fair. Well, I’m going to continue to judge him on the Langhi/Najera deal and the Jefferson/Griffin deal, so let’s just say we’ll set those aside for the moment.

The other jobs the GM is primarily responsible for include signing quality free agents, making trades, and making sure the talent on the team is complementary. Maybe we can find some redemption here.

In the past two seasons the Rockets have been building around two amazing superstars. Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady can get the Rockets into the playoffs without much help. Of course, injuries have kept them from being as good as they might have been, but let’s talk a little bit about the supporting cast that has been put in place. Vin Baker, Clarence Weatherspoon, Charlie Ward, David Wesley, Moochie Norris, Juwan Howard, Stromile Swift, Derek Anderson, Ryan Bowen, Jon Barry, Dion Glover, Stephen Graham, Josh Davis, John Lucas III, Marceij Lampe, Gerald Fitch, Rickie Frahm, Rick Brunson – a long string of mediocre talent, several of them given huge contracts that won’t be easily shed. The rest are hardly a who’s who of the NBA. We have older players who are past their prime and are constantly on the injured list. Then we have young players who have no game. Then we have players who were brought in and never played, meaning either Dawson didn’t consult with Jeff Van Gundy before making the deal or they were both clueless.

Speaking of coaching staff, are we trying to have a New York revival here? Patrick Ewing as a coach??? It’s amazing that Yao Ming has been able to overcome the teaching of a big man who never dominated the paint. Ewing was never a teacher and he still isn’t. The man can hardly even communicate. His one claim to fame as president of the Players Association was telling the media he didn’t know how the NBA expected the players to live on the money they paid them. Nice, Patrick. Charlie Ward is a nice guy, but he’s not Avery Johnson. Also very soft-spoken, Ward is not the kind of person who will stand out in a crowd. So you have two assistants who don’t speak and a head coach who is so negative you wish he wouldn’t speak. Great combination.

The first job for a new general manager should be to address the coaching situation, but that won’t happen now. Dawson will remain as the GM for one more season, grooming Morey for the job. That means a decent draft pick will likely be wasted this summer and another year of McGrady’s ever-shortening career will be thrown away.

It’s a good thing this state has two other NBA teams to follow while the Rockets are wallowing in mediocrity.

I have no idea what to expect from Morey, but I did tap a Boston source for some insight into the job he has done for the Celtics. Former HOOPSWORLD analyst Phil Maymin offers the following analysis:

“I like Kiki a lot, as I wrote in the inaugural issue of SWISH Magazine. He's one of the best old-school GMs: good eye for talent, good understanding of the cap, not necessarily the best at chemistry (Bzdelik vs. Carmelo last year, Martin this year, other pockets of instability).

But if you want to see Moneyball applied to basketball, Daryl Morey is your guy. Over the next 5-10 years you've got to believe that quantitative analysis is where it's at, especially in establishing chemistry. Defining roles and finding role players. It's one of the toughest problems in the world but also the most important for a team game where as you unfortunately know even having two of the best players in the game is not enough to win. It's the hidden reason why San Antonio and Detroit have done so well. Those GMs are old-school too but they constantly worry about chemistry. Despite the Celtics record there is no denying their chemistry is rock solid and improving. Talent alone doesn't win games anymore (cf. Knicks).

On the flipside it would be unfair to label him a numbers guy only. While he's obviously world-class when it comes to quantitative analysis, pure numbers guys can't really look at high school guys and tend to focus on college players as prospects, yet with Daryl involved the Celtics drafted three high schoolers, all doing extremely well (Perk, Big Al, Green). He understands the game and knows talent when he sees it.

He's got the whole package. You will be very happy with him. Kiki is a terrific rebuilding GM, in jettisoning old contracts etc. and bringing in talent. But the next step is moving some of that talent to build a better team. The Celtics are at that stage as per the Ricky-Wally trade. The Knicks are past due. (Maybe so is Denver?) But in Houston you don't want to rebuild from scratch, you want to build around your two superstars, right? For that, the best person short of Joe Dumars is Daryl Morey.”

Phil Maymin gives Houstonians reason to hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I sincerely hope he’s right. For now, I continue to be worried about the immediate future of the Houston Rockets.
Click to expand...

Hayesfan · Nov 1, 2007

ghost said:

The info is available online.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/smithke01.html

Scroll down to advanced stats.
Click to expand...

You rock!

Let's see... without Hakeem... 13.6
and when he was with the Rox (and Hakeem)... 15.5

I would say that's a pretty interesting difference. Course those were also his "peak" years in age from 25-30.

Thanks so much for pointing that out to me. I honestly don't spend enough time on that site.

Chronz · Nov 1, 2007

chow_yun_fat said:

Awesome piece.

How did we steal Morey from Boston?
Click to expand...

Morey once used stats to show that Brian Scalabrine made players around him better. And that he was a winner.

But atleast hes learned from his mistakes

durvasa · Nov 1, 2007

Chronz said:

Morey once used stats to show that Brian Scalabrine made players around him better. And that he was a winner.

But atleast hes learned from his mistakes
Click to expand...

I never read that. You remember where you got that from?

slowmustang · Nov 1, 2007

Scalabrine was actually Ainge's idea of brain type. Supposedly his brain type was perfect or something.

Achilleus · Nov 1, 2007

intergalactic said:

The pretentious analogies from Bline are his bread and butter!
Click to expand...

Stale bread and spoiled butter.

Chronz · Nov 1, 2007

durvasa said:

I never read that. You remember where you got that from?
Click to expand...

LOL I googled it to see if I could find anything and I found an old post of yours when Morey first got the job:

durvasa03-28-2006, 10:02 PM
Wait, is this the same fool who was responsible for the Celtics signing Brian Scalabrine?
I hope not.

But all I could find was other message boards talking about this.

The growing appetite NBA front offices have for this outsider-generated data has, in turn, created a market for hiring these statheads on staff. They're employed largely as advisers, not decision-makers, but it's not far-fetched to think that they'll be pulling the strings in the near future. Among the most promising from this group is Celtics senior vice president for operations Daryl Morey, 31, who graduated from MIT's Sloan School of Management and considers Bill James, the patron saint of quantitative analysis in sports, to be his role model. While Morey by no means ignores points per game, rebounds per game and other statistics popularly held up as benchmarks of success, he also recognizes that those numbers can inflate (or deflate) a player's value. Instead he is constantly looking for other, more obscure indicators of success such as turnover ratios, eFG% (a weighted field goal percentage that takes into account the added value of three-pointers) and productivity per possession. Yet all of these apparent abstractions have a clear bottom line. "It's the same principle," says Morey of the comparisons with Moneyball. "Generate wins for less dollars."

Making other players on the floor better is an important but difficult skill that Executive Director of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge looks for when he is evaluating a player. One reason Ainge pursued free agent Brian Scalabrine during the off-season is Scalabrine’s ability to succeed in this area.

While this skill is difficult to isolate statistically, an approach is possible to see if the numbers indicate Scalabrine’s reputation in this area. First, we looked at the group of 4 players who played the most minutes, as a group, with Scalabrine last year: Jason Kidd (538 minutes together), Vince Carter (424 min.), Jason Collins (524 min.), and Nenad Krstic (435 min.). For each of these players, we examined how that player performed when Scalabrine was on the floor vs. when someone else was playing with this lineup.

That has led Morey and the Celtics to such players as Dan Dickau, whom the Celtics acquired in a sign-and-trade this summer from the Hornets for a second-round draft pick. During his first two years in the league, the 6-foot point guard was renowned more for his moppish hair than his skills. After being traded from the Mavericks to the Hornets last season, he was, for the first time in his young career, given a chance to play significant minutes, and he averaged 13.2 points and 5.2 assists. But those statistics told only part of the story. What attracted the Celtics to Dickau were some less-heralded numbers. His ratio of 4.7 assists last season for every bad pass is on par with the 4.8 average of Steve Nash, widely considered to be the game's premier pure point guard. One can reasonably surmise that playing with better players, Dickau would have had a higher ratio. This is not to suggest that Dickau is a Nash-caliber player, only that, at the price of $7.5 million over three years, Dickau might have been undervalued by the market.
Click to expand...

slowmustang said:

Scalabrine was actually Ainge's idea of brain type. Supposedly his brain type was perfect or something.
Click to expand...

Yea I remember that too, he had the MJ brain type

durvasa · Nov 1, 2007

Chronz said:

LOL I googled it to see if I could find anything and I found an old post of yours when Morey first got the job:

durvasa03-28-2006, 10:02 PM
Wait, is this the same fool who was responsible for the Celtics signing Brian Scalabrine?
I hope not.
Click to expand...

That's hilarious. I seriously didn't remember writing that.

I suspect Ainge wanted Scalabrine because of "brain type" and some other nonsense, and he cherry-picked from Morey's statistical profile of him to justify the decision.

ghost · Nov 2, 2007

Hayesfan said:

Thanks so much for pointing that out to me. I honestly don't spend enough time on that site.
Click to expand...

That site is a must for any basketball fan. In fact, there a few (probably more) guys that consult for NBA teams that use that site for data. If you don't utilize that site, you are sorely missing out.

Carl Herrera · Nov 2, 2007

durvasa said:

That's hilarious. I seriously didn't remember writing that.

I suspect Ainge wanted Scalabrine because of "brain type" and some other nonsense, and he cherry-picked from Morey's statistical profile of him to justify the decision.
Click to expand...

Honestly, Scalabrine hasn't been that bad a signing considering his low price. He isn't great, but at least is acceptable as a backup player and is paid like a backup player. It's not like the Jerome James deal or anything where a guy gets paid the full MLE and isn't even worth seeing the court.

Forums

[HoustonPress] Rocket Science (long Morey article)

intergalactic Member

ghost Member

durvasa Member

Hayesfan Member

Chronz Member

durvasa Member

slowmustang Member

Achilleus Member

Chronz Member

durvasa Member

ghost Member

Carl Herrera Member

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!