News item: Rox spend @$6 million to acquire Budinger, Taylor and Llull. Now, the question is: why these guys specifically (and won't their agents have fun negotiating contracts for them with DM the GM!)? Why is Llull more 'stash' worthy than Colathes? How was the determination made on each/all? By old fashioned scouting? Some type of metrics interpretation from college or international play? I understand how one might be able to project an Artest, for example, onto the Rockets and trade appropriately; but how does it get worked thru from such different milieu?
there's no mystery to it. Morey collects assets. In today's NBA that is defined as players that are valued correctly by their contracts, or players that are undervalued (or percieved as being undervalued) by their contracts. Morey collects players that would be considered positive additions, relative to the $ they make, to a large number of teams.
i dont know how the determination was made, but the money spent was because les was willing to pay what the other teams demanded in order to get the players we wanted. really, the rockets didn't give up any assets by spending les' $6M. so as fans we don't have to worry about these guys ever panning out like les does.
I know next to nothing about these players, since I don't really pay attention to college basketball, but the draft reviews mostly say that the Rockets picks were potential steals. I think he purposely took players that he believed had the potential to be very attractive to other teams in the short term. Not so much considering what they could bring the Rockets, but how valuable they could be as trade assets. Donte Green, last year, is an example of that.
OK, ok. BTW - do the Rox use different i.e. 'analog' or old world style determining with college (and international) guys i.e. scouting while engaging in 'digital' interpretation by comparative analysis with NBAers?
I would think so, simply because there's just less digital information available to process. I believe Synergy Sports does do some college games though ... and I'm sure the Rockets take full advantage of that in scouting players.
Let's not forget that Malik Badine was also a steal and was NBA ready according to sites that specialize in the draft. Simply put, anybody drafted in the 2nd round is a developmental player. It cost the Rockets 6 million dollars to draft these guys. In reply to the original poster who said this was a barganing tool for the player and the agent, I say no. The Rockets own the rights to these guys. If they don't negotiate, then they have to play outside the NBA. And owning rights means you can trade them away at will. The Rockets are positioning themselves to get rid of Von Wafer. Von Wafer is just a bad contract in the waiting!!!!
DM may be good a evaluating a player...but his other skills need a fine tuning. EX: Media Manipulation : Yao's foot story today, Tracy's Surgery Circus, NY times story on how the Rockets evaluate opposing players...
I'd like to see something more definitive, and hopefully counter about the yahoo story. I'd like to see McG parlayed into something very positive. I'd like to understand the methodology of drafting into a metric system without metrics available.
