I’m sick of all the Morey lovers blaming all of his mistakes on Les

I agree. How can morey as a intern convince les to trade the 8th pick for shane, but he can't convince him to bottom out a little? I never bought the excuse. As I said, if you can't do ur job, quit.

 

I'd venture a guess that Morey had done a pretty thorough statistical analysis on routes teams take to success: tanking and building through the draft, free agency, etc. He already knows which is statistically the more likely road that will get us there. Unfortunately, that guarantees nothing -- but I'd rather be with the GM who does the analysis, as opposed to the one who just guesses or goes with "feel" or intuition.

 

I understand that was a part in your entire argument, I'm just pointing out that it's illogical to assume plane design and locker room design is Morey's fault.

I mean just sound it out yourself, you are saying Morey is responsible for a cheap locker room and plane. That sounds pretty ridiculous doesn't it?

And I don't think Moneyball is what you think it means.

The term can be misconstrued because of the term "money" in it, but in no way does Moneyball mean being cheap. Moneyball philosophy is about maximizing rate of return, by using advanced statistics to find undervalued players.

That is, players like Shane Battier do not shine in traditional boxscores but does in advanced statistics. If teams were to use the "eyeball" test or just superficial boxscore watching, he would be severely undervalued, when in fact he contributes to a teams' wins a lot more than superficial analysis would show. Most teams across all leagues have picked up on this and simply term advanced statistical analysis on players as "Moneyball".

You can't associate cheap plane and locker room with money ball. You can associate that with Les being cheap, or in extreme case Morey telling Les to be cheap for whatever reason. But cheap and money ball are not one and the same.

 

so you are Morey hater and Morey Lovers hater ?

 

Too much focus on Billy Beane and not enough focus on the A's owner and his directive for the ballclub. Moneyball isn't about pinching pennies at all costs.

Here's another moneyball baseball team for you: Boston Red Sox.

People may have seen the movie, which likely uses some dramatic license, but having read the actual book by Michael Lewis, moneyball was about how to get the absolute most out of the finite number of dollars available to spend on players.

 

OMR, I think you should research what the "Moneyball" philosophy is, as you are misconstruing the idea entirely.

As pointed out, franchises such as the Red Sox and the Mavericks subscribe loosely to a "Moneyball" approach.

For the longest time Mark Cuban tried to gain an edge specifically with the little niceties you mention (plane, locker room) stating that the menial investment in those amenities is pocket change if, in turn, they played a tiny role in securing big name players to sign there.

You could classify that as quintessential "Moneyball" (minus the advanced statistical analysis) of him saying that I see an unappreciated asset in the market (player amenities) that I can exploit to help win games (by luring better players to come to Dallas).

And nearly all of your "facts" in your original post were incorrect.


But these are just nits I am picking, as I completely agree that Morey has played a significant role in choosing our course for the future (without a total rebuild) and it is not all Les. To some degree I think Morey welcomes the challenge of doing something that has never been done before.

With retread GMs out there (Colangelo, King, Grunfeld, Petrie et. al) who, at times, seem to be running around with their head cut off; I think it is funny that so many people complain about Morey's "big picture" problems when so many out there can't even handle the more basic GM decisions.

That is not a wholesale defense of Morey, as saying that "Hey, he is better than awful" is not a ringing endorsement.

My endorsement of Morey lies in the fact that if he gets so many of these small trades/signings/draft picks right (I'm not saying ALL moves, just a majority) then I have faith that WHEN the big move happens, he will make the right big move too. I am not going to hijack this thread, but I am going to write something up about this idea some time (soon hopefully) in the future).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I concur with your original post (at least the message of it), but that you should really think/research/learn a little more so that when you offer rebuttals people who read them gain more respect for you and your ideas than less.

Last thing. I think people can finally move past the Jeremy Lin fiasco. Not only has he played himself out of the Dragic/Lin debate, but I think at season's end the question of whether Lin could really be considered a above market value asset will fall in favor of Morey. (Which is a shame, as a basketball fan, because it was so much fun. But as a Rockets fan, I love it. Lottery-bound Knicks... fingers crossed)

 

I don't think that Morey believes tanking is the ONLY way to get better, but there have been enough quotes from Morey beyond just this one to establish that he feels the lottery is the best/easiest way to get a franchise player. Certainly not the only way, but the way he would be most likely to persue if it was completely his decision or if the only goal was getting a franchise player at any cost. Les has also established that this has been explained to him and that he made the decision that he didn't want to go that way.

Personally I don't blame any of Morey's mistakes on Les, but I do believe Les is responsible for deciding which way the team rebuilds, because Les has said as much. It's like Kubiak having to say that he thought he could turn David Carr into a good quarterback, because he wasn't going to be hired otherwise. Again that doesn't mean Morey doesn't think he can find a way to succeed with the rebuild on the fly plan, but there are plenty of reasons to think that Morey would be completely fine with tanking, if not straight out prefer it, and no real reason to think Les would change his mind with a new GM.

It doesn't make any sense to think Les would even be considering replacing Morey for executing the plan Les has decided on. Les has to evaluate Morey based on whether he thinks another GM would be doing a better job at getting a star using the same plan or he has to be the one to decide to change the plan and tank. Firing Morey for not getting a superstar only makes sense if you think a different GM would have more success without tanking, and firing Morey for not tanking when Les was the one who decided to go that way isn't likely.

So if Morey makes mistakes like Terrence Williams, then that is on him. But there is no chance that Les thinks not tanking is a mistake Morey is making in the first place, because that is the path Les decided on.

We can call Lin a mistake, but I think it is more of a rare exception than something that could be predicted. It's quite likely that Lin didn't show anything to see prior to the Knicks opportunity. There was no training camp, roughly a week of practices and 2 preseason games, and this was for a team that had to give it's starters the vast majority of that practice time with a new coach and system, not evaluating what a 4th string PG might be capable of. That is supported by the fact that even the Knicks didn't see what Lin was capable of and had him in the dleague 2 weeks prior to getting his break. Lin might have been considered as better than Flynn, but you don't cut guaranteed money for what you project to be a better 3rd string PG. They needed to consider him better than Dragic for that to be a realistic consideration.

We also have to remember that he likely would have made the team if Stern had not vetoed the trade for Gasol that would have sent Dragic out. Also consider that PG's tend to have career best performances under D'Antoni and his system. Nash went from all star to MVP. Chris Duhon and Raymond Felton recently had career best years under him. Lin very well may have been seen as better than Flynn, but I don't think there was anything to point to him putting up all star numbers for the stretch he did. And it is still early in his career as a starter so only time will tell if he can keep it up. Morey talks about Lin here for those interested around the 33 minute mark.

Otherwise I agree with the general gist of the rest of your commments. Morey isn't perfect and if he makes mistakes then criticising those mistakes is fine. Of course those mistakes have to be compared to other GM's mistakes when evaluating how big a mistake he has made. Would another GM be making less mistakes or more? Saying Morey has made mistakes I agree with. Saying he should be considered for replacement for any of those mistakes at this point I completely disagree with.

 

It's not ad hominem, if I misrepresented your argument it's called straw man....

You don't even know what Moneyball is. So, I'm just going to post a link and you can read up on it.

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/examination-moneyball-theory-baseball-statistical-analysis

Now, if after reading the article you still come to the conclusion that moneyball is not upgrading locker room and planes then you're hopeless.

 

You should rename yourself to "Senile Rock".

 

What about firing of the coaches?

 

It could be somewhere in the middle. He might not totally believe that it was the best plan, but was also not totally against taking on the challenge.

It's not inconceivable the conversation went like this:

Les: I want to build a championship team but I don't want to suck first.

Morey: Sir, that's a bit hard. You know, if you want to build a top team, the fastest way is to sink to the bottom. My statistical analysis confirms that.

Les: But I still don't want a bottom feeder team.

Morey: Okay, boss. I'll try my best. It's gonna be difficult but there's a chance that we might be able to beat the odds.

If this is really the owner's decision, then if Morey fails, he can always come back and tell his boss, "I told you it wasn't going to be easy but we agreed to try."

 

Both have made mistakes.... but Morey proved he knows how the league works.
Don't you want an owner who has the same mindset or the same visions. That is key.

Of course Alexander might not be the most horrible one amongst owners but he is surely one that is not thinking ahead enough.
Maybe that is the reason he hired Morey to do the thinking but then again why doesn't he give him complete free reign?
I want to get Top 5 picks consistently therefore LES is not the right owner for me.
Les' way certainly could work but it takes a lot of TIME and tons of 9th PLACES.

 

Why are you so mad?

The whole point of this thread is to discuss whether Morey deserves or does not deserve some of the criticisms going at him, and whether the owner excuse has been overused. And you made this thread.

You made a few faulty points, I pointed them out. I nicely explained to you why your definition of Moreyball is incorrect, I taught you a few things about which words are appropriate in which context. Why are you so against improving your knowledge pool?

Accept new pages of knowledge old man, not senile rages at knowledge.

 

Yes, great logic.

Because this is how you avoid an argument. By refuting the person's point with "you like to argue".

Sorry, it's just too easy to point out your fallacies. Next time if you really want to end discussion then say "I'm going to end the discussion" instead of "You like to argue".

Here, I'll show you an example right now. I'm ending the discussion.

 

Good post OMR, while I do think Le$ deserves some of the blame, I agree with your overall point vis-a-vis Morey and his apologists. No matter what moves the Rockets make, if they don't pan out or if a mistake is made, they will look for any reason to absolve Morey of any blame. Conversely, if things work out well, they will elevate Morey to mythical status and continue their hero worship. In their view, DM is never at fault. They will always seek an excuse in order to shift the blame somewhere else. If that doesn't work, they'll engage in name-calling and other forms of propaganda. Thus, the blind Morey supporters give him all the credit when things go well and very little or no blame at all when things go poorly.