Where Morey miscalculated imho is how shooting percentages can and will atrophy during the playoffs when u begin to account for: 1. Fatigue 2. Opposing defenses 3. Slower pacing Compound that with the fact that the most glaring thing that will be remembered from not only this game, but the entire playoffs going back to the first round is how MIA the three ball was - which was such a critical part of this season’s success. Everyone including the analysts expected the three ball to suddnelty reappear and the Rox ppg to shoot back over 112. But the reality is/was that we had been shooting the three ball poorly for some time now. Team-wise. Just bad shooting for some time. Hindsight being 20/20 the tweak I would have made mid game this game or game six would’ve been to move away from the three ball. And go back to some other means of manufacturing (two) points. When legs are tired, sometimes a higher percentage semi contested two is still better than a deep uncontested three. Empirically, just imho. Be it post play or some other means. This WCF loss should highlight to Morey that statistics doesn’t always carry forward when u have other factors at play like tired legs and the grind that is the playoffs. And that true two way plAyers that can consistently shoot the three AND defend are few and far between.
Honestly . .. I think all of that is a lie. His Miscalculations were: 1. Ryan Anderson would get the Yips and could not hit anything or do anything 2. ISO JOE was not very good anymore 3. Luc would seperate his shoulder. . . .twice in a season 4. CP3 would pull his hamstring in Game 5 win 5. The Refs could and would be bought I think any one of those go the other way and we are in the finals I think all what the OP wrote only need to happen AFTER all 5 of the above happen Rocket River
In short, Morey did not have a valid Plan B, Plan C or Plan D. His chips were all on CP3 and Harden. Role players plus 3 Ball.
I think MDA deserves some blame. First off, let's not forget Luc got hurt in a meaningless game right before the playoffs. He was coming off injury in a game where the only objective was NOT TO HAVE ANY INJURIES. He shouldn't have been playing and it came back to bite us. Second, why in the HELL was Ryan Anderson playing in game 7???? Anybody who knows basketball knew GS would exploit Anderson's defense the SECOND he stepped on that court smh. This series was about RUNS. By playing Anderson you're basically inviting the Warriors to destroy us with their runs. No way Anderson should've seen the light of day this series. I like MDA and will give him the benefit of the doubt because he's overrall a great coach. But these stubborn decisions hurt us
Plan A was CP3 and his midrange Plan B was have Role players hit open shots What did you want? You want Ariza and Tucker to create off the dribble? Hahahahah
Really this is the decisive point. The sad thing about this is I believe if Boston had beat cleveland they would have made sure Houston won
I want them to admit they needed better talent than signing Joe Johnson, Wright and whoever they had in mind. Or at least a ball handler.
This is silly there was nothing that you could say Morey did wrong, the Rockets had just bad luck happen at the worst possible time 1- Anderson isn't a bad player at all but he is limited at what he can do. Was his confidence shot after being moved the bench because of his injury? Of course. The guy has been in constant trade rumors the entire season and then loses his starting spot because of an injury. These players aren't robots of course he is going to feel detached and its going to effect his play. Despite all of this the Rockets were still able to keep winning consistently with no contributions at all from him. 2 - Luc's injury. Luc was signed specifically to play a part against GS. When he was healthy he was at times the Rockets' best player off the bench. He was a consistent shooter and rarely made mistakes on either end of the floor. He hurt his shoulder twice on dunking the ball which is weird to see happen. If he was healthy it would have been different for this team in terms of being able to play less minutes across the board. Luc was a versatile player that would have been able to play 25-30 minutes a game off the bench instead of the 10-15 Green gave you. 3 - Paul's injury -- I mean the timing could not have been worse. Rockets lose game 6 with Paul playing IMO but they do win game 7 if he does play. Given what flexibility the Rockets had, Morey did the most of what he could, but its hard to overcome injuries to crucial pieces to the puzzle. As I posted a while ago here that GS doesn't miss much of a beat when one person is out because they have so much talent and so many different guys who can make plays for one another (curry, KD, Draymond, Iggy, Livingston, and even David West in the post) whereas the Rockets were built in a very specific way with players having to play specific roles. If everyone is there playing it becomes a "sum is greater than the individual parts" scenario but when one and in this case two are not healthy it quickly comes crashing down.
morey's calculations built a team to compete with the 4 all-star warriors with a fraction of the talent.
People taking down the Rockets "system" are acting like it's easy to do what we did. I think GS will beat Cleveland in no more than 5 games. So over the last 2 years they will have gone 4-3 against the Rockets, and 28-3 or 28-4 against everybody else. The Rockets relied on a razor thin combination of highly switchable players that wouldn't get exposed and 2 elite playmakers. We put Anderson out there and he was exposed immediately. Guys with defensive chops and offensive skills are extremely rare. We could have certainly found better offensive players, but would they have held the line on defense? Everybody is extremely quick to complain about what went wrong in 6-7, and nobody wants to acknowledge the amazing job we did in having the Warriors on the ropes in the first place. We were all in on CP3 and Harden creating the offense with everybody else concentrating solely on max effort defense and shooting. And it was working, we were shutting them down and scoring enough to win, we were beating the unbeatable team. Then part of our twin engine system went down and suddenly the engine wasn't strong enough.
How it went down should have been in their plans. Cant ignore the noise because they removed Chris Paul's injury history from their calculation. They better insert that variable when making a contract offer to him this summer.
You can't count on a former unemployed guy like Green to bail your bench out every game. That is amusing. Morey always has these grand schemes but somehow always comes up short........due to details and variables that changed. The thing with a dictator is, nobody is challenging him enough, he is on his high horse, and everybody goes 'In morey I trust' and overlooks his flaws and his flawed players. I hope he learns from this and won't continue his style of kicking the can, hit and miss game. Just get more consistency and variety in there.
Morey has to make a trade for a Point Guard. He has to find a another Goran Dragic, Kyle Lowry. He has to find the next big thing. Both became All Stars after gaining experience Starting in Hoston and turned Franchises around Miami, Toronto.
CP3 got hurt, and we had 20 million bucks tied up in a player that didn't contribute in any way. Let's see what Morey has up his sleeve this offseason.
MDA and Morey have the same mindset. Jack up a huge number of 3's, that will get the job done. I'm astonished that MDA thinks this way. DM is a statistician. His basketball knowledge is limited. I'm still willing to give MDA another chance since there were moments when he showed some flexibility eg rarely posting Tucker, or when he encouraged Harden to shoot the mid range shot vs Utah. Daryl should try to create flexibility as much as possible with trades. Leave personnel additions to Harden and Chris. I admit it's a very tall order. Hoping for good luck.....
Morey assembled a team that took an historically stacked Warriors team to Game 7 in the WCF and could have credibly won. May as well criticize him for not having a Marvel superhero at every position.
