Morey Built This Team - It's On Him

We need the opposite of this gif

 

Actually who in their right mind totally expected the Rockets to win the championship this year?

Actually Morey is still building the team and the immediate future looks very promising.

Actually the team at this point is currently a "contender" which means just that and not a guarantee or the clear front runner.

Actually unless you import two or more superstars no team wins the championship the first year together without an unsuccessful learning experience with the playoffs which unfortunately this team might be experiencing right now. Even Miami with Bosh and Lebron had to go through one playoff before winning the championship.

 

Tell that to Billy King who went all in. You guys are SPOILED. He didn't waste much time bringing to Harden - by trading away peanuts- another superstar.
He didn't waste time to take chances with Smith and Brewer.

Dragic could very well end up being another Deron Williams scenario. A guy near 30 being paid the max. The 20 mil max. And on top of that trading away unprotected first picks so if it doesn't work out and you fall in the rankings you can't even rebuild.
And Morrey actually DID try to go all in by trying to get Bosh. But it wasn't on him that Bosh chose Miami.

Just like in the end of matches you have to put yourself in the position to have a chance to win, the same here . You have to put yourself in position to bring over a star.
The next year a lot of stars will be UFA and 30 teams will have tons of capspace for max contracts. Who do you think will have more chances to recruit them? A team that already has gone in the second round of playoffs with two stars in the roster and a GM who makes wise decisions or a team like LAL that has a 30 year old PG, the deepest position in the league, being paid max money and having no picks to add cheap contracts/trade to fill position of need ?

 

Cool, so the OP is giving Daryl Morey credit for taking a team that could not make the play-offs and had no all-stars or high draft picks, and in just 3 seasons...

1. turning them into a team with 2 superstars
2. Division Champs
3. 2 seed in the play-offs
4. 2nd round play-off team.

OP says all of that is on Morey. I agree, he is a great great GM.

 

You're right, this is on Morey and guess what...?

Leslie Alexander is thrilled with these results. It seems as if les, morey, and mchale are all in step these days regardless of whether or not your pleased with the second round performance.

 

Yes, please, let's fire Daryl Morey for making the Rockets one of the 5 best teams in the league but failing to make us one of the 2 best, and for running into one of those 2 teams in the conference semifinals.

 

Fans are fickle.

One minute, Morey is a genius, getting us two superstars and picking up guys like Brewer, Terry, and Smith to make us a very deep team.

The next minute, Morey is a moron, leaving us with a superstar who doesn't look like one in the playoffs and a supporting cast with low IQ and can't shoot to save their lives -- and a dumb coach to boot.

The fact is, Morey does make mistakes (unlike some of his staunch apologists think), some of them quite costly. And some aspects of his philosophy might be questionable. But you can't deny the overall result and some of the ingenious moves he pulled off along the way.

To me, Morey is kind of the GM version of Popovich. Pop is not a god, and he makes coaching mistakes, some of them costly. And you can say that he lucked into Tim Duncan. But you can't deny his overall result and some ingenious things he does.

 

2011-2012: No playoffs
2012-2013: First round, 8th seed
2013-2014: First round, 4th seed
2014-2015: Second round (so far), 2nd seed


They have improved each and every year.


Teams don't just get put together and reach the Finals overnight.

The Clippers have been working at it for years.
The Grizzlies have been working at it for years.
The Warriors have been working at it for years.


The Rockets are relatively new onto the scene. All 3 of those other teams have been to at least the second round before.

 

Nobody.

But fans have bile erupting from every orifice. Not pretty.

 

He has made some great moves and some dumb moves. For one, he has let too many shooters walk. If your offense is based on made threes you probably should be able to make some. The PG situation was tenuous even before Bev was hurt. Morey didn't fix it, after he was. The Dorsey contract was stupid. On the other hand Capella looks like a keeper but needs development. Ariza might be the only one that plays effective defense besides Howard, but he is a huge offensive liability. T. Jones doesn't seem to have a playoff gear. Harden is a regular season Wonder. In the playoffs we "wonder" what's wrong with him. DMo was a good acquisition and is missed. Not a big Morey fan, but its no all on him. This team was plagued by injuries all year. The Clippers are clearly more talented, but we could still beat them (maybe). The Rockets have not played a COMPLETE game in the playoffs yet.

 

sergio llul looks like a bum from the videos ive seen.. i hope morey doesnt put all his eggs in one basket with this guy

 

Morey's last true objective should be rounding the team out with actual shooters. Anybody who has some overarching opinion that he is not a good GM is a fool. He's, quite obviously, very good.

 

J.J. Redick in the post-game press conference: "[Our] starting five has so many minutes together the last two years, there’s just such a familiarity with each other.”

 

"My s*** doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f***ing luck." — Billy Beane, Oakland A's general manager.



The Oakland Athletics are headed for another early offseason after losing Game Five of the American League Division Series Thursday night. For Oakland, the loss continues a well-known trend: The A's just can't win in the postseason.

Since 2000, the A's have made the playoffs seven times; they've lost in the first round in six of those trips. In the lone exception, they swept through the first round, only to be promptly swept out one round later. Not really much of an improvement.

In five of those first round losses, the A's went down swinging in a winner-take-all Game 5.




So why can't the A's win when it counts? A few theories.

Low payroll may shoulder some of the blame.

Beane and the A's are notoriously crafty at juicing production from every piece on the team. Over the past five years, their opening day payrolls ranked, out of 30 teams: 29th, 29th, 21st, 28th, 26th. Their Moneyball 2002 team, meanwhile, ranked 27th.

While the A's can creatively assemble winning teams in the regular season — taking advantage of scrap heap castoffs and plateauing players to hide their weaknesses against unfavorable matchups — the playoffs blunt those edges. Winning the lottery on the unheralded Brandon Moss is one thing; having $214 million to sign Prince Fielder is, more often than not, better.



More here: http://theweek.com/articles/458933/why-doesnt-moneyball-work-playoffs

 

People seem to forget that EVERY top seed in the league is in the same 2-1 hole the Rockets are in right now. I suspect every one of their fan bases thinks someone needs to be fired right now. The Spurs were favorites to win it all and the Clippers put them out in the first round. The Rockets have a chance, but they have never been favorites. I would have loved to pick up another PG at the deadline and it is reasonable to call it a mistake not to. But some people act like Beverly was injured before the trade deadline. It's easy to say trade D-Mo for a solid PG after knowing both Beverly and D-Mo are injured. It certainly wasn't a "no brainer" at the time. That being said the KG McDaniels trade has been a non-factor, and Prigioni should be a minimal minute back up on a contender.

But as always, the anti-Morey crowd expects the replacement GM is going to duplicate everything Morey got right, and correct all his mistakes. That GM certainly would be worthy of the God and genius labels some fans want to give Morey. I just don't think God is interested in becoming GM of the Rockets. Nobody is going to argue that the Rockets have been disappointing so far in the 2nd round. Ultimately it's up to the players to step up or step out.

 

I surprised this thread even has 2 stars. It's amazing how some people just NEED to blame someone or something for things not going their way.

And to whoever said Rick Smith is a better GM, how do you expect anyone to take you seriously from now on? You're worse than the people who call in to the local sports talk shows.

 

Rockets have a low payroll

 

Rockets have a low payroll?

 

I'm not sure what you want Morey to do, keep the role players around? Like is that supposed to lead to a dynasty if we kept around Landry and Patterson around? Any idiot can complain, but smart people come up with solutions.

I don't even get what zero depth are you talking about, the Rockets lost 2 starters to injury and still ended up with 2nd seed in the West. How good would the Clips be if they lost De andre Jordan and Reddick?

 

No, the Rockets don't have a low payroll.

But the way the Rockets and the Athletics try to find undervalued talent is the same. Morey will never overpay for a player. He'd rather a much cheaper player who he can put in the system than overpay for a player.

Here is another excerpt from the article:

The A's strategy was to get on base no matter what. One way they did that was with walks. Their hitters would be very patient at the plate and wait for the pitcher to make mistakes, and they'd often draw a lot of walks to get on base. The more people you get on base, the more likely the team is to score runs.

Sounds kind of like Morey's "paint and 3's" strategy. Like how baseball teams shorten their pitching rotations in the playoffs making it harder to draw walks, basketball teams shorten their rotations and it makes it harder to score in the most optimal spots.





I'm not saying this is all necessarily true... it's just interesting that both teams known for "moneyball" in two different sports seem to have some striking similarities when it comes to regular season vs. postseason success.