In his 1560 interview, Daryl Morey stated that Les Alexander's directive is to get the team back to championship level without being bad. He does not want to be under .500 and is not interested in having a bad year to get a high pick. I figured this needed its own thread since lots of conversations have been had about rebuilding and stripping away the team to suffer through a few down years to get high picks. It was clear by Morey's interview that Les will not allow that to happen. So, Morey's mission is to rebuild the team into a championship contender without ever getting a high draft pick due to a bad record. Tough challenge. He said in the interview that he doesn't think it has ever happened that a team managed to rebuild and win a title without being under .500 and they are hoping to be the first. Take it for what it's worth.
This is the first I've seen Morey give confirmation that Les Alexander has a specific directive that they have to stay competitive while they rebuild.
Big mistake. It's only going to prolong the inevitable fall to high lottery picks in the future. There is just NO WAY we get to championship level without a miracle. Those miracles are Named Dwight Howard and Chris Paul/Derron Williams. Everyone else available will just keep us mediocre.
i want the rockets to compete and entertain us but at the end of the day i would like a worse record than this year by at least 10 games.
He also keeps saying their goal is to get to the playoffs this year. I'd rather the goal be to build a championship contender, frankly...but I think it's a non-starter, anyway, because I can't see them being better this season than they were last season...particularly if they deal Scola, which I think is in their best interests going forward at this point. If they hold on to Scola solely because they want to be good enough to make the playoffs this season, I think that's extremely short-sighted.
At this rate, with the 14th picks turning out to be good players, we will never fall to the high lottery positions barring serious injuries to many key players.
I agree Max. With the roster they have I think they should move Scola. Get whatever talent they can for him or draft picks and clear some salary space.
that's why i would like us to be at least a 4-10 lottery team wait for the lottery to see how it plays out and try to move up from there.
Its a business. Are you and other fans gonna show up to games and spend money at the arena if we suck? Think logically for a second. Anyway, we had a great draft. Some people need to watch more ball.
Maybe Les forgot how the Rockets were able to win a Championship... I get it he bought the team after we sucked bad and just forgot that Hakeem was here because we SUCKED.. Or how we got Yao because we SUCKED...
Thanks for posting. Definitely worthy of it's own thread given how much uncertainty there has been regarding a direction moving forward. This pretty much eliminates any confusion in that regard. That said, it's obviously quite the task. Especially if no other team has ever done it following this blue-print. Let's see what happens.
Can we hope Les sells this team to an owner wanting more than mediocre results.. Guys how long has it been since we sniffed the conference finals? How long has it been since we were legitimately called championship contenders? Are you willing to wait another 10-15 years?
Les doesn't want mediocre results. He will likely fire Morey if he can't get us back to high level winning in 2-3 years. He just doesn't want poor results either.
