The summer of melo will always be a pure disaster which then started a domino effect but I'll take morey as my GM any day
Those were both low risk, high reward bets. Hardly even worth mentioning on Morey's resume. They didn't pay off, but not much was lost. He's made bigger mistakes than those guys... That's one of the best things about Morey. He makes some questionable moves sometimes, but sometimes they pay off and he looks like a genius when other people wonder what he's doing (Chris Paul, James Harden), while other times they don't (Jeremy Lin, Ty Lawson), people hate for a little while, and he manages to pull another rabbit out of the hat and undo the damage. Sometimes in grand fashion. The most difficult situation he's yet put himself into seems to be the Westbrook trade, which, again, I don't believe was something he wanted to do... but it will be interesting to see if he can get the Rockets back into contention quickly enough if WB doesn't work out in Houston.
None of us really know what happened there, but it seems unlikely that Morey (or any GM) would make that trade without external forces. There's suggestions of drama between Harden and Paul, who knows. There's suggestions that Harden specifically was asking for Westbrook... again, who knows. But Morey himself was saying he wanted to keep Chris Paul last offseason.
I mean yeah he is one of the best. My gripe was GMs get rarely talked about that have won multiple ships like a Jerry Krause, an RC Buford, a Bob Meyers. Except for Krause, they are really low key and they dun need to tweet their hearts out and be in the public eye so much. I mean Morey's job doesn't require him to be an entertainer yet he sometimes has the urge to make those comments.
Well I think this is a bit of a digression, but I don't have a problem with him having an opinion and sharing it. I find that fans only care about this kind of behavior when they disagree with whatever this famous or rich person is saying. Mark Cuban does the same thing, except even more attention-whorishly, and people love that guy for some reason. I don't think LeBron needs to "shut up and dribble", either. Personally, even if someone like Morey were tweeting stuff that I strongly disagreed with, I would be kind of glad to see it. I'd like to know if someone powerful within a for-profit organization I've been supporting is an *******. In Morey's case, he seems like a good dude to me, even if he says some things that didn't need to be said. If you're hating on him for the Hong Kong thing, for example, then I very much disagree. I'm far more upset with Tilly and the NBA for how they handled that than I am with Morey. In any case, you're prob right that there are GMs who don't get as much attention, but deserve equal praise for their talent.
I think he is hellbent on his mission to prove he can win it all without going deep into the draft, have crisp ball movement and elite chemistry among his players. He is also out there to prove he can get the 3rd star, he doesn't believe in a balanced scoring of 6-7 players with double digits scoring on any given night which was a specialty of the MDA's Suns. All of this while he feels he can still tweet about inequality around the world and that the Rockets are second best behind them Worriers. Missed something? Problem is the team would always be on the outside looking in, always so close. There is no guarantee of a title, but the past Bulls, Warriors, Lakers, Celtics had something that other teams did not possess in spades, the certainty of winning it one year or the next. (I am very much against the timing he did post it, should have used a burner, not his official twitter handle, causing problematic PR, unnecessary for the ballclub)
I'm not sure what makes you think that Morey is on a mission to prove anything like that. When he first brought Harden to Houston, it was a "balanced" team on paper. Exactly the kind you're describing. It had several pieces that played off each other well, moved off the ball, etc. Including Harden, if you recall. Harden was never expected to develop into the megastar that he became today. There's no way even Morey saw that in his future. Hell, even up through 2017, the Rockets had a relatively balanced scoring attack with a lot of passing and high pace. Very much an MDA offense until Chris Paul. But Harden's game continued to grow and evolve, and Morey adjusted accordingly. There was also the high-chemistry, well-balanced teams of the Yao/Mac era that he built around, which were also capable of winning titles, as I mentioned before. Few GMs have built as many vastly different winning teams as Morey, especially without ever going into a lottery-rebuild phase. From a management standpoint, the two main things that the example teams you listed have on Houston are 1) appeal to free agents and 2) drafting talent. If you find your superstars (like Dray and Curry and Klay, or MJ and Pippen) in the draft, historically speaking, you're likely to have more stability than if you have to trade or sign them. We haven't had low 1st round picks in a while because Morey keeps finding ways to make us competitive. It's a pretty good problem to have, and is a result of his brilliance. Also doesn't hurt when you're in a huge market and the Shaqs and Durants all want to play for you. Makes it a lot easier to be a "good" GM. San Antonio, on the other hand... there's a team I would credit with superior management. Though they still have the benefit of finding their best talent in the draft, but that's probably a credit to their scouting. But I wouldn't trade Morey for any other team's GM. As for HK, I could not possibly disagree with you more. The fact that his tweet was "problematic PR" is the real problem. This would be like complaining that he tweeted "black lives matter" or "fascism is bad". If that brought the team bad PR, then f*** the PR. How does it hurt you as a fan, anyway? I don't think it had any impact on our off-season signings, but if it did, again, so be it. I don't hold that against Morey at all. Just because you're in a position of power doesn't mean you should have to conceal your opinions. And a burner account obviously isn't going to have the same impact, that should not require explanation.
Sounds like you have personal beef with Morey on his HK tweet. Not a great time to be coming out against the protection and expansion of civil rights. Of ALL people. And doing the right thing when it is inconvenient does not make it less right.
For all our disagreements, I forgot to mention that I do also agree with this. I'm sure there are a lot of people working very hard behind the scenes with Morey who don't get the credit they deserve... but to be fair, the same can be said in almost any line of work. Not that that makes it ok, but the top dog is usually the one who gets all of the credit (and the blame) in the public eye.
