We can get LBJ or DWade and still get no love from the media. Hell, I remember Pippen made a bigger national splash than both Drexler and Sir Charles because he was Jordan's sidekick.
I think the problem Morey will run into is Buford is one of the best, if not the best gm in the league and cuban is a move maker and they're both in the same division. Compile that with the legend of the lakers, and another guy who is a mover and shaker in portland with a owner that don't care about the lt and he's in a tough spot. I notice how some of the earlier guys keep mentioning luck when referring to getting all star caliber players for nothing. When will the rockets get lucky? The celts give up a very good young big in jefferson and role players forr Garnett. They also give up #5 for allen. The lakers got gasol for his brother and 3 first rd picks.The spurs just traded garbage for a all star caliber player in jefferson. The magic traded Lee coming off a decent rookie season for another all star caliber player. Somehow dallas did a 4 team trade and got marion. How can all these teams without cap space get lucky and we give up #8 for a declining player and 2 first rd picks for a rental. Again, I think he has done a good job, but at some point, maybe this year,he has to aquire a all star type talent or one of the young guys have to step and and be that all star. To judge a gm's talent base,3 like to look at teams 2nd and 3rd star. When you look at the rockets 2nd and 3rd star,how do they stack up vs the rest of the league? Once done with that, how close is that gap?
Well... we got Yao, who is arguably the best center when healthy. We got T-Mac, which is easily a top 5 player when healthy. We got Ariza who beyond the playoffs, haven't proven a damn thing yet. We also got AB who will hopefully evolve his tunnel vision into normal vision, that or develop x-ray vision. We got Scola who can easily be a double-double machine. We got Landry who has all the skill sets needed to break out. The we also have Budinger we shoots lights out. If Rockets can stay healthy come playoffs time, we are a contender. Then again, the odds of Yao and T-Mac being anywhere remotely close to healthy are heavily stacked against us.
flash 21, u said great core of young players which I dispute. Let me ask you, if all of the rox minus Yao and Tracy were free agents, who would get offered the most money and what would it be? In my opinion, none of the rockets role players would be offered more than 6m and that probably scola and brooks. Compare that to a team like Utah when Milsap was offered 10m or Dallas with terry,marion,and howard that would get about 9m or so. Okafor would get 10 as would manu and jefferson. Bynum and odom would get 9m as would Nene.Richardson from phoenix would probably get 8m also. I'm not saying I don't like our role players, in fact I've gone on record about what I think about brooks, but to see great young guys make it seem like a lot of teams are williing to part with a all star caliber player like minny did with jefferson.
I see where you’re coming from but that’s not really what matters or counts. In fact I’m sure none of our players besides the 2 you mentioned I doubt that anyone would get full MLE on the market. What really matters is how well our guys fit in our system and how well they coincide with our incoming stars. We may not have max contract quality players but we do have great shooters, athletes, energy guys, etc. that compliment Yao and will go with any other star wing player that will be incoming this or next year. Plus a lot of those players will get overpaid or are overpaid for what role they play on their teams and with Detroits, Portlands, and Grizzlies willing and able to throw out max offers to players that really shouldn’t be considered it skews the numbers. Especially next year with all the teams shooting for the stars, literally, with ’10 FA. Also I believe a lot of our young guys value will rise as the season goes with all the minutes they’ll be seeing in Yao’s and McGrady’s absence. I'm sure Morey would jump on a Jefferson deal if that was to peep into his view, but I doubt there are many of those on the table, as of yet.
To be honest, Morey is in a spot where he can hit the jackpot, maybe. Tracy's contract plus whomever else (i.e., Landry?) could very well yield that lucky windfall. But we'll probably have to wait until some GM/owner realizes his team isn't as good as he was hoping, OR sees that McGrady can play again at a high level. And we've had some luck, haven't we? Luis Scola isn't an All Star but he's highly underrated, and you can see in the games in Puerto Rico how the other teams are working to get him out of the game. And what did we give up for Scola? A PG who didn't want to play in the States anymore, a bag of chips, a 2nd rounder, and a Metro pass (already expired).
LOL, you say all we get is a "declining player" for acquiring a 28 year old shane battier, and then you cite the Mavericks getting a 31 year old max salaried Shawn Marion as an example of a great move = your credibility is zero You're basically just tossing up ridiculous arguments and hoping of of them sticks....move on, you're losing this fight.
Do you have a time machine, because that is the only way that injury-prone players over 30 are going to be offered $10 million contracts. You are like armchair GM version of Isiah Thomas. edit: should also add, your contract numbers for Odom ignore the fact that he just did hit the open market this summer. He ended up signing for 8 million, not 9, and only got that due to Lakers having his Bird rights. On the open market, the best offer he got was Miami was 3 years/$19mm.
Great post. This well stated dissenting POV makes excellent points. Keeps things from getting unwarrantedly lofty.
I'm not arguing against your viewpoint per se, because I can see where you're coming from, but I think if you're gonna compare the DM's performance, please provide better teams as comparisons because frankly you are comparing apples to oranges: *Celts-the Celts have been a lottery team for a LONG time before they did the KG trade. Those "role players" you mentioned? Some of those were lottery draft picks (Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair) and a boat load of good players, in addition to the Wolves's own lottery pick. That's a total of 3 lottery picks and a franchise player for Garnet, and they even had the #5 left over after that to get Allen (a wrong move imho). How can you even compare that to our situation? Except for Rudy Gay, we haven't had a lottery pick since Yao Ming came to town. *Lakers-this was done primarily due to the Grizz's stupidity. I think everyone will agree that the deal was particularly one-sided, but can you even say it was DM's fault for not being able to jump in? Unlike the Lakers, most of our money was going to 2 MAX contracts, how can our team have the flexibility to be able to take advantage of our team? *Magic/Dallas/Spurs: The dallas acquisition of Marion is horrible IMHO, while the Magic and Spurs moves are typical "all-in" moves. We're semi-rebuilding, and going all-in when you're not sure how tmac and yao are gonna look like this season is foolish at best and moronic at worst. Carter is a worse version of Tmac, and while Jefferson is a good player, he's not nearly the difference maker our team needs at this point. *Finally Samfisher did bring up a good point: You call Battier a "declining" player at 28, yet you laud Dallas for getting a max salaried 31 yr old Marion. Just because he's what, an allstar? Marion has been an allstar since he left Nash (aka all-star maker), and never in his career has he been worth the max salary he signed. Battier on the hand has been worth every single penny he's made, if only for his D and the leadership he brings to the team. As I said Leeb, your premise may make sense, but please use better proof in your arguments. You can't look at team's personnel and say we should have gotten something like that, you need to consider the fact that DM is managing an extremely constrained team, and yet he was able to upgrade our talent SIGNIFICANTLY. What other team is paying max salaries to two guys yet can still make the playoffs in the West without those two guys? The Celts barely made it and they were missing only KG.
IMHO anybody who doesn't think DM has done at the very least a passable job is an idiot and doesn't know a good GM from a bad one.
I didn't say that he couldn't. It's going to be hard to get them,we don't have those kind of assets. I'm not in favor of tanking,but this half going forward approach while waiting for Yao and possibly McGrady to somehow lead us,is not going to work.
Let's face it. Morey is a personable, nice guy who is comfortable around a computer calculator. He is an average to below average GM at best. He got lucky when Scola was dropped into his lap and, with Adelman's input, made a couple of sound draft picks in Brooks and Landry. This summer we had all sorts of chances to pick up an athletic, tall back-up center, but all Morey could come up with is a gimpy-footed, marginally talented small forward. He was outmanuevered in getting serious players like Richard Jefferson because all of his cheap money-ball contracts were neither big enough nor attractive enough. We have very little on which to hang our hopes this year and even less for the 2010-11. Morey just doesn't have the negotiating skills or confidence to cut a deal (read steal) with other GMs like Colangelo, Pritchard, Buford, et al.
Care to list these athletic tall back-up centers who were at a reasonable price? The two I can think of right now are Gortat (not worth 6 million and we saw what the Magic did to Dallas) and Wallace (and if everyone's so leery of Iverson, why not be leery of Wallace, who is also a rowdy coach killer who was even lazier than Iverson last season). And Ariza's not a bad pick-up at all in the end for the price. .....This might be the first time I've ever heard anyone say that signing someone cheaply is a bad thing. Care to explain this brilliant logic?
Roslolian, I never said getting marion was a great move, I think its a really good move because they have a lot of assets. What do you think the mavs can get for a guy like howard and a partial guarantee contract like dampier after this season? Maybe declining was a bad word for shane, but he wasn't trending up. So maybe stagnant is a better choikce. When a all star type stagnates, he's still a really good player,but when a avg player stagnates,he's worse than that other guy. Let me ask you and i'm not petitioning for him, in this motion,fast break offense,who is a better fit, marion or battier? When I gave examples of organizations and morrey is against in terms of getting players, I think I used a good example. I think morey is really good at making minor moves, but I think in his core, he's very safe. Once the rox got into win now mode in 06, you have to stay there till you rebuild. If the rox were in rebuild as you say,why was a 30 yr international rookie brought in? Why is a 31 yr old shane on the squad and a 37 yr old barry still on the squad? When portland,utah,and orlando decided to rebuild, how many 30 yr olds did they have on their roster playing big minutes? I think you either compete for the title or rebuild. There is no in between and right now the rockets are in between. They will be good enough to win 35-45 games which puts the team late lotto. I don't have a problem with late lotto, but the contracts of scola,brooks,lowry, and a yr older yao are coming up. So say tracy rights are renounced which I doubt and going into next yr the only addition we have is ming back and the #13 lotto pick, is that a team that's contender worthy? On a side note, green and telfair wer late lotto and late 1st rd picks. Gomes who is the most productive out of them all minus big al were salary fillers. Getting allen for #5 and garnett for basically jefferson and gomes were great moves. Getting a 29 yr old jefferson for garbage because their 3rd scorer is Injury prone was a great move. I think getting Scola for nothing was a good move no doubt and he is underrated. The key is getting "that guy" who is trending up towards all star status or trading for one.
How many wins (you can give a range, if you prefer) do you think we'll get this year and the year after? Assume Yao doesn't play at all this season.
Durvasa, I think 35-45. I think if the rockets had a Camby at center this year and I know tracy will be here early and will only miss a few games, this team would be a 50 win team.
If Tracy only misses a few games and is in 07/08 form, and the rest of the role players stay reasonably healthy, I think the Rockets (as is) can win 50. With Camby instead of, say, Battier+Hayes, I could see us being a little better, or no better.
Camby? Not really a fan, i think he's one of the most overrated players in the league. I'd say your assessment of wins is correct but IMHO we don't need Camby as long as Tmac's back and healthy this team's a 50 win team for sure. However if Ariza's playoff performance was not a fluke I think we'll be competing for top 4 seeds in the West, not sure how that will translate into the postseason though...
