I am not surprised Morey gets snubbed by fellow GMs. He's the symbol of the new breed of young and brassy GMs from non-basketball backgrounds. Conspiracy theory aside, I think the poison pill contracts he handed out coming back to bite him is a downer that might overshadow the Howard signing.
I don't think you understand what the "poison" in the poison pill contracts is referring to. It's the extra cap hit / luxury tax it induces to other teams, not the fact that they are 3 year / $25mn contracts. People who are like "Har Har paying them each $15mn/year wtf maury" don't realize that we were paying them $5mn the first two years, getting a discount relative to the average of $8mn/year for the contract. The question is whether you think each player is worth 3 years / $25mn. I would argue that Lin is not and Asik is worth more than that, and on the balance it's not that bad. Plus structuring it this way actually helps the rockets, giving them large expirings next year and also allowing them to save more money than the pro-rata $8mn/year if they trade either over the summer or sometime next season.
I think most of us understand the cap hit logic. But you still can't dismiss the fact that the last year of the poison pill contract makes it extremely difficult to trade because the other team's owner has to swallow the balloon payment even though the cap hit is not as large. It doesn't help that the superstar Morey signed plays the same position as one of the said poison pill players. And the other poison pill player has been renegaded to a backup role mostly because of the other superstar player he got the year before. So he sort of undermined the value of his own smart signing. This might not be as damning if the poison pill thing didn't look so smart at that time.
The award isn't about what sexy transactions made, it's clearly determined by pre-season expectations and the team exceeding them. I don't think anyone expected the Spurs to have the best record considering they are a year older and just came off a grueling long, disappointing playoff run. And, they got that record playing their "stars" less minutes. So, you have to hand it to Buford for putting together a roster able to do that even though nothing was earth-shattering in terms of signings and trades. The Suns and Blazers both far exceeded expectations. Miami and OKC are going to automatically get a lot votes considering they are as good as they are every year. Don't get me wrong, Morey deserves props and has done a great job constructing the current roster in the manner he has. But this season, he just had max cap room and got one guy to sign on the dotted line. They were probably expected to be a 3-5 seed and that's where they ended up.
The criteria for the award is nebulous anyway and the sample size is tiny, not to mention the voting is self-interested and probably motivated by personal animus. What if the players voted for MVP? It would probalby be slanted in favor of whomer was not regarded as a jerk by other players. Going from your best players being Kyle Lowry (or Dragic) and Luis Scola to Dwight Howard and James Harden in less than 12 months for virtually nothing seems like it's the type of thing an "Executive of the year" award, to the extent you have one, would be named for. But frankly I doubt anybody really gives a sh-t. Other than the obvious (Riley in the LeBron year) - I don't think I can name a single GM of the year in the past off the top of my head. Hahahahahaha, no. There's literally nothign clear about what the criteria are. Look at the list of winners and you'll find different stories for each. How do you think you have Gar Forman and Pat Riley both winning in the same year, (one for exceeding expectations, the other for luring hte greatest player ever and then meeting or arguably falling short of expectations)? And it's not like anybody expected the Spurs to be terrible this year. The consensus was that they were a top 3 team in the West, along with LAC and OKC. That's what they finished as (and at the time the voting was done, they weren't even out of the first round....) That's what "coach of the year" or "most improved" is generally given out for. Though even those awards tend to fluctuate in terms of criteria.
I know what the "poison" in those contracts stand for and what the intended reasoning was. I also know that a year later onwards, those are the two contracts that rockets have been trying to get out of. I am sure the owners are lining up to pay Lin $15 million out of their pocket next season. Who is swallowing the pill right now? Knicks and the Bulls, or the Rockets?
3 straight 14th picks that were thrown away 1.) PPAT 2.) Morris 3.) Royce White I could cite the ones of past like Dorsey or the ones he traded for that didn't pan out (the low risk high rewards ones) but you probably already know them.
You cant just rattle off supposed mistakes (I can defend the White pick) in a vacuum. You should compare his results to other GM's.
14th picks are crap shoots picks anyway, when was the last time a 14th pick produced a legit star for any team and how was patpat a mistake, he was servicable starting PF for like 2-3 seasons for us
Didn't get first round votes this year or in 2011 when they signed them? There is no set of logical, uniformly applied criteria for this award. There is no order, only chaos.
Again. Stop confusing terms to try to benefit your point. There is no pill because the Rockets signed them and nobody matched. If you're asking who is stuck paying the $15mn for them this year? Well, could be Rockets, could be someone else if they trade either. Who received the benefit of paying the lower amounts the first two years? The rockets, guaranteed, unless someone has a time machine. So the only way you could argue this was so bad for the rockets is if the original contracts of $8mn/year for Lin and Asik was THAT bad. My argument is that on the balance, it's not. Especially considering Morey signed both before finding Harden on his lap. And another thing that people seem to generalize: "Owners would never pay X out of his own pocket!!" But a basketball team is a business. There are minimum salary requirements. If a team didn't get lin, they would need to get another point guard. Lin's incremental salary to the "replacement" point guard is the only incremental amount of money. Further, that money is tax-deductable because player salaries are expenses of businesses, not a personal expenditure of the owner. And then there's the incremental marketing dollars Lin brings. All in all, I'm not sure it's actually costing owners that much out of their own pockets.
Not to mention Dragic won MIP, and Lowry is even better. Those don't look good on his resume, either.
LOL not firing Pops after getting the Spurs to the finals last year? Yeah that's totally a GM of the year move Who's the Spurs legend, TD or Parker? You think anybody in their right mind will trade those guys this season after the Spurs reached the finals last season? I mean seriously do you think Buford will even be allowed to get rid of Pops, Tim Duncan and Parker even if he wanted to? This award is a popularity contest so there's really no point of trying to figure out why someone is more deserving over the other. I don't even get the Lin/Asik reasons, those players were signed in 2011 what does that have to do with 2014? If you're gonna say paying the "poison pill" is a big reason this year why Morey didn't win why didn't he win in 2011 when both Asik and Lin were signed for 5M?
Lowry wasn't let go this year, and neither was Dragic. Why does something he did 2-3 years ago affect this year's voting?
