Morey suffered from the halo effect or, better, the horns effect. There have been so many bad management decisions over the last decade, that many of us had concluded that the Rockets scouts are brain dead and CD enjoyed throwing money at worthless players. Plus, it looked like JVG was going to bring over every old burned out Knick to ever play in the NBA. Then the Morey era began. First, the James deal was great and then the draft, major disappointment. BUT, the tide has turned, and Morey may become the best thing since crushed ice.
morey is already a huge upgrade...hes done a tremendous job so far...give him his props...A+ so far...much better talent so far than last year's team...head wont even be in the rotation this year
Let's examine that one a bit. Swift, as the rest of the league - in fact the world - knows is a total bust considering his limitless potential. He can't perform in a more intricate offense than an alleyoop pass, is injury prone, and dissappears or lacks motivation during stretches of a game. Gay is an athletic machine, certainly...and that about does it for his qualities. His cons include much the same as Swift's - low Bball IQ contributes to low offensive awareness and he lacks motivation for SEVERAL games at a time. Not a lick of defense either. So, combined you have no heart, no hustle, no awareness of the game, no defense, ah - but you do have Sportscenter clips once a week or so! That really does make it bearable through a pathetic 22-win season with a good team who lost its star early in the season - not unlike what happened to Houston. But what was our response this year instead of last year???? We kept our composure and fought onto the playoffs. And much of it thanks to Battier's heart, his hustle, his defense, his timely shooting, and his........maturity!! Or maybe that's just one of those forgotten intangibles we keep hearing about.
I thought we all had the whole we were never going to draft Gay without a trade in place thing down by now. Too bad, but one day we'll all get on the same page. As far as Morey goes, I can honestly say that I never did really doubt him. I didn't condemn him for going after his guy in Brooks. You can never really get down on a GM in any sport for going after their guy especially basketball with their two round drafts. The James trade was a great one for us. I mean only in Minnesota does getting more size mean trading for Howard. The Scola trade was a totaly surprise. I have read what some other board members had to say about him previously, but I never dreamed we'd be able to get him away from San Antonio. If he signs it will be hard to give Morey anything less then a B+ for the offseason, and really its just beginning.
Really that presumed fact is rather pointless to bring up. We obviously COULD have had Gay, whether the Rockets felt he was some one they would have drafted to keep or not. Just like we could have had Richard Jefferson instead of Eddie Griffin. But that was officially CD's draft, so I don't put that on Morey for better or worse. Until we get 2-3 years or more of a track record to look at it is rather pointless to overly praise or condemn Morey's GM abilities at this point. Certainly as Rocket's fans I'm sure we all hope that these moves work out for the best, but only time will tell. I certainly agree that we look better on paper than we did when the off season began though.
Chad Ford said Houston Rockets have mismanaged its salary cap. "History doesn't look kindly on this type of contract. The NBA salary cap can be brutally unforgiving. Manage it well, as the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs have done over the last five years, and your team has a shot to remain relevant and competitive year after year. Mismanage it, as teams like the New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves have done, and you have painted your team into a corner."
Morey has made decisions that not many have anticipated, but I'd have to see how these new pieces fit in the regular season before proclaiming him a genius. But it has been intriguing so far, and as another poster wrote, it is definitely a whole lot better than if they just brought in old Sacramento players for stopgap measures.
Yeah, but any team in the league with the ability to do so would have and would still sign T-Mac to that contract. Tracy and Yao's contract are givens. Any team would gladly take them on if it could. The only mismanagement of salary that he could realistically be referring to is the signing of pieces around them. And to bring this back to the topic, Morey hasn't mismanaged money thus far - and with his mathematic credentials, I doubt he will.
1st - Rashard was never coming to Houston, he wanted max money and new only orlando could pay him 2nd - Pausing is a good thing and I give young boy credit for not leaping out there and paying huge cash for non hoopers. 3rd - He has upgrade the point guard and power forward positions. I would love to see camp in October. James and Alston going at it. Luther and Brooks going at. PF Hayes, Scola, and Reed (please don't sleep on this dude) 4th - Mike Harris is a 3 not a 4 Bottom line young boy has added scoring, athletism, and attitude to the squad.
Well honestly i felt Morey was a good gm to began with although i wasn't 100% behind him during the draft I've begun to see that he is only making us better. i mean sure we still have about 5 pg on the team but I feel confident that Morey will do something and maybe sign Francis But overall i think we have ourself a decent GM maybe in a couple of years when he has more time to prove himself he will be rank as a top GM in the NBA.
I think Morey is doing just fine One Question though: How Much Credit does Adelman get in this? I mean . . .how closely do you think they are working together. Rocket River
First of all, you need to learn how to use the quote feature. I almost missed this question directed towards me. Second, I didn't actually claim that Scola WILL be better than Juwan. I suppose I implied that I think he will though. And I do think he very well could be. But what I said was that the worst case scenario is he'll be as good as Juwan Howard, and of course I meant as good as Juwan Howard was for us last year. I went on to say the best case scenario is that he's far better than Juwan. I didn't say I expect him to be far better than Juwan, but of course I will hope he turns out to be. Now as for supporting these claims: We can start with the fact that it's clear Morey expects he'll be better than Juwan. Last season, Juwan lost his starting job to Chuck Hayes. Morey has already stated that he expects Scola to be starting with Hayes backing him up. Thus, Morey expects Scola to be better than both Juwan and Hayes. I trust that Morey and the Rockets scouts have a much better idea of what Scola can do than I do, and this is in large part what I am basing my opinion off of. But so far as saying "his stats don't say a thing", well, his stats are from Europe. It's different there. But ask yourself this, if you're looking at his stats from there and thinking they aren't impressive, then why was he a two-time MVP there? His stats are more impressive than you think. But even if they weren't, he averaged 15.5 ppg and 5.9 rpg in about 26 minutes a game last season. Juwan Howard averaged 9.7 ppg and 5.9 rpg in (gasp) about 26 minutes a game. For further perspective, Walter Hermann (a teammate of Scola on Team Argentina) isn't supposed to be anywhere near the player Scola is and last season in his rookie debut he averaged 9.2 ppg and 2.9 rpg in less than 20 minutes per game. Another of his Team Argentina teammates who isn't supposed to be as good as Scola, Fabricio Oberto, averaged 5.6 ppg and 4.9 rpg in 20 mpg last season. And finally there is Andres Nocioni, yet another of Scola's Team Argentina teammates that Scola is said to be better than. Nocioni averaged 8.4 ppg and 4.8 rpg in his rookie campaign in about 23 mpg. By his third season in the league he averaged 14.1 ppg and 5.7 rpg 26.5 mpg. If Scola is so much better than these guys, I'd assume we can expect more impressive statistics from him. Throw in the fact that Scola has already managed to hold his own and then some against guys like Elton Brand, Jermaine O'neil and Carlos Boozer and I'm pretty confident he'll be at least AS good statistically as Juwan Howard was for us last season. And if we're lucky, he'll be far better.
Regarding Scola's projected numbers, John Hollinger puts it at 17.1 pts/40min and 10.2 reb/40min. Of course, that's just a rough estimate, but it's as good a guess as any at this point. For perspective, here are all the NBA players last year who played at least 1000 minutes last year and averaged at least 17 pts/40min and 10 reb/40min: Code: [B]player age tm pos min pts/40 reb/40[/B] 1 Yao Ming 26 HOU C 1624 29.6 11.1 2 Zach Randolph 25 POR F 2425 26.5 11.3 3 Amare Stoudemire 24 PHO F 2689 24.9 11.7 4 Shaquille O'Neal 34 MIA C 1135 24.3 10.5 5 Carlos Boozer 25 UTA F 2557 24.2 13.6 6 Chris Bosh 22 TOR F 2658 23.5 11.2 7 Tim Duncan 30 SAS F 2725 23.5 12.4 8 Pau Gasol 26 MEM F 2133 23 10.9 9 Kevin Garnett 30 MIN F 2995 22.8 13 10 Jermaine O'Neal 28 IND F 2459 21.8 10.8 11 Dwight Howard 21 ORL F 3023 19.1 13.3 12 Al Jefferson 22 BOS F 2319 19.1 13 13 Shawn Marion 28 PHO F 3010 18.6 10.4 14 Nene Hilario 24 DEN F 1715 18.3 10.5 15 Zydrunas Ilgauskas 31 CLE C 2130 17.4 11.2 Not bad company.
I have a lot of respect for Moneyball and I respect other posters like durvasa a lot that apply it as well. I apply it to everything. I have been bashed endlessly on this forum for it, but it's just because people that don't use it don't get it. Once you start using it, you see that is absolutely does work.
So then why didn't you use it for your little buddy spanoulis, who had the worst PER and Roland rating on the whole team? You don't get bashed because you use PER or things like that, you get bashed because you claim you do when in reality you clearly don't, as your V-span hard on shows.
I like all of our moves in the off-season thus far, but sorry, I'm not ready to join the Morey bandwagon just yet. That doesn't mean I dislike him, far from it actually, I just don't see any reason to proclaim him our savior at this point.All of his moves have been in the Rockets' plans for some time now... We all know the history of Mike James and Houston, and that a similar Howard for James trade was proposed around the All-Star break but declined by Houston as to not take on Eddie Griffin's contract as well. Mike James also stated that Adelman's words were also influential in his decision to come, though I'd expect he would have came regardless. Adelman was also clearly influential in the re-signing of Bonzi Wells. The articles of our recent trade proclaim that Scola has been a target for Houston for years, and as much as I love that trade, I can't see a reason to call it a steal when we gave up enough to convince the Spurs to trade him to an in-division rival desperate for a 4 and back-up 5 help instead of shipping him to the East. The only moves that were really created in the Morey-era (aka the last month and a half) are the draft signings. I love Aaron Brooks, and see him as a great pick, but with us only giving AB one practice in which he feels he did poorly it makes you wonder how much influence Oregon native Adelman had on that pick. Morey's plan was to trade up and pick a guy who we would not even see play this year (Rudy Fernandez). I'm hopeful Landry works out, and I think he was a better pick than Fazekas or McRoberts, but I expect it will be years before we see if he was a good pick or not and I believe Glen Davis to already be the better of the two by quite a margin. The only benefit to the Newley pick was that we can hold his rights without him taking a roster spot. I won't lie, I'm still silently angry we let DJ Strawberry slide past us (http://www.nba.com/summerleague2007/players/strawberry_071107.html). Morey, at this point, strikes me as a guy who was lucky enough to have things fall into his lap and smart enough to hold onto/take advantage of them. Good enough for me as a GM, but I'm not ready to bow down to the new Rockets God.
