What risk are you taking right now? Thats what i want to know. A. continue your long mediocre talentless slow rise B. take a risk and possibly fail but get a higher draft pick no matter what if you do anyways c. continue your riskless slow rise to next role player
Who taught Kevin Durant how to win when they had their 20 win seasons? Which veteran should we credit for making Lebron James the player he is today? Great players make great players. In fact, great players make great coaches, and great players make great veterans. Not the other way around. And what does this have to do with TWill? We gave up a protected first rounder for him, which would actually make it a low risk trade.
Taking your time: It's a risk. Morey could have traded TMac early in his final year, but he waited to the VERY last second and landed Kevin Martin. Being patient is a risk, but it can pay great dividends.
truth is. I d rather be blamed for the team having my mindset and lose in the short time massively for it. Then everyone forget it was this thought that led to our high draft pick that led us to possibly our next star later on down the road. Rather than going along with the crowd for more happy days of possible first round exits in the playoffs or barely missing it for another decade.
I don't think taking risk and being patient are mutually exclusive. Taking risk is a change in strategic priorities with the team's situation in mind. Being patient is a trait that should be a part of every decision-making process. You can be extremely patient, and still execute a high risk high reward plan.
Yeah. thats what I mean. If some opportunity comes along that sounds pretty good they could pounce on it. If it high risk/high reward. Thats what mean. Not go willy nilly and risk everything. If something reasonable shows up? I hope they know when to take that risk is what I want.
I think in the case of the Rockets it remains a calculated risk. Whilst the collection of "assets" has not reaped a superstar talent it does enable the team to offer up veteran talent for the opportunity to draft on potential. An example would be identifying the Timberwolves needs to acquire the #2 pick and take the risk that Williams or Kanter can work out for the Rockets. Knowing that you have Courtney Lee capable of starting, would you give up Kevin Martin as part of an offer for the second selection? Alternatively, Scola remains attractive to teams out there and the Rockets maintain the luxury of Patterson and Hayes for whatever the trade entails. The calculated risk makes some sense due to the duplication of talent the Rockets currently have. If the opportunity presents itself to risk on a talented small forward or centre it will be worth it
Maybe I misspoke so let me clarify. Just because "high risk, high reward" should be the strategy for a rebuilding team, that does not mean it can't be calculated. I am not advocating a roulette wheel and let's bet on black. They need to figure out what is the potential reward for taking this risk if it works out? How much do our current assets depreciate due to a worse record if the risk craps out? How much added value do we get from a better pick the following year if our record worsens? And probably many other factors. They need to put all that into big blue and see if it makes sense. My point is what would make sense for a rebuilding team is very different from a contending team. What would be very risky for a contending team could be a safe bet for us.
I was making an analogy, not actually meaning to describe poker. I was trying to describe a game that has a free lottery for losers....like poker where you get to spin a roulette wheel with house money if you lose all your poker chips/assets, so why not throw caution to the wind and hirer Nick Gilbert to be our GM. All you are saying is the lottery is a safety net for people who take reckless risks and fail miserably. Surely Morey disagrees with you.
Here is a thought. Maybe there are people out there that would rather be good every year rather than take a chance on being great. Especially when the risk to being great may mean you wont be good for a couple years. People around here are way above average in passion about their team. They want a team that has finals aspirations. But maybe some feel you always have a chance at the prize if your merely good. I think some of us may take it for granted that we know that a merely good team getting to the finals happens once every 20 or 30 years or so (81 Rockets?). And none have won it. So anything perceived as "tank" or "blow up" just seems like a step back to them. That subtracting never adds. Hanging around the folks here, ive bought into the logic (and realism) that a .500 -.550 team just doesnt stand a chance. That you have to have star power. And more than one of them. I am NOT one of those folks. But I know folks that are relatively ok about their team (whatever team that may be) if they win more than they lose and knock on the door once in a while.
Maybe "reckless" was a poor choice of words even though I made a point of it to clarify. High risk high reward. To me that is reckless because in essence it is just gambling. You are as likely to lose everything as you are to strike gold. Expect in the NBA, you do not lose everything, in fact you are rewarded for it by the safety net. Surely Morey agrees with me, since he called that the "easy way out". You do not call something "easy" unless it actually works. Why do we need Morey then, is your question? Because striking gold, one way or another, is not the be all end all. In fact that is the easy part as long as you take risks. The hard part is surround your franchise player with enough talent to actually contend. That is Morey's specialty. Maybe it doesn't take a genius to acquire talent by "take reckless risks and fail miserably", but it does take one to make something of that talent and build a winner.
This is so well said, and I could not agree with you more. Morey would never have handed out huge franchise strangling contracts to Mo Taylor, Moochie Norris, Cato, Glen Rice. Morey would not have allowed Olajuwon to have no supporting cast for a decade, or waste the three years of a healthy Yao and T-Mac with a team that had sub-par role players. Morey has assembled a team of great role players who are good enough to be on the fringes of the playoff race in the west -- if this team gets a star we know Morey will find a way to put talent around him and not saddle the team with terrible contracts in the process as was done when the team had Francis and Yao.
The lottery is like the government safety net for banks. They can afford to take risks that could ruin them because the government will just give them risk free loans (high draft picks) until they get rid of their mistakes. The bonus here is that we have Goldman Sachs as our asset manager (Morey). He would get us back to respectability much faster than other GMs. In fact, I worry that might get us out one lotto pick too early and we end up as a WCF team instead of a championship team.
I think your first and second paragraph are incongruent with the OP. The OP actually says the second paragraph is a flawed strategy. We should blow it up. follow along HamJam...
I'm not use to grown men using smiley faces and emoticons yet, so perhaps you were just joking -- but, to clarify, I was not saying what Morey has done is sound strategy, rather it is just an indicator that he could re-assemble a team of role players if the current team of such players were traded away for a star or potential star (draft pick) -- which was the exact point the OP was making.
I agree with the op Yes to trading martin and scola even if we dont quite get equal value for them.... losing them will hurt us right now but we get more playing time for lee and 2pat and also probably a higher draft pick in 2012... I'd love to trade them for picks in 2012 but if we trade them for picks in 2011 I'd be cool with that too. We also need to take a risk by drafting the player that morey thinks has ther greatest potential and dont even worry about need. If Morey thinks Marshon Brooks will be a better player than a Morris Twin or a Euro big then take him at 14 i dont care if seems like a reach. Like the OP said building a team ( filling needs ) doesnt matter until you get that franchise player. I'd like to see us swing for the fences 3 times on draft night. Brooks/tyler/jackson/nogueria/shelby all may not be surefire players but they all have high ceilings and if we really focus on player development we can help them reach it( at least going by the internet draft experts.... Morey may have a completely different draftboard) Basically dont be afraid to pick a player that might not contribute right away. I dont mind trading up in the draft but i would not give up multiple picks to do it. I would rather trade marin or scola. This draft is weak at the top, but has some good potential in the mid first and i personally i think a Kanter or a Vesley has just as big of a bust potential as a Tyler or Nogueria or Brooks and it wont cost as much to get them. Not saying i wouldnt move up if Morey thinks they can find the right player but ideally i would trade Scola + 38 to move to up and if you want to trade the 14/23 then try to move back to the next draft. Kmart to minny seems like acommon move. When i suggested it 2 months ago people killed me for it so this is kind of nice. If a trade goes down i would like the same thing Kmart and only one of our picks to move up. Perhaps we could trade for thier 2012 pick instead ( i dont know if they still have it or not) Minny may not pick 2 again but if morey thinks they will be top 10 maybe it is worth a shot. And i would urge all of the people looking at taking a SF this year to look at next years SF class and tell me what they think.. if land a top 5 pick next year , it would be very hard for me to turn down Barnes or Jones. If the player at 14 with the highest potential is a SF then i guess i would look at him but again dont force a pick because of a need just get the player who you think will be the best. No more of this he will be a solid player crap i want to take a risk on a player who could be a true force bust factor thrown out of the window. Take calculated risks, focus on the future, and i think we will be fine.
Why dont we just get a caravan. Drive up to Dwight Howards house and try to woo him in advance to his free agency? Take some balloons, a few red painted face people, some flowers, and then show up at his home at any occassion looking like desperate looking nerds? That seems to have a positive impact on free agents from what I have heard.
Actually the second paragraph is not a strategy. He is merely pointing out a fact. Our current personnel and predicament is not the result of a strategy, it is the result of two superstars breaking down leaving the team with glaring holes. The players we have on this team, every single one of them, were brought here to play alongside Yao or Tmac. The fact that neither of those guys are here anymore is why we should, and are changing direction. In order to bring in someone of similar caliber is why the OP is suggesting taking more risk, as the system the league operates under caters to that tactic. If you want to call that "blowing it up" then so be it. But know that it is not because Morey all of sudden had a change of heart and realized it was a "flawed strategy". It is merely dealing with reality and the changes that come with it.
CXbby, don't interrupt my discussion with someone else in your thread. what? You already have half the posts here dude. Let peeps talk amongst themselves. Yeah, that's nothing new, we all agree with that. The OP went too far by saying that even if Morey FAILS and trades away every asset with reckless abandon to where he can't build it back up via trade, because he has no assets left...it wouldn't matter because we'd be the worst team in the league with a top 3 pre-lotto ball pick...so, the safety net would save us. OP is just a huge flawed theory, because if it worked, that means we'd have to out-lose 8 other teams trying to do the same thing...because you wouldn't need a good GM to do that. You could hire Nick Gilbert to run that strategy.
