That's actually a good thing. It says the organization, fans, the city expects more...and the thing about it the team is mediocre. Not bad, not good, just average...and people are freaking out. That's good. If the Texans win 3 games in a row people here are ready to celebrate a championship.
ming and mcgrady are supposed to be playing at a high level right now. We have had some bad luck /bad breaks. We have gotten talent via trade and movement before and the list goes something like this: drexler,barkley,pippen,glen rice,francis (#2 pick)mcgrady, artest. We just happen to suck today and right now but I don't see any reason why we won't have talent continue to come here. There is an idea that the good players want to play together and we have to live with that and hopefully give the other quality top tier guys a reason to want to play together here. melo wanted to go to the knicks and that was that. You can't blame a guy and if I was in the NBA I would want to go to the Rockets. We are still relevant as long as we don't sip on the poison you are sipping on in the moment. Rockets have and stood out and are going to again. If chris paul or deron williams wants to go play in NY then you have to live with that too. That doesn't make us anything less relevant than we were when we won the titles and SI wouldn't even put out a special issue for us. We have always been slapped around like that? Where you been?
Now that's a misleading statement. DM is not to blame for what happened to Yao and MeMac. I know that's the company line and all that but basically, it's something of a copout. The problem wasn't that MeMac and Yao both broke down physically although that was the icing on the cake so to speak. Rather it was the entire premise behind that trade that was flawed and that is what reverberates to this day. And Morey shares responsibilty to some extent because he blindly followed and attempted to execute the flawed strategy conceived and implemented by his predecessor. Consider the particulars of that deal: The Rox sent their starting backcourt and PF to Orlando for MeMac, Tyronn Lue, Juwan Howard and Reese Gaines. In essence, they swapped SF3 & Mobley for Lue and Gaines and Cato for Howard. Clearly, in order to get MeMac, they took a big step down in quality for their backcourt. The Cato and Howard trade was more of a wash with one exception: Cato may have been so-so as a player but he provided the Rockets with a big body at the 4 who took pressure off Yao who could also play the 5 spot. That disappeared when they got Howard who at best was a decent PF. They didn't address this problem until Luis Scola fell into their lap. They are STILL searching for a PG although Lowery is the best they've had in some time. And with the injuries to Yao and with MeMac gone, they are now back to looking for a SF and a center (and a backup center). They now find themselves stocked to the brim with role players galore only to find themselves no longer with Yao & MeMac - a complete reversal of fortune. Now when that deal was done, the prevailing - no, the OVERWHELMING belief around here was that the only thing left for the Rockets to do was to find the right mix of "role players" to play with Yao & MeMac. And this is where "the plan" broke down. The reason is simple: the Rockets and CD made this deal with no real strategy in place to actually go out and get those "role players" - it was just something that they would attend to at a "later date". Also, the entire success of this "plan" rested on the ability of CD and the Rockets' organization to go out, find talent and put together a team capable of contending - a prospect that was dubious at best. After all, this was something which they have been hard pressed to do so ever since the championship years even after numerous trips to the NBA lotto during the decade. But it was just accepted as a matter of faith that CD and the organization was up to the task. The hard truth is that they weren't and they simply had no clue. Anyway that "later date" never came about and so by the time the injuries started to hit Yao & Tmac, that + the lack of quality players + the accumulation of drafting, trade and free agent mistakes had taken their toll. Which bring us now to 2011 where we find DM trying to pull rabbits out of his hat in order to transform this team into something other than mediocre. It was his reliance on a flawed strategy conceived and executed by an incompetent organization that has led to situation you have today with this team. They have managed to dig themselves a deep, deep hole with years of bad decisions and climbing out is going to be a real bit*h.
Thats what people forget. Tmac and Yao are supposed to still be playing in their primes right now. We should still be top 4 in the west with those guys carrying us.
People can make as many excuses for Morey as they want, but fair or unfair being the GM of an NBA team is a bottomline business, and the bottomline is the Rockets have gotten worse under Morey. That's just the reality of the situation. The "he inherited Yao and T-Mac" excuse won't fly for much longer, let's see what he comes up with.
No, I agree that it is a good thing that fans of the Rockets expect more (at least one Houston teams fans do), but there is a smart way rebuild/reload and a Dumars/Kahn/Wallace way to do it.
Yeah, but it should fly a few months after we've lost Yao. IDK what some people expect. For us to just go out and get Howard and Melo?
Lets remember that we have ALOT of space after this season. We may not have a superstar that we can get..but im sure with all the money finally available Morey can put together a solid playoff contender.
I'm sorry but who was the previous GM of the Rockets? Carol Dawson What did manage to do? From NBA Champions (though he didn't completely put that team together) to not winning in the 1st round for 10 years... How long did he last in the position? roughly 10 years.
What exactly is misleading about the statement? You start your post with that statement and then provide nothing to back it up. In fact, it is not understandable what your entire rant about the T-Mac trade has to do with anything. The only thing in your rant that has anything to do with Morey is the Scola trade, which you fail to acknowledge as a brilliant trade, but dismiss it as "having fallen into our lap".
Dumars is a good point. He broke up his team a bit too early, and Detroit has paid for it ever since. They still had a few years left of contention and perhaps could STILL be there if they did the Spurs/Celtics way of things and adding old key players like Shaq etc etc. He did what a lot of people say we should have done. Trade Tmac while he still had value...but at the time no one wanted to really do that. Cmon now, it's easy for everyone to say it now too. "We should have traded Tmac and Yao!!!" but at the time Tmac was a beast, leading a otherwise bad team to 22 wins in a row and being argued by a lot of people to be better than Kobe...yeah trade away that guy. Then now people say we should have traded away Yao...the Same Yao that helped the Rockets almost upset the Lakers? Also I'm sure the FO had dreams that Yao was going to really do it this year, remember Hakeem hit his prime around the same age Yao is now. I'm pretty sure the FO thought 'If we have a dominant Center, we are still contenders.' which is why we trade for Martin and make all the moves we made. All this hindsight stuff is pointless. We had star players that WANTED to play here. You just don't go throwing them away. Especially since both have shown flashes of greatness.
What does Carol Dawson have to do with anything? Because he wasn't good, it's OK if we give Morey a pass? How about we actually hold the organization to some standards, one being to put out a team that is actually good?
The Rockets are now the ugly girl at the bar not wearing panties, just looking to go home with someone.
Thats what all this is about. Yes. The Rockets should have traded away Tmac right after the year he did that 22 in a row crap and Yao right before this season started. But look at where we are at now. Without a superstar and wondering how in the hell can we get another. You don't get superstar players just to trade them away while they are in their primes. With this logic the Mavs should be trading Dirk by Friday. I mean hey...he's bound to get worse right? Might as well sell him while his value is still high. I think people forget how dominant these two guys really were, and their own shortcomings was lack of a good team to support them. Also Tmac hit bottom in a year. There weren't really any signs of it. Sure he had nagging injuries year to year but he was always there for the playoffs at the very least. Sometimes that happens. See it a lot in sports where a guy is a superstar player one year and the next would be lucky to even be considered a all-star. Point is, Tmac and Yao were franchise players. You ride those guys till the end, Rockets did the right thing and all we can hope for is that the rebuilding process isn't too long.
Well, he did go to three all-star games in a row. But more importantly is he was perceived to be a "franchise" player (hence the nickname.) While he may not have turned out to be the "superstar" we hoped...coming into the league he was clearly a player most people thought you could build a team around. Therefore, this is the first time in 25+ years the Rockets have not had an established superstar(s) or future cornerstone in place. Basically, I agree with the current despair...disagree with laying blame on the organization. I have a few minor gripes with some moves, but I definitely can't reasonably point to any single one mistake that would have significantly changed this team's current outlook. It just seems like this organization ran out of luck about the time Yao went down with his first injury. The constant fretting about "mediocrity" and "purgatory" only two months after the nail was finally hammered into the coffin, just comes across as whining about life not being fair.
I'd like to to see you do better. Meh, not really. Morey is doing the best he can, people need to lay off. Unexpected injuries and getting less than we expected from some calcuted risks, have nothing to do with stupidity. Anyone who uses the word Morey and stupid in the same sentence is a moron. Pick another team to root for. Embarrassing P.S. The Rockets arent on a 10+ year plan. Thats why Morey humps the phone for 18 hrs a day.
