Jonathan Feigen , Houston Chronicle For much of the season, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey had turned things around nicely. He had been like an outfielder that misjudged a fly ball only to recover in time and make a tough catch. His initial moves did not work. His adjustment did. It is inherently wrong to judge general managers by just one season. Unlike coaches and players who begin at 0-0 each season, a general manager’s successes and failures carry over from one season to the next. Morey had built a team ready to contend, if not quite get over the hump to finally conquer the Warriors. The moves he made to be the 2018 NBA executive of the year did not vanish. But the players he acquired to try to duplicate some of that success, many acquired with the same limitations, soon did. The successes of past seasons are not irrelevant in that they bring contracts that limited Morey to low-percentage plays with minimum contracts. But the Rockets also calculated that they could replace Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah Moute with the kind of move that landed Mbah a Moute. They went with James Ennis III who might have been better offensively than they would have predicted but never fit their defensive style or needs. They tried to make Michael Carter-Williams the emergency fill-in they lacked. They were willing to experiment with Carmelo Anthony, mostly just taking a look, but decided to move Ryan Anderson to avoid the log-jam at power forward, bringing in Brandon Knight and Marquese Chriss with an expectation that at some point they could contribute. None of those off-season additions panned out. None were still on the roster past the trade deadline, with the Rockets spending a first-round pick to move Knight’s contract in the three-team deal that brought in Iman Shumpert. Morey, however, did recover nicely. It took the good fortune of other teams’ deals and buyouts, but when the Rockets needed injury help in a hurry, they landed Austin Rivers and Kenneth Faried. Miscalculating on either move, with Chris Paul and Clint Capela out, would have been disastrous. The entire saga with Danuel House, Jr., however, was also a mixed bag. He had also been brought in from the G League when Chris Paul and Gerald Green were out in late November and rookie Vincent Edwards was hurt, making him unavailable for a call-up on his two-way contract. House exceled in his role and after the Rockets successfully gambled on placing him on waivers, he was signed to a two-way deal. When the allotment of NBA days on House’s contract were exhausted, however, he and the Rockets reached an impasse with the Rockets offering a three-year, minimum deal and House willing to sign a minimum contract only if it would allow him to be a free agent in the off-season. The Rockets were concerned with the precedent of developing a player to help him leave them, but the stalemate cost two months in which House could have helped fill the frontcourt void off the Rockets bench. Given how vital every game became – the Rockets finished tied for the third-best record in the west and as the fourth seed, one win shy of being the second seed – two months of House’s help was a lot to lose, especially since they brought him back for the one-year, minimum contract he wanted all along. That the Rockets so clearly needed House when he was biding his time with the Vipers indicated the issues with parts of the roster. Anthony had been jettisoned after just 10 up and down games, never seeming a good fit. Chriss never earned playing time. Once healthy, Knight was far from his form from before his injuries. The Rockets saved their mid-level exception for a rainy day, instead filling the bench with players on minimum contracts, but then never were able to spend it. All of that, even with Faried’s and especially Rivers’ contributions, left the Rockets short on the bench. That was more about last summer’s decisions, with no sufficient replacement for Ariza found, than anything about that happened during the season. That is understandable given the limitations and the strength of the starting lineup. But it also sets up the challenge for his off-season, with the Rockets starters enough to push them past the cap, the bench almost entirely unsigned after this season and more of the work to be done this off-season to fill the voids left open last off-season, even with the effective short-team fixes made since. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sp...18-19-Rockets-review-Daryl-Morey-13896809.php
