Those of you wanting to get rid of Daryl Morey are DEAD WRONG!

I am also in the keep Morey camp.

People focusing on regular season records vs playoff records are ridiculous. It's totally counter-intuitive to complain about winning in reg season and losing in playoffs. In order to make the playoffs, you have to win a lot of regular season games (especially in the west). In order to have a stronger seed/home court, again, you must win a lot of regular season games. And we tend to lose sight that only 1 team can win it all every year, and in the last 10 years thats only been a handful of teams. I am thankful for what this guy has done for our team. We could be the Kings, Sixers, etc and be in the lotto every year- that doesn't guarantee anything. At least we have competitive basketball to watch every year (minus this season, clearly).

All that being said, I do not agree on your above point. My biggest complaint with DM over the past few years has a lot to do with the players he's put around our stars...If his offensive philosophy is to sling threes and get to the FT Line as much as possible, why are we not chasing 3 pt sharp shooters? If we are going to be awful on defense, I'd rather do it with great shooters as opposed to streaky/average ones. And why do we collect so many BAD free throw shooters? Frankly, I am tired of watching hack-a-Dwight, Josh, Clint, (Omer before this) and so on. It is sickening to watch how many free points we give away night after night at the line.

Point being, I just don't buy that the shooters market has been limited for DM and he has just had bad luck (although it was exactly that with Bosh) for the past few years. I just think he is targeting the wrong players for what we try to do schematically and philosophically, which from my understanding are both his brain child (along with Leslie's influence). People keep saying we need to improve coaching and chemistry, and while I agree, I believe we need shooters if we plan on continuing to play this brand of basketball.

 

Then why do you make over 15 posts a day telling us what you think?

BJ

 

It's very simple. It will make sense to replace a guy if your replacement is better. You just don't see many GMs floating around who is better than what you already have in Morey.

However, there could be better guys out there probably working under some GMs now who has the potential to take the job competently, who we fans just don't get to see or know much about. This would take a very shrewd move for the owner to take a chance on a new blood. You know, Morey is exactly this kind of hiring by Les.

If playoff and winning record is admirable enough, then the dubs cannot justify firing Jackson. But they did it and the result proved them right. Morey has flaws and he is not as good as a few others. Not bad enough to get fired, until you find a obvious upgrade. Hopefully Morey learns and improves. This season could be his humble pie.

 

not enough spaces b/w your comment and "DD".

Easily a fake signature, would not be fooled once.

 

ad hominem attacks are pointless.

 

A lot of the games we lost were very close but it's interesting that you are putting an exact figure out there with absolutely nothing to back it up. Yes a bad coach can cost you a great deal of games. Winning and losing comes with a lot of factors and coaching is one of them.

 

But that's what it has been.

 

One other thing regarding all this talk about the Rockets not having many losing seasons. By my count, the Rockets have had only 3 sub-.500 seasons since Les bought the team in 1993: 1999-00, 2001-02, and 2005-06. The first two were during the Francis/Mobley era when the roster wasn't that good thanks to a lot of youth on the team coupled with Rudy and Carroll's poor personnel moves. The latter was due to an injury-plagued season.

But here's the real takeaway for me. What happened as a result of those losing seasons with regard to the draft:

2000 - The Rockets have the 9th pick. They draft Joel Pryzbilla and trade him to the Bucks for Jason Collier and a future 1st rounder
2002 - The Rockets win the lottery and get the 1st pick. They draft Yao Ming.
2006 - The Rockets have the 8th pick. They draft Rudy Gay and trade him to the Grizzlies for Shane Battier.

So their 2 most recent losing seasons netted them Yao Ming and Shane Battier, a superstar center and a terrific role player and glue guy who were both instrumental in one of only 3 playoff series victories the Rockets have experienced in the last 19 years. Just keep that in mind when you're singing the praises of Les and Morey for how often they avoid losing more games than they win in the regular season. Sometimes it's actually a good thing to pile up losses, rack up ping pong balls, and build through the draft.

 

You do get irony, right?

 

There is no question his Run and Shoot offense can work but as GM he has done a below average job acquiring players to carryout his offensive scheme for a number of years now. His evaluation of players is very questionable (talent and personal). Its like Bill Belichick coaching the Cleveland Browns.....

 

Because I enjoy talking hoops and what can be done to fix my favorite team.

DD

 

a) that's called what philadelphia did and everyone couldn't take it so they fired hinkie.

b) les is the owner. he doesn't want to lose. if morey says "nevermind, i'm going to lose for draft picks", les fires him. hence, morey doesn't say "nevermind, i'm going to lose for draft picks".



also, 2000 and 2002 were probably more injury plagued than even 2006. at one point in 2002 cuttino mobley with 2 hurt ankles was the only starter still playing and in 2000 we had pig miller and matt bullard (the pig and the bull!) starting. crazily enough, they went 10-3 with pig miller in the starting lineup.

 

2001-02 was partly due to injuries. Francis had that migraine issue. But it was also because after the Rockets won a surprising 45 games in 2000-01 playing almost nothing but ISO ball with Francis and Mobley, the league stepped in and changed the illegal defense rules and Rudy was unable to adjust.

My point still stands. The last 2 losing seasons for the Rockets resulted in a franchise player and a great role player. I get that Les doesn't want to lose, but there's nothing to be gained from wringing out every last victory possible from a mediocre roster only to wind up with 41-45 wins and either the 13th or 14th pick in the lottery or a 7th or 8th seed and first round knockout.

This past season is a perfect example. We could've easily thrown one of our last 3 games and gotten the #12 pick in the draft(and at least a shot at a Top 3). Instead we win out and face the Warriors who promptly smoked us in 5 games even with their best player and the league MVP only playing a total of 4 quarters.

 

Simply put, we got lucky that we drafted Yao. Luck is mostly why the TWolves have KAT and Philly doesn't.

Not only do you have be terrible enough to get the # 1 pick, but you have to be lucky that a true superstar is in that draft.

Jazz lost DWill 5-6 years ago, they have nice pieces but do they have a superstar/franchise player?

How are the Suns doing after losing Nash?

How have the TWolves done after losing Garnett?

Magic after Howard?

There is no easy path to ascension as losing will sometimes guarantee nothing but more losing.

 

So just so you know, 41 games were the number of games we lost in the regular season.

Of those 41, I think 33-36 of them were definitely winnable. How many out of the 33-36 games were lost because of in game coaching mistakes? I can say I can think of 3 off the top of my head. Sure, a lot of them were marred by poor defense and poor execution, but those factors are more tied into what goes on in practice before the game and in training camp. So let's say I'm missing a couple games, and the real number is closer to 7-8 games that were lost to in game mistakes. That still doesn't account for the other 33+ games we lost. So your attack on Morey about his quote about in game coaching is quite wrong. He is right, in game coaching isn't the biggest factor.

What is more important (as evidenced by the switch from Mark Jackson to Kerr) is coaching outside of the game. Yes, we're talking about practice here. A team needs players with defined roles, and players need to play their roles. You can't have hot swapable players on a team. Every player on the GS roster knows his role and never does anything outside of his comfort zone. Yet again, these roles are defined in practice. We need a coach who can see these factors and assemble line ups and rotations accordingly. Furthermore, he/she should assemble the line ups such that each guy knows how he fits into the puzzle. I have yet to see a quote from Morey saying this type of structure isn't important. If Morey said that, then I would grab the pitchforks and torches with the rest of you.

 

I would be very down to make 12 mil pesos a year. Thats a lot of money.

 

Fine, rupees then. Or yen. You get my point. Without a reference point it's hard to contextualize results.

 

Yes we did get lucky with Yao. As for those other teams, the Jazz did a pretty solid job rebuilding after Stockton and Malone. But D-Will forced his way out of town, Sloan retired, and now they're rebuilding again. It's going slower than the last one, but they're on the right track.

The Suns are a mess right now. They looked like a team on the rise, but Dragic forced his way out, they rolled the dice to try to sign Aldridge last summer and came up empty(kinda like the Rockets with Bosh), and Hornacek lost the locker room and got canned. But they still have a ton of cap space and a lot of draft picks. It'll take some time, but they'll be back.

The T'Wolves have just been a poorly run organization for a long time. Credit McHale for some of that. But even they've managed to right the ship finally. They were mediocre-to-poor for a decade following Garnett's MVP season where they reached the WCF, but they went into serious tank mode, parlayed Love into Wiggins, got Towns and LaVine, have another high pick coming this summer, and just got Thibs to take over their team. They're gonna be scary in a couple of years.

The Magic's problem is they get franchise players and either lose them to free agency(Shaq) or trade them away after things go south(T-Mac, Dwight). The T-Mac era was also marred by the Grant Hill ankle injuries and missing out on Duncan. But they did at least get to the Finals with Dwight and made it to the 2nd round and ECF in the season before and after that respectively. Now they're in a slow rebuild, but at least they're on the right path(20, 23, 25, and now 35 wins over the last 4 seasons).

You can point out the dregs of the NBA to try to make the Rockets look better in comparison. But in the end, we still have nearly 2 decades of almost no playoff success and multiple rebuilds in that timeframe.