[Toronto Star] Morey's 'Moneyball' approach paying off

DBALLER · Mar 13, 2008

When are these owners going to open their eyes and realize that these ex-ballers DO NOT have the managerial skills or are too dumb to run a multi-million dollar company. I mean, how many BAD ex-player GM must there be before this happens! I would NEVER EVER put my multi-million dollar business in the hands of someone dumber than me. I own a million dollar business so I should know. I know some of ya'll are gonna bag me for saying this but I'm NOT going to beat around the bush and be politically correct. We all know the majority of athletes are pure dumb! If they weren't playing ball they'd be bagging my groceries or cleaning my toilet. For every smart athlete (i.e. Emeka Okafor) there's thousands of Idiots like Marbury, S. Kemp, Isiah, Ferry and Barkley! If ya'll don't agree let's just check their SATs score! Case close!

Tree-Mac · Mar 13, 2008

A little off-topic, but I think the following is somewhat a good comparison:

Chinese people call themselves Han, which dates all the way back to the Han Dynasty about 2000 years ago.

The general (Han Xin) who almost single handedly won the empire for the founder never had leadership role in the battlefield before. Without this general, there wouldn't be a Han Dynasty. No one but him could defeat Xiang Yu, not even the king. He made the jump from foot soldier to general, nothing in between. The founder of the dynasty was an excellent talent recruiter. He saw the potential in this guy.

I think Alexander is like the founder and Morey is like the general and the Rockets is like the Han Dynasty!

Just bored.

Water Boy · Mar 13, 2008

user said:

I want to know the reaction toward the Scola trade from the Spurs fans, after the 20 game strike and the Rockets passing the Spurs to the top of the South West.
Click to expand...

I posted this on the Louis Scola #1 Rookie Class Thread. Man what a steal from a division rival!!!! Morey is either very lucky or a genius for pulling this one off.

San Antonio Screw Up: Spurs Made Mistake Trading Luis Scola to Rival Houston Rockets

The AM Take: The San Antonio Spurs are a model of excellence. They win NBA Titles, turn a tidy profit, and their players avoid trouble.

However, they’re not perfect and mistakes happen. Last summer, the Spurs dealt international superstar Luis Scola to the Rockets. Teams in the same conference often exchange assets. But cross-state rivals in the same division hook up for a trade about as frequently as David Stern and Mark Cuban sitting down for a friendly social.

Division rivals typically avoid trading with each other to limit risk. For example, Scola has solidified the four-spot for the red-hot Rockets, helping Houston rattle off nineteen straight wins.

San Antonio’s junk is clearly Houston’s treasure. And the Argentine forward could help the surprising Rockets win the first overall seed in the Western Conference and challenge the Spurs in a seven game playoff series.

Why would the defending champions trade a talent like Scola? And why would they trade him to their Texas rival, the Rockets?

A lack of minutes and cap space forced the Spurs to move Scola. Coach Gregg Popovich felt there weren’t enough opportunities in his front-court to keep the forward happy. Also, signing Scola and paying his buyout fee would be expensive for the cap-conscious club.

San Antonio employed a different philosophy when trading Scola. Once they made the decision to move him, they focused only on getting back the best compensation possible. Where those assets came from didn’t matter.

While I understand why San Antonio traded Scola, it doesn’t excuse helping a rival like Houston. Like I said, even the great Spurs make mistakes. Of course, this mistake could be costly come playoff time.

http://www.hoopsvibe.com/nba-blog/s...ts-ar47567.html

Juggernaut · Mar 13, 2008

scottlaw said:

10% Statistic, 90% Luck

I like Morey, dont get me wrong. I just cant have the same respect to a GM that never plays the game.
Click to expand...

agreed. i feel like u have to play the game to really understand it. but i lie him too.

Buck Turgidson · Mar 13, 2008

It's continually amazing to me how many people - fans & journalists alike - either didn't read, didn't understand, or misrepresent the main themes of the book "Moneyball".

topfive · Mar 13, 2008

Paging Solid...

Paging Solid...

Change your mind yet?

RockingRox · Mar 13, 2008

Now I can see how human started worshiping a god.

Water Boy said:

Mar 13, 2008 04:30 AM

Dave Feschuk

When the Houston Rockets hired Daryl Morey as general manager, it was said to be a safe bet that Morey could walk into a room full of his fellow GMs and not be recognized.

The 35-year-old Morey, who took over the GM role in the lead-up to this season after serving an apprenticeship under former GM Carroll Dawson, held a computer science degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from M.I.T. But he hadn't put in the time to earn an NBA PhD; he has never played, coached or waterboyed in the world's best basketball league.

But Morey is the first NBA GM to be heralded as a disciple of what's been termed the "Moneyball" approach to sports management. He's a self-professed stats geek who has studied the work of both Bill James, the baseball-versed pioneer of sports statistical analysis, and Billy Beane, the Oakland A's GM who famously (and successfully) applied some of James's principles to his team architecture.

Now that the Rockets have become one of the great stories of the season – tying the Milwaukee Bucks for the second-longest win streak in NBA history at 20 games with an 83-75 victory over Atlanta last night – Morey's approach is likely to get a lot more attention.

Not that Morey's approach has been the story of a remarkable string of wins.

The skeptics have been waiting for Yao Ming's out-for-the-season absence to finally derail the juggernaut (although only the first 12 games of streak came before the Chinese centre was felled by a stress fracture in his foot).

They've been waiting for Rafer Alston to implode (although Alston has been an efficient stalwart as Houston's starting point man).

They've been waiting for Tracy McGrady's usual injury problems, which already kept him out of 15 games before the streak, to sideline him again.

And they're waiting for the Rockets to revert to the form that saw them open the season 15-17.

As they wait, Morey has been heralded for fleshing out this season's supporting cast, most notably by acquiring starting power forward Luis Scola from the Spurs in the summer.

It's far too early to tell not only how serious a championship threat the Rockets can be, but how influential Morey's stat-engrossed approach can become. He has said the Rockets have invested millions in everything from the massive computer servers required to store the hours and hours of digital video from which statistical trends are mined, to the analysts who do the prospecting. And if Morey has hit on something revolutionary, nobody is expecting him to share the wealth of proprietary data.

The Raptors, like a lot of NBA clubs, dabble in video cataloguing and statistical analysis, although perhaps not to Morey's career-defining extent. Bryan Colangelo, the Toronto GM, has likened statistical analysis to one tool in the toolbox of a successful executive.

What's en vogue all comes down to winning, of course. When the Rockets got off to their slow start this season after last year's first-round playoff flameout, there were those lamenting how, a couple of summers before, the Rockets had traded the rights to a lottery pick named Rudy Gay, among other assets, to Memphis for Shane Battier.

But Battier, who has averaged about 10 points and five rebounds a game as an NBAer, may well be the quintessential Morey-type player, a performer whose value to the team goes far deeper than the conventional numbers. He is, in the vernacular, a glue guy. And Morey presumably has the esoteric numbers to prove it.

Traditionalists will argue that you don't need an exhaustive database to make that kind of beyond-the-boxscore observation, which is why Battier was a sixth-overall pick in the NBA draft.

Traditionalists will also understand that if the Rockets roll in the playoffs the way they've been succeeding in the past six weeks, exhaustive databases compiled by Morey clones are likely to quickly become a very fine idea in the minds of NBA CEOs.
Click to expand...

skip to my lou · Mar 13, 2008

I hate toronto sports writers every article they find a way to bash the same players that havent even played on that team in years either it is mike james,rafer alston or vince carter

madmonkey37 · Mar 13, 2008

Juggernaut said:

agreed. i feel like u have to play the game to really understand it. but i lie him too.
Click to expand...

You mean like Isiah?

That team is so poorly constructed its not even funny.

bloop · Mar 13, 2008

Nelly said:

You can't call it luck if the guy goes with the "safe" choice almost every time. Battier, Brooks, Landry all produced in college and didn't have a bad track record. Drafting Rudy Gay and thinking he might be the next Tmac requires luck.
Click to expand...

it's "safe" in the sense that your proprietary stats back you up, not "safe" in the sense that everyone agrees these players will be good... in fact the opposite because an essential component of moneyball is finding undervalued players not just identifying talent. you dont need a Cray computer to tell you that carmelo anthony kicks ass. where moneyball comes in is finding 2-3 dudes who can provide you with similar production at half the salary.

moneyball was born in professional sports when some jewish dude bought the oakland A's in the 90s and demanded a slash to the payroll with the same level of success as before (playoffs, series titles etc). the core tenet isn't simply winning or identifying talent but getting talent cheap. anyone can build a winner with the yankees or Red Sox payroll. the point of moneyball is to get guys cheap and build a winner.

of course the payroll disparity isn't as big a factor in the NBA but the point of hiring morey was so he could bring in guys under the radar like scola and landry. so far it's been awesome but you need more than 1 draft to see if this thing is gonna work. in baseball sabermetrics has a 30 year history of theory and statistical analysis... for basketball it's not even 5 years old... no one even really knows if it's possible

pgabriel · Mar 13, 2008

DBALLER said:

When are these owners going to open their eyes and realize that these ex-ballers DO NOT have the managerial skills or are too dumb to run a multi-million dollar company. I mean, how many BAD ex-player GM must there be before this happens! I would NEVER EVER put my multi-million dollar business in the hands of someone dumber than me. I own a million dollar business so I should know. I know some of ya'll are gonna bag me for saying this but I'm NOT going to beat around the bush and be politically correct. We all know the majority of athletes are pure dumb! If they weren't playing ball they'd be bagging my groceries or cleaning my toilet. For every smart athlete (i.e. Emeka Okafor) there's thousands of Idiots like Marbury, S. Kemp, Isiah, Ferry and Barkley! If ya'll don't agree let's just check their SATs score! Case close!
Click to expand...

wow, what a first post

ico4498 · Mar 13, 2008

pgabriel said:

wow, what a first post
Click to expand...

yup, Jerry West & Joe Dumars suck ...

pollaxt · Mar 13, 2008

ico4498 said:

yup, Jerry West & Joe Dumars suck ...
Click to expand...

For every West and Dumars, you have a Michael Jordan or Isaiah Thomas. It's a crapshoot, people.

pirc1 · Mar 13, 2008

Good GM doesn't have to know basketball that well, if they are really good they will have very competent scouts and other people around them that really knows what they are doing. Just like a good president doesn't have to know economics but he sure have to have people giving him good advise and knows when to follow them.

code_red · Mar 13, 2008

What the article fails to mention is that Morey's decisions aren't made in a vacuum. Every decision Morey makes has input from Rick Adelman, who does know alot about basketball.

You can bet that picking up Jackson and Brooks had influence from Adelman.

Williamson · Mar 13, 2008

Juggernaut said:

agreed. i feel like u have to play the game to really understand it. but i lie him too.
Click to expand...

Again, he did play the game. He just didn't play it in the NBA (or college for that matter) because he wasn't good. Besides, if you have to play in the NBA to understand it, explain Jeff Van Gundy, Stan Van Gundy, Greg Poppovich, and on and on and on.

Forums

[Toronto Star] Morey's 'Moneyball' approach paying off

DBALLER New Member

Tree-Mac Member

Water Boy Member

Juggernaut Member

Buck Turgidson Member

topfive CF OG

RockingRox Member

skip to my lou Member

madmonkey37 Member

bloop Member

pgabriel Educated Negro

ico4498 Member

pollaxt Member

pirc1 Member

code_red Member

Williamson JOSH CHRISTOPHER ONLY FAN

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!