Morey may not have have pulled off any big trades yet, but I don't think that's necessarily a fault. We have been in win-now mode for a few years, and it's hard to pull off a big trade without blowing up the team or getting an agreement from ownership to take on more salary. I would love to see us make a successful splash trade, but that's not something Morey can do without a lot of luck or a go-ahead from Les. I'd say he's doing a great job managing in the Spurs style. Lots of solid moves to improve the salary situation, good scouting to find solid role players and high potential players at the tail ends of the draft, and minor trades to improve team chemistry. The Spurs, after all, assembled their championship core without _any_ big trades. On second thought, his approach may be more similar to what his former team, the Celtics did. Although they certainly wouldn't have won this year without the splash trades for Garnett and Allen, what Boston did was accurately accumulate solid young players for several years (Jefferson, Perkins, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Ryan Gomes, Leon Powe, etc.). This put them in position to make both of the big trades. Morey probably deserves a good deal of credit for this year's Boston championship.
I think Morey played a big part in that trade for Battier. CD might have had some authority to agree or disagree with it after all the arguments were laid out, but I have a feeling it was Morey's analysis that pushed the team in that direction. I do recall CD saying that he was getting calls from other execs congratulating him on the deal, but I don't know the extent to which he was involved.
As far as the Jackson trade goes, we might re-evaluate it as another nothing-into-something come February. James is already washed up and Bonzi is right on the cusp, so whatever we get out of the expiring would be something compared to their relative nothings at that point. I don't think we'll see much in the way of a big trade until the Yao-McGrady experiment is finally chalked up as a failure, but it seems Morey has already taken that into consideration. He's calibrated our cap space not just for the big-name FAs in 2010, but almost as a set window for our duo.
When you're talking about stats, you have to take everything with a grain of salt. With that said, it is still possible to project defense and team play. For defense, you look at the PPG and FG% scored against your player. For team play, you look at the +/- point totals when your player was on the floor to see if there was a contribution. If you do this for different combinations, then you'll get a pretty good idea about how important he was to the team. Intangibles may not show up, but if your team is doing well when you play, then it means something.
what precedes the big trade is the stock-piling/accumulation of talent. this should take another draft and offseason (total guess). boston was still a terrible team while morey was there, but he accumulated enough attractive, valuable talent that boston was able to swing a few big deals on the heels of his departure. like you said, he's in the process of acquiring as much talent as possible and when the rockets have talent in excess, i have full confidence that morey can get the big deal done. one that won't sacrifice the whole of our future/talent to acquire an aged star.
You may be able to make big trades, but small trades also count. A James-Rafer trade basically turned all your big trades, 1st round drafts, JVG and Yao-TMAC into perpetual failure.
point is that for any individual player, measuring their defensive ability does not have a stat. e.g. there is no stat for "did the player know his rotation and make it successfully, forcing an extra pass/tougher shot?" and that sort of thing. theres no defensive stat that captures "the player played good defense, but the opponent made the shot anyway" or "the player played bad defense but the opponent missed" either. it's these sorts of situations that make evaluation of defense via statistical analysis really difficult. to your point about defensive PPGA/FG%A, its still highly unreliable. if the player matches up with a quality opponent each game (battier), his PPGA/FG%A may only average, even though his defensive performance was superior. so we could have a situation where tracy's PPGA/FG%A are equivalent to battier's simply because tracy is defending - on average - weaker offensive opponents. likewise +/- is very dependent on rotation patterns and minutes played. in order for a player's +/- to be accurate, you would have to have that player play significant minutes with every teammate and against every opposing combination. since this never happens, it becomes difficult to use as a relative performance tracking tool, except for players that log very significant minutes in all situations (tracy).
I like how every year so far he's able to stick it to the spurs! First Scola, the Batum, and now he's trying to steal their depth! Is he really not a Houston native? He always seems to have a plan too. Draft night 2008, the way he and his staff knew what everyone else wanted in the 20's and used that knowledge against them, it was like the end of Godfather I when Corleone kills everyone. Morey is the Godfather. Somebody photoshop that.
Big trade is not always the answer to winning Championship. Granted, Boston did it, and LA got a steal from idiotic Memphis (who again just gave away Mike Miller). But the other stable successful franchises, namely Spurs and Pistons, didn't make major trades - they just maintained and incrementally improved the team. In any case, it is quite possible that Morey is accummulating all these assets for a possible big trade anyway. After all, we can't possibly keep 20 players in our roster.
I love the way Morey publicly stated that he needed Landry to get more detailed tests on his knee before the Rox would even consider signing him. "Attention, other GMs: This guy's knee is in such bad shape, we might not even offer him a contract! I'd steer clear of offering him big bucks if I were you." Heh. Nicely done. You can't tell me that at this point, Morey doesn't know exactly what shape Landry's knee is in. But after he said that, even the GMs who are 99% sure Morey's playing them for fools will still have that 1% lingering doubt about tying up major salary money on a 1/2-season wonder with health questions. This dude is sharp.
dont post as much now as i used to...but if you dont appreciate morey, then you arent paying attention. the battier deal was his and he is proud of that deal and should be. the positioning to get scola, draft landry, draft brooks was outstanding. the trade for bjax was solid as well because morey got out of james' contract one year earlier. hiring adelman was a solid move as well. he has done an outstanding job from the day he came here. hes different and thats a good thing
FWIW....in actual trading (stocks or whatever) that is what make you big bucks over time. you try to keep risk minimized and try to find situations where your reward is potentially huge. so basically, you are just kind of laying back, keeping your head in the game, and taking smaller but solid trades so you can build your base (or at the very least not go backwards) like morey has. one of the simplest and most dumb sounding phrases I tell newer traders is that it is much easier to make money if when aren't constantly losing it. put another way if you are consistently taking "high risk/high reward trades" (in reality those trades may just be high risk/low reward trades aka memphis) then when you do finally get one right you have so much to make up for from your past losing trades that you net very little or nothing at all. I have no doubt that morey will be ready to hit the big fat pitch out of the park when it comes. on a side note you also have to look at what actually got boston and the lakers each of those trades. in both cases it was poor decision making that got bailed out by even worse decision making or luck.
I agree Morey has done well but some of his tactics (especially the one with Landry) may backfired and it creates a very bad impression of the organisation. If Morey tried these tactics on some players, let say, Yao, I pretty sure Yao will force a trade and the Rockets will get scrubs from the forced trade.
I unlike many think Morey should be into a more pressing mode when getting players. If he thinks jax contract and someone else can yield a high quality player, he should do it now. If the rox start slow like last yr, counting on a 22 game winning streak is asking a bit much. The really good gm's know what they want and they go get it. I do think there is a time to sit back and a time to press. The state of our high mileage stars should make every move a priority. I just think this tenure will be more about just being just good enough to win , but not good enough to win the ring.
every gm has to play hardball. it doesnt create a "very bad impression". the spurs have the best FO in the NBA and they do it all the time. a gm's job is not to be a nice person. it is to build a good basketball team. morey has done nothing (that I know of) that I would consider ethically questionable or questionable from a business standpoint when building the current roster. Landry's situation is uncomfortable now, but going into last season, how could morey pay him with no money? with the information we had at the time, morey did well just to keep him around, seeing as he had no money to give him.
decisions born of panic are almost always bad ones. see shaq trade and jkidd trade from last year as examples. if there is no good deal to be had, i am glad morey is standing pat. we have a good roster, let's not panic and screw it up like the Mavs and Suns did. one of the things that we need to understand is that expirings are more valuable at the trade deadline then they are in the offseason. why? because a team does not know what its official roster will look like right now. once a team has its roster set, realizes it is in danger of lux tax in the future, and decides that it wants to trim salary, that is the point at which expirings become an asset they would look for. (notable exception to this is if you have misguided management like Memphis that's trying to trim down the team to sell it.) but other than that relatively unique situation, most teams are not as motivated to take on expirings right now as they will be at midseason. buy low, sell high right? our assets will have more value later, so if there's no obvious deal now then lets wait.
