Shaun Livingston has played for and either been traded or cut from the following teams: LAC, Miami, OKC, Wash, Char, Mil, Was, Clv, Bklyn That is a total of 9 times in only 7 seasons. Not a single team offered him longer than a one year contract until the Warriors. This is whole thread is absurd.
So you are blaming Morey for cutting a guy who was then cut by the Wizards 5 months later? And was so good that the Cavs did not sign him once he became a FA for them? Livingston was nowhere near the player he is with GS(5 ppg in playoffs last yr lol) than he was when he was with us.
Extension do not hit the books until the next summer. He didn't get cut to make room for Harden's last year of rookie-scale salary. The were under the cap by $5m *before* waiving Livingston. UNDER THE CAP. The timing was due to final day of roster cuts -- which also was final day to extend Harden. The two aren't related except for they have the same deadline dates.
It's also good to remember that Livingston did NOT blossom on the Warriors, but with the freaking Nets, one of the worst management in the history of nba, so yeah, it happens.
i believe only lowry and dragic are starting. dragic makes $15M and has been slightly above average in these playoffs and lowry, while i like him, isn't making much of a case for us to have kept him around. so how many should we have kept? if you have a great ability to find solid players that you keep filling the roster with, you're not going to be able to keep them all around. you notice how everybody talks about duncan, parker, and ginobili? that's because no one remembers all the other guys the spurs cycle through. that's how it is for role players. you don't keep them all around at full market value. not if you want to sign a dwight howard. not if you want flexibility when you need it. not if you want trade pieces instead of albatross contracts. not if you want guys who produce more wins than their contracts indicate they will. so keep everybody on the team every year. except if you decide to keep everybody on the team. then don't. morey's entire philosophy has been to get stars. the reason is that stars have pretty much been a prerequisite for almost every championship ever. he has moved role players as needed to acquire those stars. then when he did he tried to get role players around them and build continuity. for whatever reason, that continuity blew up in our face. i guess you could argue for building continuity and foregoing stars, but that seems fairly pointless since teams without stars pretty much never win championships.
If your job is to build a team and find talent - then you have to look at how he is doing in that job. Livingston should not have been cut, he was more talented than the guys we kept over him. That is 100% my beef we let players go and keep lessor versions of them because it saves us money. We let players go because we don't want to PAY the going rate for role players and we go for cheaper options. Each time we do that the foundation is weaker - I don't understand how people can't see that. Here are some of the players we have let go that we could use right now. PG - Dragic, Lowry, Brooks, Livingston SG - Thornton, SF - Parsons, Morris, Carroll PF - Hill, Patterson, Scola, Landry C - Whiteside, Asik I am sure there are more - but my gosh - if your job is to keep and develop talent, wtf are we doing? DD
What's worse is that while Moray was star chasing for Carmelo, the Warriors quietly added Livingston on a good deal. While Maory was attempting to acquire LMA, the Blazers quietly added great pieces like Aminu, Harkless, and Henderson to shore up their own bench. This offseason, Murray will continue to star chase Durant while other free agents get scooped up by rival teams.
Ok... Let's be honest about this. How many of those players had the team have actual been able to keep and still acquire Howard though free agency? Hindsight maybe tells us that the Howard signing wasn't as great as we all would've hoped, but it did help lead to a WCF appearance. Furthermore and IIRC, without moving Lowry, the team wouldn't have been able to trade for Harden.
Morey in 2012 should have know that Livingston would become a < 7 PPG role playa 4 years later on a championship team and should have gave him a max deal which would have prevented the Rockets from ever signing a superstar. I mean damn if only we had Livingston?!?! Think of the possibilities. FU Morey. What a can-kicking-down-the-road joke.
There are certainly circumstances in all of these, but the point is still valid, a great GM would find a way to KEEP the better role players and aquire the stars. The culture Morey has created is a hit and run one, where players will come here for the money but they won't be loyal to here - because we are not loyal to them. Contrast that with the better teams in the league like the Spurs who get their players to take a little bit less for the good of the team, hell the fricken Mavs do that.....we don't have that culture - so we keep on letting quality players go, for cheaper less talented options - not quite as shiny.....thus our foundation is weak. This is what you have under Morey. His job is to know or to be able to evaluate, how is that going BTW? Many people on here including myself did not want to get rid of Livingston.....the point is our GM does not have a history of identifying up and coming talent....and that is a terrible place for the org to be, IMO. DD
I don't even think Livingston can play that many minutes throughout the season. Warriors are real careful with him because of his leg.
I'm not too hot on Morey at the moment either. But DD's expectations are extremely unrealistic and just aren't fair.
Reg: 19.5 minutes or 1 minute less than Corey Brewer(20.4) Playoffs: 28.0 — would be 4th behind Harden, Ariza & Howard
The Warriors - and they're relevant here because that's what started the thread - work because they have Curry, Green and Thomson. Then they have Iguodala, who was last year's Finals MVP. Then, on top of all that, they have one of the most beautiful offensive systems I've ever seen. The Kerr triangle/motion hybrid offense that they've now perfected is just so beautiful to watch. Everyone knows where they should be, and that's with no play being called. Meaning even in disjointed situations, mismatches, etc., every player finds their spot perfectly and continues moving and cutting perfectly. And that's true when they go big, that's true when they go small, that's true when someone comes off the bench you had never heard of - Ian Clark anyone? Ian Clark has a 126 offensive rating and 96 defensive rating in the playoffs. This system IS INSANE!! Have you ever seen a more perfectly constructed team and system work together in unison? I mean, even with the Bulls, it was just pure outright better talent. But despite how good the Warriors are, in the back of your head, you just can't stop but think if you put Green on another squad it wouldn't work nearly as well. If you put Thomson on another squad, he's stuck having to create for himself a lot more, and that's the worst part of his game. But in this system, it's insane. So, to your point, have the Rockets let go of some players?? Absolutely. But it's such a moronic point to b**** about. Here are legitimate points to b**** about. 1. Coaching. A good portion of the board never liked the McHale hire in the first place, me included. I defended him for what he was good at when he took too much heat, but it was always clear that he had a lot of limitations. I haven't been fully on board with a coaching staff on this squad in 20 years. You can't hire just for defense (JVG), or offense (Adelman), or player relationships (McHale), etc. You're about to pay someone millions of dollars a year to lead your multi-million dollar business... that dude needs to be on top of his game in EVERY ASPECT. Unfortunately, I don't think this has hit home. Rumors of wanting to hire a "name" coach, for example. How the "f" is that near the top of your list of qualifications?? Isiah Thomas is a name coach, maybe we should hire him? 2. Marcus Morris of Kwahi Leonard. Same position. One in front of the other. Just have to call it like it is. That your nearest rival then traded an asset to move up and take him, and he's come one of the best players in the league... it's a dagger in the heart. 3. Recent swing and misses. Principally I'm looking at Parsons and Dwight. You understand a bit why he did what he did with Chandler, but if you take a big risk and miss, it's on your record. Even if you recognize that Chandler is overrated, overpaid, and too injured, you could have had him as a trade asset. Then Dwight. For one, somewhat in retrospect but somewhat even before hand, you should have/could have done your diligence and figured out that chemistry would ultimately be an issue. Apparently many of his past teammates don't have the best things to say about him. For two, he's the complete opposite of the way the NBA is going. This was obvious beforehand. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, you absolutely have to trade him for something this trade deadline. trade him for an expiring and a draft pick for christ's sake.
we are 5th in payroll this year. you pay for stars. you try to get value in role players. locking in the going rate for role players keeps you from getting stars because you won't have capspace or friendly contracts that people want to trade for.
Stop looking into the past. Yes we know Morey made lots of mistakes. We need to look into the future. We don't even know who is our head coach for next season yet.
What is inaccurate about it? The Harden trade happened, and the Harden extension was agreed to at the same time. Oh sorry... i was off by two days. -Oct 27th - James Harden is traded to Hou (influx of salary came with it) -Oct 29th.... Shaun Livingston is released to create cap -Oct 31st.... James Harden is extended This is a fact, and if you think that the Harden trade affected nothing about the cap situation that year you are a fool. Was there other things Morey could have done to keep Livingston & stay where they needed to be with their cap? Sure, he could have been a wizard with magical powers and known the Harden trade wouldn't have happened later than year and not signed Royce White, or TJ. Maybe waited another year to bring over Donatas. They also could have MAYBE given up a first rounder for a team to take back either Scola that summer or Garcia. Would that have been worth keeping Livingston? Look... the only point I'm trying to make here is that its so easy for you guys to b**** and moan in retrospect, but you have no inclination (mostly out of laziness, but it also might dampen your argument) to actually include place and time into the equation. I'm all for the argument of ... Yes... Morey should have found a way to keep Livingston.... however, if I'm going to go there, I'm actually going to spend the time and effort to figure out how it could have happened, and at what costs. If you can't do that... sorry DD... you are just lazily b****ing, and you are smart enough to do better than that.
Yes I should have said Harden trade instead of extension. Look all I'm asking for is for the whiners to put this in the equation. They have no concept of time & place. The Harden trade happened Oct 27th (with it came an influx of salary with that and the Dalembert trade). Livingston was cut the 29th. This transaction had alot to do with Livingston being cut. Yes, they were under the cap. However if we recall at that time when Morey was still wheeling and dealing, we knew for a fact there would be more roster moves, and staying under the cap to acquire salary in trades was incredibly crucial to Morey. It was arguably his best asset in roster moves. There were other ways to get there, but at that point Livingston was key to open up the space to make another in season trade. Morey valued staying under the cap so much that he amnestied Scola the Summer before. Another transaction that technically wasn't necessary with the cap rules, but had to be done to maintain flexibility. Why aren't more people b****ing about that one instead of Livingston? Had the Harden trade not happened than maybe he & Livingston are able to be kept on the roster. However the Harden trade was such a huge transaction for the Rockets literally... THAT WEEK, that its just purely illogical to not include that into the equation.
people tend to underrate adelman on defense. not only were we #2 and #4 in defense under him, sacramento was #2 one year and portland had two #3 and two #4 defenses. but who is on top in every aspect? at least who that isn't very happily employed by their current team? i mean, you either have the known commodities who probably have a weakness or the completely unknown (aka inknown) commodities who you aren't even sure have any of those strengths but who seemingly have more of a shot of having all of them than the known coaches. you either take the known "fairly good" or the unknown "possibly a complete disaster or completely brilliant". part of getting a name coach is presumably for the instant locker room respect. i don't know why that's such a big deal because you would think professionals would just do their job and listen to the coach, but since seemingly everyone (current coaches and players, former coaches and players, etc) thinks it is a big deal i just assume it is. our current team would seemingly be more in need of that than your typical team so i can see the desire. we're already dysfunctional and coming off a season where we served up an inexperienced coach to the wolves and we saw how that went. unless you very quickly prove that you are great as a coach, the locker room will probably tune you out much quicker than a jvg type who they already have a respect for and who they know at least sort of knows what he is doing and whom they probably know the media will be less likely to blame (i.e. more likely to blame the players). while we obviously should have taken leonard, you have to wonder like your golden state comments above, what would leonard look like if he wasn't groomed in the san antonio system? i still don't remember why we let parsons out of his deal. unless it was literally an under the table condition of signing dwight, then it was stupid. letting him out of his deal and trying to sign him as a restricted free agent one year early vs keeping him for $1M and then trying to sign him as an unrestricted free agent made no sense to me. as for dwight. even if the league isn't going the direction of a dwight, you still sign him. stars aren't growing on trees. ones that will sign with you are even more rare. rim protection and rebounding are still valuable. he basically does what deandre jordan does and jordan is obviously valuable. he just sucked this year, but that's the risk you take when you don't draft your own stars and have to sign/trade for them. as for trading him. if there was someway to trade him for something without hampering our cap this offseason, then i agree we should have done it.
