Why MoneyBall doesn't work & other lessons learned

Are we less likely to beat teams that are better than us than any other team?

Moneyball or not -- teams tend to beat teams they are better than, and lose to team they are worse then. Right?

 

CD years sucked. He made worse moves every year. Griffin, Swift, Juwan, T-Mac. The only reason they got Yao Ming was, because the Rockets sucked so bad that they won the lottery.

If it was moneyball that made the Rockets suck, then it was in any data analysis that stopped trades for T-Mac and Yao, 4 years ago, and not in the drafting or trades other players. Morey cleaned out CD's crap.

 

I've heard the complaints about not getting Amare, and I don't get it.

Amare was all about the money, as this is his last major contract. He was going to opt out at the end of last season, and would have demanded more then what the Rockets were willing to give him. He went to the Knicks after all, because the Knicks were basically the only team that were willing to give him the max, and that was partly because they HAD to get someone worth the max to not look like complete morons in the eyes of everyone. And given the concerns over Amare's health, I wouldn't have offered him what he got. God knows we've suffered enough with one injury-prone big man.

 

Did he? It was Morey who traded Gay for Battier, which I approved of, BTW.

And it is Morey that has built a roster that was cow tied to an injury prone Yao Ming.

It is also Morey that has built a mediocre team, so, I guess if you are ok with mediocre talent then sure, he has done great.

I will withold judgement on him until I see him take an actual risk for a big named or potentially big named player.

Until then, I think he has done a good job, not a great one.

DD

 

All of that makes sense, but why are you saying that the Rockets haven't understood this for many years? Did they ever say or suggest that scouting isn't important or understanding how players fit into a particular team's context isn't important or examining what a player can do in particular matchups isn't important?

You seem to be going more off of your imagination on how the Rockets operate, rather than the many interviews with Morey and others in the organization over the last 5 years on how they do things.

 

Gamble on high ceiling guys like, say, Terrence Williams? Why doesn't Morey ever think of something like that?

 

Problem is, you're saying this with hindsight.

Remember during off-season you argued the Rockets should stand pat, and you believed the current Rockets team is easily a 56 win team with Yao?

Morey has done everything he could given what he could work with. What franchise players are available right now that we could acquire with our current assets?

Our closest "franchise player" right now is Terrence Williams, but he doesn't exactly have a lot to offer at the moment. Morey has taken risks for sure (Ariza was a risk, and so was Terrence Williams). I don't think Morey could have done a better job.

 

Hill doesn't get minutes? Not to mention, there's debates over whether he even deserves them, with how he's been playing.

Look, the ideal of having a bunch of young players is nice and all, but at the end of the day, you have to have some veterans to guide the team and make sure they do things right. Otherwise, you end up with "young talent" developing the way that they're doing a splendid job of doing right down in Sacramento.

There's also the fact that the Rockets believe, and so do I, that minutes are to be EARNED and not GIVEN. If Jordan Hill wants minutes over Brad Miller, he needs to get out on the court and show that he can play better then Brad Miller. That is what a culture of winning is all about. You don't just give Jordan Hill minutes just because he could possibly in the future be better then Brad Miller, and hope he becomes something. You earn them. That's what we did with Landry, and he developed all right. Same with Brooks, he was behind five or so guys when we drafted him, but he became the back-up, and then the starter, because he showed on the court and in practices that he was better then James or whomever. The Rockets clearly value players who genuinely give a crap, and you won't get people like that if you just give them minutes just because they're tall.

 

The Rockets have quantitative data for a lot of those things, and they do a lot of film scouting and live-game scouting as well. You keep returning to this idea that because the Rockets invest heavily in data and analysis, that means they are missing out on other things that are harder to capture with stats. How does that follow? The data is used to complement and augment traditional scouting. Not replace it.

Here is an interview with our advance scout, Pat Zipfel, from 3 years ago. Worth a read.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/4283/the-life-of-an-advance-scout

 

My question was what makes you think our poor record against really good teams has to do with moneyball and not simply that they are better than us. Take any other team that's around or just below .500. Do most of them have a better record against elite teams than us?

 

The Dawson years, 96-97 to 06-07, had the Rockets in the lottery 6 times and the playoffs 5 times. The only star from those 6 lotteries that the Rockets managed to get was Yao Ming.

Draft lottery under CD

2000 9th pick. Rockets trade down for 15th pick Jason Collier(3 crap years). Collier was another big stiff that couldn't block shots, while Magloire was an athletic shotblocking C. This move really confused many people at the time.

2001 13th, 18th, and 23rd pick. Rockets trade all their picks for headcase Eddie Griffin(#7). They should have drafted Joe Johnson over Griffin. If they kept the picks, they could have had a combination of 3 of the following players: Richard Jefferson, Zach Randolph, Tony Parker, Gilbert Arenas, Gerald Wallace, Mehmet Okur, and Samuel Dalembert. An example would be Zach Randolph at 13, and Gerald Wallace at 18, Tony Parker at 23. It was a very deep draft.

2002 1st pick. An even worse record(28-54) allows the Rockets to win the 1st pick. Rockets get to draft Yao Ming. It was a no-brainer at the time. Rockets should have swung for the fences and gone for the risky high school player Amare. Les was also interested in the Chinese money, so Amare wasn't going to be chosen anyway.

2003 Rockets had no pick. It was traded as part of a package for Steve Francis, several years ago.

2006 8th pick, Morey seemed to be running this draft. Rockets were trying to trade for Minnesota's 6th pick and lost out. They trade the 8th pick for Battier.

I am most upset with the Eddie Griffin trade. We had so many picks in a deep draft. They could have had Tony Parker, Richard Jefferson, and Randolph or Tony Parker, Gerald Wallace and Zach Randolph. Tony Parker and Gerald Wallace had as much upside as Griffin without being headcases. Parker would have been a great player off the bench with Francis starting. He was a high upside 19 yr old player.

 

You are missing the point. We lost elite level talent. Elite level talent doesn't grow on trees. How long did it take our future dynasty to recover after we lost sampson to injuries and lloyd and lucas to drugs?