Why MoneyBall doesn't work & other lessons learned

We should have taken Amare #1 and Yao was a no brainer? Wow talk about revisionist history.

 

Oh, that's the point. It takes about 10 years to replace them.

Rockets lost 2 star players to injury, last year. That's why they suck this year, and will suck again for the next 9 years.

I should keep the T-Mac and Yao is injured excuse until 2020, then.

 

I agree with some of the things OP is saying. Stars are stars. NBA is all about stars. I hated the Battier move so much. Still hate the Battier move as much, if not more, to this day.

I think its best to make our final judgment after the trade deadline. If we still don't have any stars after the trade deadline? This team is dead.

 

Well people are trying say moreyball is the problem and completely forgetting the fact that we lost 2 major stars.

 

The fact that the Rockets would consider renting Carmelo shows how desperate they are. There are no top 10-15 players available, at least not for what we have to offer. Nor will we be able to attract any legitimate franchise player through free agency. The only way to get the type of player we need is through the draft.

 

They could have traded down for the Clippers 8th pick and pick one of their other young players. It would have given access to the chinese media market for the Clippers, so Donald Sterling could definitely make more money. They had Olowokandi, but he was going into the 4th season of his rookie contract. He wasn't that great..

 

its the fact that morey and moneyball didnt get any stars.

stars were all from the dawson era.

moneyball has delivered us a bunch of good roleplayers and thats it.

I'm a fan of moneyball, but I don't like the lack of firepower on this team

 

..........................................I'm sorry, arguing that the Rockets should have done this is like whining we took Dream and not Jordan. This is simply an absurd criticism.

 

Not really the same thing. Both guys were 4-year college players.

The knock against Stoudemire was that he was a 19 yr old kid vs Yao Ming (almost 22) that had played against NBA competition on the international stage.

 

Rockets got only 3 stars, Francis, Yao and T-mac. Rockets were in the lottery 4-5 times in a row, including a #1 pick(Yao). The main problem Morey had was trying to get more stars, when your draft picks are mediocre with the exception of Gay..

 

Rockets got lucky with Francis. Francis hated Canada! If Francis hadn't demanded a trade, there would also not have been a Francis for T-Mac trade. It would have only been 1 star in the CD era.

 

How was Yao a no brainer? Wasn't Jay Williams the no brainer?

 

If they did that, I wouldn't be using Gortat as an example of a player Morey refused to 'overpay' for and he went to the highest bidder. Because we didn't do that, I CAN use that as an example. Ariza was signed using our disabled player exception and wouldn't have factored into any Gortat decision.

I think your belief on the Rockets thinking is the "well, we didn't want you anyways!" type thing. We lost out on signing him to an offer sheet because we weren't offering the full MLE like other teams were. If the Rockets were wasting their time because they thought Orlando would match, why even show up to his door at 12:01 with an offer LESS than the MLE? Wouldn't that make it MORE likely for Orlando to match? And as I mentioned earlier, Ariza did not take up any of our MLE, so it would not have been a waste of time if we were the one who Gortat signed the offer sheet with.

 

At the time, many championship teams depended on great big man, whether it's Shaq, Duncan, or Hakeem, with the exception of the Bulls. It was nearly impossible to find even a decent roleplaying C in trade. If the Rockets drafted Jay Williams, they would have still been looking for a C to take over Kelvin Cato and Jason Collier's spot for several years. Rockets can't even find a back up C for Yao Ming for the last several seasons.

There were many dynamic PGs in the league also. Some teams even had 2 good PGs. At the time, there hadn't been championship teams with a star PG, since Magic Johnson. However, Magic was 6'9" not 6'2" like Jay Williams. Stockton, Kidd, and Payton weren't getting any rings.

 

Magic?

Isaiah

 

You don't really have to talk about championship PGs. All you have to say is that never in the history of the NBA has a team won the title without an elite defensive big man. The same can not be said of any other type of player.

 

Yao was viewed as a major project at the time. Do you remember that too? He wasn't the number 1 no brainer pick.

And what are you talking about with not having a backup for Yao? Did you forget about Deke?

 

He said last few seasons, which I assume means this year and last year.