Why Rockets GM Daryl Morey claims he has let James Harden down

Well to Morey's credit if CP3's hammy doesn't explode, Harden has his championship.

 

"it's on me". Ok tmac

 

Sounds a little like Bill O'Brien's "I have to coach better" line.

 

Harden is often surrounded by scrubs or dudes on their last legs

if u compare his squads to those of his contemporaries, it’s an absolute joke

all these 50+ win seasons would’ve been 40 win seasons plus a 1st round exit with most other stars...the talent level just isn’t there...not if you’re talking about title contention...not when u see guys with Big 3s

 

Morey 'I also talked about SpaceX and Bitcoin in length in this.'

 

scrubs? by harden's 3rd season we had a conference finals team. a team with a good enough supporting cast to win game 6 with harden on the bench. if the warriors hadn't become a 67 win team overnight, we'd be right there with anyone. then, within 2 years of dwight and james tearing the franchise apart, morey built another team that somehow led a 4-HOFer juggernaut 3-2 before a hamstring injury. and we have a decent claim as the 2nd best team last year (really i think milwaukee would beat us, but given that toronto won, i think we would have beaten toronto). outside of a once-in-a-generation warriors situation, who are all these other way more talented teams? two of the biggest favorites this year are just teams who happen to be in a city where star players were born or wanted to force their way to for more fame and money.

 

Except Morey has actually won some playoff games and arguably built 2 championship caliber teams.

(No excuses for last offseason, though. That sucked.)

 

He's done good, just not great but that's not just Morey, that's on the owners - both Leslie and Tilly - and coaches as well. Cannot just blame himself, but I don't think he's sincere.

 

Yes, scrubs. That team had his declining co-star Dwight miss half the season and 2 other starters not even able to play come playoff time. Jason Terry was a starter. With most other stars, that season is 40 something wins and a 1st round exit at best. Don’t confuse Harden doing phenomenal carry jobs with him being surrounded by phenomenal talent.

1 season he actually had a championship caliber team. 1 season out of what? 8? He’s usually surrounded with a plethora of very limited and inconsistent role players that he carries resulting in the team overachieving. Compared to what these other superstars have to work with year in and year out, it’s a joke.

you’re talking about Toronto...the same Toronto team that went 17-5 without Kawhi last season, and was on pace for almost 60 wins this season...the Rockets without Harden could never

Toronto is stacked

 

Agreed. You take out the best player on any of the past few teams that won titles and replace them with Harden, you're still going to see that team in the Finals and/or win the title. Would a Harden/Irving/Love team beat a stacked Warriors team after being down 3-1? Maybe not, but those Cavs would still be in the Finals.

Harden's best team was probably the one with '18 CP3. It's subjective, but I think if you pair any other player in the league with '18 CP3 and everything happened still happens, I still don't think the Rockets would get past the Warriors.

 

And replace Harden with Lebron and Lebron still won't be able to get the Rocket's past GSW

 

It's really Kevin Durant's fault. Those three Cp3 Harden teams coulda won in any other era. Even Durant probably regrets how meaningless it all was.

 

Morey is not responsible for Chris Paul's hamstring or Tilman's desire for penny pinching

 

Another blow to the "Morey is a Robot Abacus" crowd. This guy sounds like he really cares for Harden. This sounds like legit remorse.

 

exactly, we're basically complaining that we didn't surround harden with enough talent to beat the most talented team ever.

i don't think morey planned for dwight to miss half the season. either way, that team without harden staged a 19 point comeback in an elimination game. it's hard to argue it was some terrible collection of players.

i don't think anyone thought year 1 of harden was supposed to be great as we had purposely been treading water waiting to trade assets. but by year 2 we already had the 5th best SRS in the league. unfortunately harden had a terrible playoff series and our 1st round opponent had the 6th best SRS (top 6 were all in the west) and we lost a close series. by year 3, the supporting cast was winning elimination games and we got to the WCF before losing to a 67 win team. by year 5 we had quickly turned a disastrous situation straight back into 55 wins and possibly a WCF if harden doesn't have a concussion/quit on the team in games 5 and 6 against the spurs (notice harden isn't exactly having legendary playoff series only to be held back by the supporting cast). the next 2 years we had possibly the best team in the league and then, by any definition, a title contender.

so something like the 6th, 3rd, disaster, 4th, 1st/2nd, and 2nd/3rd best teams in the league in a 6 year span (we'll see how this year works out). with arguably the same team being in our way the whole time, not some string of teams hopping over us every year with all these other great management teams. the only times we lost to someone not named golden state, it would be hard to argue harden wasn't a big part of the problem.

all i said was i thought we could beat them last year. our regular season matchups didn't make me think we couldn't and them taking 6 games to beat the warriors without KD and 1 game without klay and a 4th quarter without klay where they barely hung on doesn't make me think we couldn't.

 

Tell me what GM is gonna come forward and say this kind of stuff about a player on the roster.

And what, Morey is gonna get on the microphone just to give Harden more media points? He knows Harden is mistreated by everyone. The media bias getting to the CF members here alone is proof.

 

That was 1 game. U can’t use what was by far the best moment from a supporting cast, and make it seem that they were actually amazing. We had fluke things occur like Josh Smith going 4-7 from deep. Terrance Jones played out of his mind.

peep their production against GS in the WCF...

-Josh Smith shot 39% from the field and 41% from the line while taking 14 shots a game...Rocket Melo wasn’t even that bad offensively
-Corey Brewer went 0-8 from 3 and shot 34% from the field overall
-Jason Terry shot 38% from the field and 30% from 3
-Terrance Jones shot 38% from the field
-Pablo Prigioni shot 33%

meanwhile, Harden averaged 28, 8, and 6 on 46/43/87 shooting splits...out of the entire rotation, only Harden, Dwight who was injured, Ariza, and rookie year Clint who barely got any PT showed up...the rest of the starting lineup and bench was absolute garbage

Josh Smith and Corey Brewer weren’t even NBA caliber the very next season...Jason Terry was on his last legs already...Prigioni played 1 more year and then retired...Dwight completely fell off the map and became an unwanted team cancer

what Harden has had to work with is often a joke in comparison to other superstars...a huge joke

You’re really gonna bring up 16-17? That team was supposed to be a bottom seed 1st round exit, not anything close to a 55 win team making it to game 6 of the 2nd round...Harden was again surrounded with limited role players, and carried them causing the team to overachieve...

18-19 roster was nothing special and riddled with injuries...it was a “title contender” solely because of Harden’s legendary carry job and ability to take on a huge burden...not because the overall talent of the team was so great...that same roster without someone able to shoulder the load like Harden is a bottom seed 1st round exit at best

 

Harden might traded on draft night with morey talking like this!

Tell harden wash them basketball shorts if play resumes!


God speed rockets, Landry restaurants, and hulkamaniacs worldwide!

 

He's paired him with Dwight, CP3 and Westbrook.

We've had solid rotation players in pre injury Parsons, pre injury DMo, Lin (que the hate but he was a good 4th/5th guy), Josh Smith that one year, Ariza, Capela, Roco, Tucker, Beverly and etc.

That's more than a lot of team have together across a quite a long period of time.