Look dude, there's a graph that encapsulates their entire view of the DM analysis. On said graph, the Rockets DO NOT always come out ahead. They mostly do, but often don't. That's 75% of their entire analysis. "let's use VORP, make some projections on VORP where required, and see how he came out". Even with that, as the article notes, the entirety(!) of the net positive VORP attributed to DM trades can all be found in the Harden trade. The Harden trade produced 50+ net VORP so far. All the DM trades produced about 35 positive net VORP. Meaning, WITHOUT the Harden trade, the net VORP on all other DM trades is NEGATIVE. DM gets HEAPS and HEAPS and HEAPS of praise. Even I have said, many times, he was a top GM. I don't think he gets nearly a critical enough eye... EVER. This article is an example of that. Lots of GREAT trades brought out. Absolutely no mention of various criticisms beyond that.
Well... i think someone has to present the other side. Sometimes he's a top 5 GM, sometimes he's a top 10 GM, to me. Some moves I scratch my head, but on the whole he was "VERY" solid, lol. Even his criticism is often couched. "Well, look at his owner!" "well, he couldn't tank" "well, he couldn't spend above the luxury tax" Sure... and other GMs have other constraints to work around. Dennis Lindsey has the good fortune of being the GM of the Jazz, lol. There's also lots of GMs doing solid, but unheralded work. You never hear anyone mention Tim Connelly, for example. That's my whole point. There are now lots of very solid GMs.
Okay how else would you view it? Second most wins in the entire NBA during his tenure. Is that better? NEVER being allowed to tank and almost never allowed in luxury tax. I thought he was a great GM before this article. Using VORP to look at his trades just adds on to what I already knew. Oh he also built a 65 win team that took probably the greatest team of all time to 7 games. Dude the article literally says this "Perform the same calculation for each of Morey’s trades, though, and the Rockets came out ahead by 34.8 VORP. Think of it this way: In his 13-year tenure as Rockets GM, Morey added almost the same value over replacement player via trade that Lowry did on the court (35.5)." This is Morey's VORP WITHOUT Harden. And again if you again Kyle Lowry level of VORP with trades than you are pretty damn good GM. Dude, I can play this silly game too. Without tanking Warriors never get Curry or Klay? And without those two they dont get KD ever. Without tanking OKC never gets Durant, Westbrook or Harden. He gets plenty of blame too, is Moreyball bad, you cant play without a center, dont value team chemistry, blah blah. DM is not here. We are not with a better replacement. Yea he's a top GM who we LOST. Even I think Morey ball can be too dogmatic and it definitely has points where Daryl's models just break. I think Daryl knows that too, that's the thing about him, I fully believe the dude learns from his mistakes and would make improvements. EVER? Thats not even true, we get criticized by the media ALL the time. What are you talking about? I've addressed some of those "valid" criticisms(Chandler Parsons, lol cmon dude). He's a great GM and yea great GMs make mistakes too. They do way more good than bad but there is bad. But with Daryl he was never allowed to go into luxury tax nor was he allowed to tank and that's something all of these "championship" level teams do.
Dennis Lindesy is not winning with the Jazz anytime soon, Mitchell is most likely gonna leave eventually, same with Gobert. But you're right, he's done a solid job. But here is the thing, in the first 4 years of his tenure, he either tanked or didnt make the playoffs in some fashion. He was allowed to stockpile assets from being bad as well and that allowed him to get Donovan Mitchell. And his draft picks from tanking arent stellar either. Emmanuel Mudiay and Dante Exum. Same with Tim Connelly tanked for the first 3 years as his run with the Denver Nuggets.
I've literally said how i'd view it 100x. He was a very solid GM. His advantage over other GMs shrunk and shrunk through his tenure, as other GMs basically became more and more like him, partly because a lot of them were his proteges Again, I literally already, in a prior post, noted their inclusion of this fact. They also noted, RIGHTLY, that it was 8th most in playoff wins. Basically summarizes his tenure. OH SO VERY VERY CLOSE... but no cigar. Again, have already pointed out the criticism or praise of DM, for some reason, often comes with some kind of qualifier like this for some reason. How about we qualify the GMs of the TWolves, Jazz, Grizzlies, Thunder... etc. LOTS of teams have qualifiers. Sadly, there are a few that don't, and reap the benefit of that (Lakers, Celtics, Heat). Where does it say this?? It never says WITHOUT Harden, its 35.5. Frankly, it alludes the opposite. Right after the sentence yo posted it says: "The significant majority of the value Morey generated via trade came in the Harden deal. " It also says before your quote: "Perform the same calculation for each of Morey’s trades, though, and the Rockets came out ahead by 34.8 VORP." It seems to very specifically be including ALL of his trades, including the Harden trade in the calculation. And withouth tanking DM had the opportunity to draft Kawhi, but instead chose Marcus Morris. There's a reason why tanking is a double edged sword. And some teams, don't even tank, but just suck consistently every year. It's because more important than the tanking is the drafting itself. And I LIKE DM's drafting. Cause absolutely you can't get it perfect EVERY time. But have to call a spade a spade. The perfect player to pair next to Harden was right there. "We" get criticized in the Rockets get criticized. DM barely does. He's adored by media, fans and other executives. And as noted he's a VERY solid GM. But at this point I'm not super worried about losing him. I AM more worried about the reason they lost him... Fertitty. It's obviously a bit of a guess... but in the hands of the right owner, I am perfectly fine with both the GM they replaced DM with to try out, and the coach they chose. Even if DM is the GREATEST!! and/or MDA was the perfect coach... at some point you have to move on.
No, he was an elite GM. Having advantages while also having constraints puts you back at square one dude. Namely being able to go into luxury tax, tanking and in general having much more control. Its not RIGHTLY when you arent using it with context dude. You arent accounting for injuries, you aren't accounting for playoff opponent, strength, nothing surface level analysis and significantly smaller sample size. And the "OH SO VERY CLOSE" thing is a BS argument. A GM doesnt actually go out and play. He puts the pieces in place for them to succeed and thats what he did. And I like how you act like the KD Warriors are just any old championship team. Why dont you blame Bob Meyers for KD getting hurt, or Klay getting hurt or Looney getting hurt in the finals? They dont have the qualifiers, those teams you listed WERE ALLOWED TO TANK. And teams who were champions were allowed into the tax(Cavs, Warriors). In 13 years, do you see a lot of teams that werent allowed to tank? Celtics were last in the league before trading a Al Jefferson to get KG. And that culminated in that horrible Brooklyn trade years later. Lakers tanked to get assets for Anthony Davis. The Heat have also tanked as well,or they were bad enough to secure high drafting positions. Ooops, oh you're right it does say that my apologies. But in the article literally says in the article "But Morey added value beyond the Harden deal." Just look at the graph dude, most of the deals we largely came out ahead. And the Lowry trade should not count against him since he literally used that trade to get Harden. We then made significantly less trades after Harden because Daryl had acquired the center piece. His last two years Morey hasnt been able to make trades he wanted so there is that too. And btw there are lots of one note trades that significantly help teams. Without Masai making the one trade for Kawhi, the Raptors are a joke(and he didnt even draft Derozan). Without the tanking and without Brooklyn giving away 4 first rounders, Ainge is nothing special, he's what you call "solid." Without tanking, Warriors are nothing. Without tanking, Spurs dont have Tim Duncan. Only one really big miss and that was missing out on Nic Batum which I can live with. Plenty of good organizations who missed out on Kawhi. Plenty of GOOD organizations. There are so many teams that miss out on so many good players in the draft, its not even funny. And no one, NO ONE saw Kawhi being as good as he is now. I guess All the GMs who passed on Draymond m are maxed out at being "solid" in fact, its probably an even worse mistake since he was a second round pick. Every GM has had a miss like this. And if they havent, its because those teams were tanking. Weve never even had a top 10 draft pick to work with. Tanking isnt a double edged sword if you know who you are drafting and know how to use draft capital. Tanking the right way, gets you very high draft picks and gets you championships. Tanking got the Warriors Curry and Klay. Tanking created the OKC big 3. Tanking created the Spurs(Tim Duncan). Tanking created the Lakers you see today. So you like Daryl Morey's drafting but dont achknowledge that he's never had a high amount of very good draft assets to work with? Also I dont see how team's "just sucking" helps your argument out at all. He's not adored by the media. His moves are constantly questioned. Us taking a lot of 3s are constantly questioned, are small ball was constantly questioned. Other executives? Morey is not well liked in the league. Fans? There are a lot of people out there that call him a nerd who doesnt know anything about basketball, our own fan base included. Executives? Zach Lowe literally wrote an article criticizing him right after we lost to the Lakers. That was evident in the articles written about him after the whole China thing. They respect him but thats something different. And I disagree about him just being "solid". He was really great and wasnt allowed the advantages other teams were. Why? Why would you think Stone is gonna be better? You arent super worried about losing Morey because you dont think he was that good. Which is fine, but I dont think your reasoning holds up when you look at what he's had to work with. You dont just lose a top 5, ELITE GM and think you are gonna replace him with someone better. From Mike....yea maybe. From Daryl...no. You need a GM who can lead your rebuild in the right direction. Instead we have pin headed owner and his dopey son being involved. And even with a good owner there is nothing about Stone that should give you confidence he's gonna be better than Daryl, especially since Morey's actual protege went to Sacremento. Change for the sake of change is dumb,the "moving on for the sake of it" is ridiculous. The whole "lets try out something new for the sake of it" is how we got orange turd.[/QUOTE]
Im not going to respond to the whole thing. and i'm not here to make a huge deal out of a misread either. but literally the entire basis of their argument, analyzing trade value based on VORP, you completely misread. And when reading it right, it said the exact thing i mentioned in basically my initial post... OUTSIDE of the Harden deal, DM didn't "fleece" anyone. He had trades, most of which were solid. Great. Like other very solid GMs. Many of whom ALSO have organizational issues to deal with. No need to go back and forth over it anymore. It's just humorous their entire argument, if yo remove one trade, is completely the reverse.
Okay, but just so you know there are arguments out there that I have constantly made to you which you never addressed. Dude if you take a look at that graph, itll show Morey winning the majority of the trades he's making. Post Harden he made way less deals. I dont know how many times I have to explain that to you. Daryl did come out ahead in almost every trade he made pre Harden. And btw how many teams are "fleecing" anyone these days? How many deals like the Harden trade are you seeing now these days? None. Like is that what a great GM is supposed to do, constantly fleece people in trades at every turn,that's ridiculous. Daryl has won so many trades over the years, teams dont even want to deal with him as much. And those trades were better than solid, a lot of those pre trades helped us land James Harden, oh my god. Dude please stop it with this, you havent listed a single Championship/sucessful team team that either wasnt allowed to tank or one wasnt allowed to go into the luxury tax. That's fine. Except its not true. You think Daryl would be **** had he not done the James Harden deal, but pre the James Harden deal he was making great moves.He stopped making so many trades afterwards because the point of doing them is to net you a guy like James Harden. And he built our whole franchise up WITHOUT TANKING OR LUXURY TAX. Without tanking Boston...nothing, no KG Without tanking nothing, no Curry, no Kly Without Tanking Spurs...nothing, no Tim Duncan Without tanking Cleveland...No Lebron I could go on and on and its honestly really easy. But go on about "completely" reversed...yea sure dude. And the Warriors and Cavs went into the luxury tax as well. Please miss me with this "solid"(which is average cause that's what you really mean) stuff.
Because it was before BLM and now You got screaming a Smith yelling at people for giving job to Steve Nash, Harell giving Doncic „white boy”... and better believe compton based players affiliated with the movement are more likely to think like this. How many white players are there on the Rockets? I cant think of one tbh. You think its coincidence? Why JL was pushed to the front? Why theres news that USA Men team coach(white) nor Atkinson didn’t get approval from players? Pro athletes are dumb and with given facts I really believe they think binary like that
And you may be right. Pushing Lucas to the front made me think James is probably more KD/Irving like than i thought before, and pushing JVG off made me think that even more. I see Silas as compromise
But preferring Lucas/Silas over JVG does not have any racial overtones to me. System familiarity and coaching styles immediately come to mind before any thoughts of skin color. Maybe it's just me.
