4 replies to this topic

[Sir Thursday]

Another year, another point guard cast off from Houston starting to play well as a starter for another club. Last year it was Lin, this year it's Moore. I guess at least this time we didn't have him in camp for a while before we cut him, and he's not going to get held up as an icon/figurehead for an entire ethnic group, but nevertheless it does feel like the pattern repeating itself to a degree.

So the question is - is there an inherent danger in assembling a squad with too many NBA level players in it? Does the way that the inevitably required cuts of good players inflate the level of the talent pool available to other teams mean that Morey should be modifying his strategy slightly?

In another thread, I posted the list of players that we have cut from the roster this off-season. Here it is again:

Jon Brockman
Gary Forbes
Josh Harrelson -> Now with Miami
JaJuan Johnson
Jerome Jordan -> Now with Memphis
Jon Leuer -> Now with Cleveland
Shaun Livingston
E'Twaun Moore -> Now with Orlando
Luis Scola -> Now with Phoenix
Diamon Simpson
Sean Williams

Livingston and Forbes are more than capable of finding a team to play for too, and someone will roll the dice with JaJuan Johnson, I expect. The net effect of some of our trades seems to be that we strip our trade partners of assets, only to throw them back onto the open market. The rest of the league are the beneficiaries of our strategy, and what's more it's possible that it could alienate our trade partners slightly (since there are rules in place that do not allow them to resign players they have traded away for a reasonably long length of time, IIRC).

You might say that we're picking the diamonds in the rough out of the detritus we're getting in trade, but in the case of many of these players we never actually got a good look at their play, so we don't really get that benefit out of it either.

Then of course there's the loss of face that comes with letting a good player slip away. Lin was initially a bit of an egg on the face for Morey and Alexander. Who's to say that won't happen again? Who's to say it's not happening right now?

[blakecouey]

I see where you're coming from, but the fact that we have too many good players that we have to cut some of them is a good problem to have. At the time of the cuts the only one that had any trade value was Scola, and that value wasn't going to bring us back anything we wanted(as it would've left us taking an equally bad contract back most likely). Same thing goes with Lin last year. I understand the disdain for letting these guys go, when they're high enough caliber to get a job elsewhere, but they wouldn't have gotten a chance here, and at this point I do believe we kept the right guys(that could change, but none of us can predict the future).

[rockets best fan]

I see where you're coming from, but the fact that we have too many good players that we have to cut some of them is a good problem to have. At the time of the cuts the only one that had any trade value was Scola, and that value wasn't going to bring us back anything we wanted(as it would've left us taking an equally bad contract back most likely). Same thing goes with Lin last year. I understand the disdain for letting these guys go, when they're high enough caliber to get a job elsewhere, but they wouldn't have gotten a chance here, and at this point I do believe we kept the right guys(that could change, but none of us can predict the future).

agreed. we have to cut somebody and like blakecouey said and (IMO) we are keeping the right ones most of the time

[sircharles]

scola is the only one on that list that is better than mediocre. moore is getting minutes in orlando because that team has nothing to lose and not many other options. all the other players in my opinion are pretty bad and had absolutely no trade value. just baggage that came with what we actually wanted.

[Chichos]

You also have to remember that success in the NBA has as much to do with coaching style and opportunity as talent. Jeremy Lin's talent is driving and kicking, so you put him on Memphis where he has to feed the post, defend, and shoot threes and he probably doesn't make the roster. Instead he went to the knicks in a PG friendly system with few three point threats and he was successful. (Extreme example but it illustrates the point)

There will always be guys with talent coming up through our system, but if they don't fit the team as constructed c'est la vie.