25 replies to this topic

[rockets best fan]

Clyde only won one championship with Houston, and he wasn't even with us the full season that year.

Then we tried to load with even more superstars to win more, and it didn't work.

true, but I think the point rocketrick is making is our owner isn't afraid to take a gamble trying to win.

[areteejay789]

Also to criticize Billy Beane for not winning a championship is stupid. His payroll is literally a quarter of the biggest payroll in the league... In baseball there is no salary cap, so how are you supposed to compete with someone that can spend four times as much on players to fill the same number of players. Have the tampa bay rays won a championship? No, they have a tiny payroll (which the owner dictates) due to a poor market, so cannot spend as much as the yankees/redsox etc. No one criticizes andrew friedman for being a bad GM just because he wasnt won a world series... Its about playing the odds in your favour. It doesn't always work out, you just have to make the rational decisions, and hope for the best. There is no one fool proof method of winning a title in any sport, or everyone would be doing it. So you really cannot blame morey for not winning a championship, the fact of the matter is, he has improved our CHANCES of winning a title in the foreseeable future. No team has a guaranteed championship, until the season is up. All you can do, is give yourself the best chance of winning, which i beleive morey has done, and done better than pretty much any other GM other than maybe Sam presti, or RC buford.

[phaketrash]

@Kade

I will admit that I am a fan of Morey and Moreyball, so it comes as no surprise that I disagree with a number of your claims. They seem faulty and inconsistent to me for a number of reasons as they tend to rely on implicit assumptions that may or may not be true. For example, you seem to blame Morey for not blowing up the team earlier...something I do somewhat agree with...but a popular reason that has been floated around is that that was more Les' prerogative than Morey's. Maybe that is not true, but it seems a bit unfair to say we're making an excuse for Morey if we blame it on Les, while simultaneously being able to use it to support your own argument, given how plausible the Les theory sounds (I won't comment on Les' competency as an owner).

Your penchant for wanting to take the OKC route is just overplayed. Almost all teams hope to do that -- few accomplish it. OKC is pretty rare in succeeding using that model, esp. in the number of years it took them. That is as much skill as it is luck. Don't get me wrong, I like Presti and think he's a very good GM, but you are advocating a strategy that has a rather low chance of paying out (although it could pay out handsomely). It isn't some revolutionary concept or strategy that none of the GMs in the NBA has thought of before...

And in the same light, to judge Morey only on championships seems silly. How many different teams have won a championship in the last decade? Out of the 30 teams in the NBA? I guess this leads to my biggest point -- we don't have to agree on whether Morey is a GREAT GM or not in a vacuum...what we're really trying to decide is how good of a GM Morey is relative to the other GMs in the NBA. It isn't about perfection; it is about alternatives.

How many other GMs do you think are better? 5? 10? 15? For me, that number is pretty small, so Morey is a GM I like very much. If you look at Morey's whole portfolio, failures and successes, you can see that he has been rather successful. Morey has had failures too, of course, but what GM hasn't? You have to judge him overall, as you would any other person in his shoes. With that, I really can't think of that many other GMs over the same period of time that I would prefer. Can you list them for me?

I just feel like you are maybe a bit too biased when it comes to Morey, easily discounting his successes by attributing them to 'luck' while simultaneously placing more blame on him for failures. I had always heard that the Royce White pick was McHale's. Sure, ultimately the decision rested on Morey, but even then, I think it was a great gamble. I just think it is inconsistent for you to say the gamble on White (given we had 3 picks and where we were picking; the talents he brought vs. the risk, etc.) was dumb yet the gamble a team would take imploding their team and rebuilding through the draft is not. I just doesn't make sense to me. By the way, try to take hind sight bias out of the equation.

Morey's also proven that he is willing to rebuild, when the time is right (see: current team). We have a young, exciting team right now and that has to be attributed to Morey's strategy, too. Some luck as well (true for almost all GM's moves, esp. picks when searching for a KD-type player). Keep in mind Morey's done everything w/ the mess left to him before he came in...and the draft picks he has had (for whatever reason -- we can argue on this point). His asset accumulation strategy did pay off, and his valuation of players is generally correct. Again, I am just baffled that you think you can name that many more GMs you would rather have. I will have to be enlightened.

[rockets best fan]

phaketrash:
dang............ I think I want to hire you as my lawyer now that's tossing him under the bus. however I could not have said it better.

[thejohnnygold]

I am surprised that no one has pointed out Okc and presti's luck in acquiring durant. Portland should have taken him, but went for "old man creaky knees" greg oden instead. Pure luck or destiny? Either way, it was out of his control.

As for morey, i think he is doing his job just fine. He has shown a deftness for adjusting on the fly as injuries kept derailing good plans. Sit back and enjoy the ride knowing that it is all out of our control. Ask anyone whose bball prime came while jordan was destroying. Sucks to be karl malone, gary payton, charles barkley, an indiana pacer, new york knick, and on and on. Point is, even making all the right moves guarantees nothing. Deal with it.

[tombrokeoff]

Well put and can apply to most things in life.