So much for Continuity

Continuity was the theme Morey pined about when he re-signed Brew, Bev, and McDaniels this off-season. Of course, Josh Smith was long gone by the time he made these comments to Feigens in an interview in September and we had also moved out 3 other players for Lawson as well. But those weren't considered to be part of the major rotation anyways and getting major minutes.

Here's the Feigens article where Morey compared us to the Warriors:

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/spo...hp?t=4de6e2db57438d9cbb&cmpid=twitter-premium

Spoiler

Thought this was an interesting graphic put together by basketball-reference.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/continuity.cgi





What this shows is we are at 15th in the league at 73% from year before. There are 14 other teams with more continuity than we have. And this number is likely to move lower as we continue throughout the season.

Morey touted GS making one significant change, adding Shaun Livingston, equating us adding Lawson to our core as being about the same as GS adding Livingston. But he did not account nor talk about the loss of Smoove.


Realistically our primary rotation last season, if/when everyone would have been healthy was:

Harden
Howard
Ariza
DMo
Bev
Smoove
Brewer
Pablo

with Terry and Jones picking up scraps.

With DMo's injury that forced our rotation to finally finish the season with

Harden
Howard
Ariza
Terry
Smoove
Brewer
Pablo
Capela

with Jones picking up the scraps. (Bev was out. And Capela finally surpassed Jones.)


When you look at what we're doing this season, this is our rotation:

Harden
Howard
Ariza
Lawson
Thornton
Brewer
Capela
Terry
Jones



If we're realistic about our roster, injuries, and how this team has fit together, we do not have continuity. DMo, Bev, and Dwight have missed significant time. Smoove is gone. And we're left picking up scraps with a new PG (Lawson) and a bunch of guys (Thornton, Terry, Jones) that are playing rotation minutes that should be end-of-the-bench guys (part of 9-15) and would likely be end-of-the-bench guys if we had DMo, Bev, and Smoove back on this team and healthy.

I didn't see continuity when Morey made that statement. And I for sure don't see it now. I think we've got to churn this roster. We clearly need better players at the top of the rotation, much less the end of the rotation, and several of these guys should be on the bench only playing spot minutes in a mop-up role.

 

One team's situation is not another's. I don't hold it against Morey that we lost Smoove. I really don't think it was Morey's fault at the end of the day. I think something else happened there with Smith and his desire to play here. However, just because he's having problems in LAC does not discount what he meant to this team.

Nor do I hold injuries against Morey except to this extent. He re-signed Bev, gave him $18 million and Bev had basically been hurt all season. Bev was restricted. I wouldn't have signed him. I'd have waited for another team to make an offer. If it was too much I'd have let Bev walk. Didn't appear Bev was drawing much interest. I think Morey paid him way too much. Maybe 2-9 with a player option after this season???? I wouldn't have given Bev 3-18. Because he was injured multiple times and we didn't know what he'd be like once he recovered. I wouldn't have been afraid of him walking. And in fact I would've probably tried to trade him as part of a S&T package to Denver for Lawson while retaining Johnson on the roster. I wouldn't have been worried about continuity with Bev.

Smoove WAS the clear 3rd best player on this team once DMo went down. It took a while (too long) for McHale to figure it out. But nonetheless SMoove was clearly our 3rd best player. You can't simply take that away, and not replace him at all on the roster and expect to have continuity. We didn't replace him at all. We brought back the same bigs...except him and Dorsey weren't there. We basically replaced Dorsey's role with Harrell. But we lost our third best player and we didn't put anybody else in there.

That can't be ignored.

 

That may be the truth. But it's not like we were giving Smoove a big contract. HE would've been on a minimum salary deal. Volatile? Sure. But consider this. We need some volatility in that locker room. We need somebody throwing stuff around and yelling. Because James and Dwight sure ain't gonna do it.

My point about continuity is you can't lose the third most important player on a team that went to the Western Conference Finals, and not replace him, and then expect to be the same team or better.

And another point about Smoove........I'm afraid most of Houston is far underestimating Smoove's value to us on the defensive end. That man was of huge importance to our D. Huge. He created turnovers and bad shots galore for this team to get our offense in transition. Without him this season our D has been DEAD in the water.

So, for me the loss of Smoove is much less about his offense and much more about his defensive impact. We did not replace him. Therefore you can't expect to have continuity working in your favor.

I do blame Morey for talking continuity when he obviously knew Smoove's impact and he knew he hadn't replaced Smith's defensive impact on this team.

 

Yeah. I'm simply not buying the "lack of a clearly defined role" garbage. Smoove was the 3rd most important player playing for us by the end of the season and the playoffs. There's simply no way that Morey wouldn't define his role ahead of both Terrence and Clint as a clear top 3 big on this team and he would leave over that for a backup role behind Blake/DeAndre in LA.

Doesn't add up. And I've recently gotten a report that indeed there was something else going on there with Smoove's decision, which is what I expected was the case. I'm not going to go into it. If somebody else wants to reveal it, they can. It's not coming from my sources but from theirs. But the "lack of a clearly defined role" excuse is hogwash.

 

We didn't need Smith for trade value. We needed Smith for play value. Minimum contract, no risk, extremely important rotation piece. No-brainer top 3 rotation big for us. No brainer top 3 player for us last season and this season at worst he would have been 6th man. Most definitely a better player for us than Brewer, Capela, Lawson, Beverley, Terry, Terrence, Harrell, Thornton, and McDaniels. On a minimum salary.