[ClutchFans] How we got here: A look back at the end of the Yao era to now

Wow! Talk about turning the roster over! It seems like much longer than 18 months that this all happened, it's all a blur.

Morey is a freaking monster. I'm not sure people truly know how hard it is to do what Morey did and in such a short amount if time. We are truly lucky to have the front office we have.

There was a little luck involved in all of this, but Morey and the orginization were uber prepared and that says A LOT.

Thanks NIKEstrad

 

Daryl Morey is the best GM in sports period. Regardless of what the outcome is, the huge transition from McGrady-Yao to Howard-Harden is crazy. The steps that he had to follow to get to this point were calculated from the beginning. Genius indeed.

 

I can't even imagine what kind of monster team Morey would be able put together if he were in either LA or NY.

 

+1 on this for an interesting and informative read.

morey will be remembered for money-ball, but what sets him above the rest are:

1) morey gets out of the mistakes quickly. most GM's are too proud to admit they made a mistake and want to give it time to prove they were right. morey signs ariza, he knows its a bust half way through season, moves him in the summer. none of this "let him grow with the team, he'll be fine" nonsense you here from other GM's.

2) panning for gold. he will go through 20 fringe players to find the two that we kept. that's a lot of CONSTANT work. but finding something out of nothing is worth it. its a free way to stock the bench.

 

Great post NIKE. What's so amazing is everything so calculated and precise. Morey has a plan, and executes it. Love our FO.

 

this is what espn insider stories should be #respect

 

crazy this was only 18 months; morey is a genius

thanks for the post, repped

 

All Morey's misses are on small scale contracts, and they are easy to fix. His big bets have very high success rate, which is the key in the whole process.

 

Nice write-up - but a supporting player in all this is the black swan-type event of the Lockout/New CBA that Morey saw and was able to anticipate way better than all of the rest of the league - frankly he was so far ahead of the x's & o's old school orgs like the lakers it's almost comical.

 

Beautiful OP, NIKEstrad! Just what I needed to read on a Sunday morning. What a trip to see it all laid out. An excellent read. You should do a column for Clutch. Heck, this would have made a nice one!

 

Agreed-- moneyball is important, but these other 2 points sometimes get overlooked.

 

daryl probably had bios and newspaper clippings of sam presti, grunwald and every other gm in his living room prior to even joining the rockets.

 

I'm a bit surprised you didn't go back a little further and discuss the implications of the Gasol trade that didn't happen. That was most certainly a bigger factor and the makeup of this team would be entirely different -- and there would likely be no Harden or Howard.

 

Another thing Morey does is to create perceived value and trade the piece. Nba rosters are littered with Morey cast offs who did very well in Houston but were never able to duplicate the same success.

I have often wondered whether we went to adelman because offensive numbers are easy to sell.

Other teams saw the performance here and banked on upside that we knew did not exist, or placed too great of a value on what did exist because those GMs could not find the same production throught the draft.

 

Would read again.

 

Great great read. This historical review should be kept in the Rockets archives for when we win that championship.

Not only is Morey great at finding undervalued talent and making them shine in our system, he is also a salary cap genius. So far we're the only team to have exploited the "poison pill contract" which we used to get Asik and Lin last year.

And we have been smartly under the cap during the years we were stocking up. I think that's why Les Alexander loves him. He pinches pennies until we really have a contender and then Morey's willing to spend. The FO combines basketball and financial genius.

 

This makes it clear as day. Morey is an undeniable genius. A reason I'm proud of being a Rockets fan is because our team never takes the easy route. We didn't tank, we fought tough and nail to stay competitive whilst looking for the smart ways to acquire the stars to build a championship contender team!

LONG LIVE MOREY!

 

If someone could put this into an infographic pdf, the reknown of Morey's genius would spread far and wide.

 

What accelerated a lot of this was the new CBA. He was smart enough to take advantage of it faster than anyone else. Asik, Lin, and most importantly Harden were a direct result of the new LT penalties.