Daryl Morey

Smooth Transition

Morey quickly putting his stamp on the Rockets as general manager


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Damien Pierce
Rockets.com Staff Writer
HOUSTON -- Before becoming an NBA executive, Daryl Morey was a high school basketball player with a dependable jump shot.

Well, maybe his jumper wasn't all that reliable.

"I was pretty unremarkable," Morey admitted.

The same can't be said about his transition into the Rockets' front office.

With a computer science degree from Northwestern and an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the new Rockets' general manager has a different background than most sports executives. That has not stopped him, however, from quickly putting his stamp on the Rockets in his first off-season.

The Rockets have been one of the league's most active teams this summer, naming Rick Adelman as the franchise's new coach and adding guards Steve Francis and Mike James as well as power forward Luis Scola. With those moves and the re-signing of free agents Bonzi Wells and Chuck Hayes, the Rockets are optimistic that they've narrowed the gap on the Western Conference's top teams heading into the season.

This, of course, is what Morey was hired to do. But how he got here and how he is doing it is unlike any other general manager in the game. The Rockets general manager uses traditional methods like any other team, but is attempting to create a sustainable edge by applying objective information to personnel decision-making. This is a concept most notably praised in the famed book Moneyball about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. While Beane's approach was celebrated for his ability to build playoff-caliber teams without overspending like big market clubs, a principal of Moneyball is to find undervalued assets relative to the market that allow a team to maximize wins under cap constraints.

That's a philosophy that Morey is pioneering into the NBA.

"We're not doing anything new," Morey said. "General Managers have forever been trying to figure out which players are going to fit into their system and create wins. We're doing the same thing. We're making the same decisions, but we're trying to make them better. We're trying to differentiate ourselves by more accurately forecasting a player's production by using information from the past."

Since succeeding retiring general manager Carroll Dawson in May, Morey has been making such forecasts using scouting and objective information. Unsurprisingly, the Rockets have more invested in this approach than any other team in the NBA. Every player move involves a scouting component and an information component to assess the potential and risk of the move.

Morey notes a couple of moves this summer where such analysis played a vital role in making a decision. Before making a trade with the San Antonio Spurs to acquire the draft rights to Scola, Morey's team determined that international players like Scola have a strong success rate in making the leap to the NBA. It also played a role in the acquisition of Steve Francis. While some have speculated that the guard's game has declined, it was clear from video and objective information that he was essentially the same productive player, but it was hidden by his reduced role in New York.

Three weeks from the start of training camp, Morey now has both players on his roster along with a handful of other players that he acquired during a busy off-season. He believes that he's put together a team capable of competing in the Western Conference.

"Until we prove it on the floor, we're behind teams such as Dallas, Phoenix and San Antonio," Morey said. "But we feel like we've closed the gap."

As a college student, Morey's first job in sports was at STATS, Inc., a Chicago-based sports information, content, and analysis company that initially focused its efforts on baseball. Right away, Morey was part of the effort to begin the firm's focus on basketball.

Ultimately, he didn't jump straight into professional sports after acquiring his degrees. He instead went to work for a leading a strategy consulting firm, The Parthenon Group. But the idea to return to sports did not fade.

"It is extraordinarily difficult to get any job in sports and I did not have luck finding a job with a basketball team when I left STATS," Morey said. "I never really stopped thinking about a career in basketball, however."

Morey got his chance in Boston. After working closely with a group that was acquiring the Celtics when he was at Parthenon, Morey was hired as the team's senior vice president of basketball operations. During his more than three years with the franchise, he worked on improving the team's decisions on trades and drafting players.

Eventually, Rockets owner Leslie Alexander hired him as an assistant general manager with the intention that Morey would replace Dawson following the 2006-07 season. So far, the owner has been pleased with what he has seen from the new general manager in his first summer running the team.

"He's done a great job," Alexander said. "He was hired to be a top NBA general manager and I think he's filled those expectations."

Morey still stays in close touch with Dawson, who remains a consultant with the team. He credits his former boss with leaving behind a solid foundation and establishing relationships around the league that have already proven beneficial.

Still, the Rockets' general manager understands that he'll now be leaving his own stamp on the team. Morey has received positive feedback for the moves that he's made so far, but he knows he won't always receive glowing reviews.

"Decision makers in sports are always going to be characterized as an idiot or a genius," Morey said. "Nobody buys a newspaper unless the story focuses on an extreme opinion. We're likely going to have a small losing streak at some point during the season and we will be idiots again then. So I think you've just got to stay even keel and focus on the big picture. We have to continue to objectively assess how close we are to a championship and keep doing what we can to get closer."





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Also be free to post your different opinions about Daryl.
Think,that in one season he made us really good team.
At least on the paper.

 

man,mistake in copy/paste

 

Ever team has it's losing streak