Not on a board where posters call the GM overrated
Morey does seem a little overrated. Most of the media can't say his name without calling him brilliant in the same sentence, but when you look at the results of his "brilliance", they're just really not there. I find it incredibly weird that we excuse the Rockets (and Morey's) continual playoff disappointment with "Well, the Warriors are just an historically great team" as if Morey has no agency in the league's player movement and also as if he's only been the GM of the Rockets while the Warriors have been a super team. The guy has constructed teams that have been to a grand total of one conference final and yet he's seen as a revolutionary mind instead of a GM on par with Bob Whitsitt and Donnie Walsh. Yes, both those guys are good GMs, but they're not remembered with the same reverence that we currently reserve for Morey.
I come to the same crossroads with him as I do Billy Beane. The "shit doesn't work in the playoffs" thing... I mean, we laud these guys for having a great, process oriented approach to team-building and unearthing value but if the process only leads to disappointment in the playoffs, maybe there's a problem with the process? Maybe constructing a team around James Harden that has no offensive variance is an incorrect, flawed route to a championship? Sure, Harden's step back three is one of the most reliable and profitable shots in the regular season and it'll help you rack up wins. It's great against the Devin Booker's of the league, but in the playoffs you have the long arms of Kevin Durant contesting the shot and now it's not as effective. Every year, they do the same whistle hunting shit and every year the refs swallow their whistles in playoffs (as they have since the dawn of the league). What's the definition of insanity again and why don't we apply it to Morey?
Did we, as Red Sox fans in 2004, voice to Theo Epstein "You know what, the Yankees are really good, so you get a pass on beating them until A-Rod and Jeter get old."? No, of course not, because that's a ridiculous excuse to make in professional sports. You have to find a way to beat really good teams and some teams are able to do it (like the Red Sox, Pistons, Mavs in 2011, Spurs in 2014, Cavs in 2016, the list goes on). Morey has had many bites at the apple now and he's proven incapable of constructing a team that can actually beat the best.
You say they've come closer to beating the best than anyone else and that's kind of the whole point. These things are won on the margins and Morey continually loses on the margins. You can't point to the Warriors and say "They're a great team" as if the rest of the league was bystanders to them becoming a great team. Every team had a chance at Dray, 10 other teams could have had Klay, Steph probably could've been had for a first round pick when he was going through his ankle problems and Iguodala was out there for every team with cap room. The Warriors built this team with guys that weren't obvious NBA superstars and they, with Kerr's guidance, had the foresight to change the way the league is played. That's actual brilliance (and I'm not even a Warriors fan).
While GSW was building the greatest team of the decade, Morey was building a good team in the Western Conference. But he's continually made decisions that kept them at good, like:
- Signing Dwight Howard after the whole LA fiasco. Yeah, they had one good season with him, but by then you
had to know that introducing Dwight Howard to a locker room just would not work (btw, that same offseason they could have signed Iggy). The rest of the time he was injured and they couldn't wait for him to leave the team by the end of it.
- Drafting Marcus Morris over Kawhi Leonard.
- They had three chances to draft Draymond if they wanted to, but instead they took Jeremy Lamb (traded for Harden, so that's obviously great) and two guys who couldn't play in the NBA (Royce White and Terrence Jones). They could've also drafted Khris Middleton.
- in 2016, they signed Ryan Anderson to a 4 year $80 mill contract. That's the reason why, when they went to their bench in these playoffs, they could only roll out Iman Shumpert's corpse and Austin frigging Rivers.
- Instead of taking Monte Morris or Sterling Brown in the 2017 second round, two guys who could also actually give them minutes in these playoffs, they selected Isaiah Hartenstein, a guy who can barely play against Dragan Bender, let alone the Warriors, and doesn't even fit their system.
- They signed Carmelo Anthony this year - seriously, what process led Morey to look at Anthony in the playoffs last year and think he'd be useful against the Warriors?
You can look at that and think "Okay, that's great in hindsight..." and that's fair. But then I see the Warriors and they don't have a Ryan Anderson on their books. When they had draft picks, they were using them on actual NBA players who can contribute. The Rockets could have beaten the Warriors if they made some right decisions when they made wrong decisions, but they didn't.
And if you want to look at the success that certain teams have regarding picks or free agency and say it's luck, then what's the point of any of this? What's the point of scouting and statistical models and everything else that goes into player evaluation? Isn't there something to re-evaluate if you look at Marcus Morris and Kawhi Leonard and you pick Marcus Morris? Shouldn't a team be questioned when they sign a slick shooting power forward who gets played off the court every playoffs because he can't hold up on defense? Is that luck or is it just a shitty job of self-scouting?
At this point, it's hard for me to look at Morey and not see a guy who is really effective at certain things but misses something fundamental about basketball. Points per possession stats are great over the course of 82 games and the sample is large enough that the math actually bears it out - if you take more threes and drive to get fouled, you're going to more often than not beat the other team. Great, here's your 50 wins. But when you get to the playoffs, that formula doesn't work - it's a different kind of game that requires broader offensive skills, greater defensive intensity and less reliance on the officials. Why hasn't Morey grasped that yet?
TL;DR: When we evaluate Morey, we say,"He's coming up short, but you can't really blame him because he's really smart and there's a process behind it." I just don't see how effective this process is if it keeps resulting in second round flameouts. There have been dozens and dozens of general managers who came close but couldn't beat the best and they've mostly been lost to time. Until Morey can prove otherwise, he shouldn't be regarded as some wunderkind. He's just Geoff Petrie with better PR.
