Is Daryl Morey the LeBron James of General Managers?

all these talented players will seem a lot easier to swallow if you had a franchise player or a couple of all stars. the bigger question is how long does the owner give morey to get them.

You cannot trade 1$ worth of coins for a crisp dollar bill, you have to give more coins to get a crispy dollar. This perfect trade that Morey is looking for won’t come up because almost never will a team sell their dollar for quarters and nickels. We must overpay for a superstar, and I think it’s the right move.

Side Note:
Bill Simmons wrote in the same piece:

Chris Bosh for Kyle Lowry, Luis Scola, Chase Budinger, and New York’s 1st round 2012 pick

I still don’t know what I think of that though.

During the McHale hiring press conference extravaganza, DM danced around the rebuild parameters, but today he outright said it on 1560 with Lance Z.

LZ: Rebuilding is tough. I’d rather you be in a spot to be in a puncher’s chance to get something than be the Astros where you have to go through the hard way. If you play it right you can avoid the gutter while you rebuild.

DM: Absolutely. Leslie has an approach I agree with. We knew Yao and Tracy were injury prone. The right thing to do was stay competitive and hope they were healthy to make a run. Overall we really needed to be quietly looking to the future so we were ready for the future without them. That’s what we’ve done. We hope to turn the corner without being terrible. Mr. Alexander does not want to be terrible in order to get better.

LZ: What sucks is being terrible and then screwing up the high pick.

DM: Getting the high pick is worth it but not going through the horrible season. Hope to turn this around and be a championship contender without ever going under 500. It’s never been done before. We are hoping to get fortunate like Boston when Garnett became available.

Les is asking DM to accomplish the unprecedented. Even the Celtic example with Garnett example took a top 5 pick to accomplish. Although Garnett, himself, was traded for 7 non-lotto and low lotto players, Ray Allen was traded for the 5th pick in the 2007 draft.

I have no doubt in my mind at all that given just one top 3 pick, DM could provide us with the centerpiece to a championship team and less importantly, but still talked about, a game-changing defensive big man.

Would I like the Rockets to become a championship team without a 20 win season? Sure, but I’m not optimistic that it will happen without a huge free agent signing.

I just hope that Les changes his expectations rather than his GM if he doesn’t have a championship team in two years.

If they find a really good center somehow. I think our team is very similar to the Lakers, but deeper. And I think DM and LA are purposely building it that way. I remember last time we were in the playoffs thinking that we didn’t stand a chance because the lakers had 3 or 4 guys on the court who were over 6’7 and lanky as heck. Well, with Kmart at 2, Marcus at 3, and Patterson at the 4, we would be a very similar team. The obvious difference is that Kmart is nowhere near Kobe talent, but I’ll take Lowry at pg over Fisher and our bench (whoever is left of scola, hayes, the other pfs, dragic, Bud, courtnee lee, etc).over there 3 man bench. We really just need a CENTER. Pao Gasol is crucial to the Lakers success, the second most to Kobe. We don’t need someone as good as Pao though, b/c i’m real high on Patterson. So we just need someone to clog the lane and dunk a couple back every once in a while. what yall think?

We just need to try this experimental growth serum on Hayes, turn Yao Ming into the Six Million Dollar Legs, and wait for Kevin Martin to walk on water to drop 60 points a night.

If he is the LeBron of GMs its because he is the best in the game and only really stupid people think he isn’t.

and the constant swinging fora superstar and missing, I’m okay with the job Morey is doing. What I would rather see though, is he trade assets for picks from horrible teams. You can get pretty even value for future first rounders during the season. You don’t gut all your role player talent for a superstar. Look at how Dallas won the championship; one superstar and several good players. We have a ton of good young players waiting on a centerpiece. I think DMo could be that guy if motivated correctly but regardless, identify a core and trade everyone not in that core (Lee, Bud, Scola, Hill…) for draft assets, preferably this year.

Last year I said that the Rockets had the finest supporting cast in the league. The problem is, that’s all it is: a supporting cast. The thing was built to revolve around Yao. Morey was forced to gamble it all on a successful Yao comeback, which of course never materialized. It’s nobody’s fault – that’s just what happens when your owner understandably places a massive contract on a rare big man.

So here we are: a franchise blessed with some proven assets (Scola, Lowry, Martin), but mostly shot through with young raw talent in the form of Terrence Williams, Jordan Hill, Courtney Lee, and now Motiejunas and Morris. People, if you’re looking to rebuild, you could do far, far worse. Even if only half of these acquisitions pans out, Morey will look like an utter genius. As usual.

What is rebuilding but getting rid of your existing roster and bringing in new guys via drafts, trades and free agent acquisitions? Hey, I’d be happy to strap some dynamite to this thing, blow it up and have a do-over if the team had gotten long in the tooth (see the Lakers, Spurs or Celtics). But with the young talent Morey has acquired, I have a hard time seeing how hitting the reset button is going to result in something much different, or more advantageous, than we presently have. Unless I’m mistaken, Morey just jettisoned our oldest player in Brad Miller. I mean, we’ve already got a lot of young talent – what are we supposed to do, tear it apart and rebuild to get really young?

One last thought. Everybody makes a lot of noise over Morey’s brilliance, and rightfully so. But he’s hardly the only smart GM in the league. Yes, there are more than a few imbeciles, but plenty of other teams have extremely intelligent guys running their respective shows. And as Morey has pointed out, everybody knows where the talent is, and you have plenty of other people going after the same short list of superstars. During the press conference announcing the Thabeet trade, Morey essentially said, “Look, we need a big man. But you can’t trade for proven big men in this league, because teams just won’t give them up under any circumstances.”

What people really want, and what the Rockets really need, is that centerpiece player. But getting that franchise player is the ultimate poker game in the NBA. So people really need to lay off of the notion that Morey is either too lazy or blind to not go after one guy or another.