Sabermetrics come to basketball

And I've always said that BS because numbers can be construed in many different ways. The bottom line is talent. Can a guy play and can he play with the game on the line?

 

Morey is out on a limb now because of Jeremy Lin, not Harden. There's a question of whether Harden can be the superstar, but there's a bigger question about whether Lin can play in the league at all. It's going to become shorthand for his method -- maybe not to the degree that Jeremy Giambi not sliding is shorthand for Moneyball, but if Lin doesn't work out, it's going to be a mark against Morey's system forever.

 

So can observation.

 

If it's not in some way about numbers, why use a phrase - 'bottom line' - borrowed from accounting?

 

Read the article last night... Very interesting stuff...

 

Because I chose to.

 

You wasn't alone in that observation. I never was a big Okafor fan and while Howard is good, he is still a bit too childish for my taste.

 

Ding!

 

Blaming Morey for the team getting worse under his watch is not quite fair. He lost Yao while he was in his prime. There are not that many 7'6" guys with soft touches who can shoot 85% from the FT. You don't just replace him in the next draft.

Morey has done a pretty darn good job if you ask me. Without Yao, the Rockets were going nowhere.

Now, he's picked up Lin, Asik and Harden. Asik is looking really good; Harden too. Lin, not so much but you never know and he's only getting paid $5M this year.

 

BTW unrelated to the basketball subject matter, but this is yet another SI story that I'm not able to read without a subscription. Layden's Notre Dame piece too. Is the magazine again getting to be worth getting, or are these just two exceptions? Christmas around the corner and all, I can relive the days when Mary Decker was the first cover to appear in my mailbox, followed not much later by PAULINA PORIZKOVA HOLY YOWZA!

 

Not his fault. The team was built around McGrady and Yao. McGrady went bust pretty much right away and Yao, due to no real fault of his own, handicapped the team for years with trying to make comebacks but never succeeding.

Despite losing two superstars, he has managed to find undervalued players and make a push for playoffs each year. What that does is make the Rockets a team that has all the pieces except a superstar but unable to get that superstar because they always draft in the teens.

After years of trying to trade for that superstar (Howard, Bosh ... etc), Morey finally faced the reality of that not happening. He tore down the team minus a few good pieces this offseason. He signed undervalued players who have proven to be quite good (Lin and Asik) and got a steal for a 6th man who he believed through his advanced statistics was a superstar.

Now the Rockets have a budding star (Harden), a very good center (Asik), a good PG (Lin), a great swing player who can defend super stars (Parsons) and enough cap space to sign a a max deal in the offseason. If the Rockets can get someone like Al Jefferson this offseason they will be scary good because they have a lot of depth.

By the way, Morey has a laundry list of gems he has found in his short time in Houston using the metric stats.

Carl Landry, Luis Scola, Chase Budinger, Kyle Lowry ... etc.

 

Do not waste that money on a guy like Jefferson. You've got to horde that space until a disgruntled superstar (KG, Howard etc.) wants out.