As the Houston Rockets buyout Ty Lawson, and this team looks on its most disastrous season in years, there are rumblings that perhaps it is time to blame management and General Manager Daryl Morey.
There is an irony behind these rumblings. When Morey started running the Rockets in 2007, his initial job was to find supporting pieces to build around Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. He successfully did so, picking up guys like Carl Landry, Aaron Brooks, and trading for future All-Star Kyle Lowry.
But almost a decade later, Houston’s problem is that while they have two stars in Dwight Howard and James Harden, the supporting cast around the two is miserable. The only Rocket besides those two with a PER above a league-average 15 is Clint Capela. And even Capela’s is inflated by the fact that his offense almost entirely relies on dunks.
If that was not bad enough, PER does not track defense, and it is on the defensive end where this team has been a disaster. While everyone makes fun of Harden’s defense, it was Patrick Beverley and Trevor Ariza who were supposed to guard opposing teams’ best perimeter players. They, as well the Rockets as a whole, have failed to do that, and Jabari Parker’s career-high 36 points on Monday against the Rockets is just another example among many.
The supporting cast is terrible, and that failure is on Morey. How does a team which was once able to find good players on the cheap now drop $23 million on Corey Brewer? What has happened to Moreyball?
On Moreyball and team chemistry
One criticism which has often been aimed at Moreyball is that its dependence on analytics and math do not account for more nebulous things like hustle and team chemistry. Furthermore, by trading and dumping players like assets, Moreyball creates a team environment where players do not feel like they are part of a team.
In the worst case scenario, everyone looks out for themselves at the expense, a total contrast to the team ball we see in Golden State and San Antonio.
This criticism has grown even more as the Rockets crash and burn, and the players themselves are talking about the lack of team chemistry. But this makes no sense. This past offseason in fact had the lowest turnover of any Rockets team in years. And as noted above, Morey in fact, took the opposite direction, bringing back players on possibly overinflated contracts to keep the team together.
So what happened? It is incredibly difficult to say, and there are several possible theories. But the one which best fits the fact just revolves around simple expectations.
Expectations and laziness
People forget that in the lead up to the 2014-15 season, Houston was a fairly popular pick to miss the playoffs. They had just lost Chandler Parsons and Jeremy Lin, and the popular feeling was that if either Howard or Harden missed significant time due to injuries, the team would fall apart.
The Rockets reacted to those negative expectations by rallying around each other and hustling night in and night out. The result was that even though Howard missed half of the season with injuries, the team finished second in the Western Conference and made it to the Western Conference Finals.
But thanks to those startling successes, both the team and the front office grew complacent. If Morey had done his due diligence, he would have seen that there were warning signs that Houston’s success in 2014-15 was a bit of a mirage. The team won a lot of close games which it should not have, and the team was too dependent on Harden’s offensive brilliance.
Unfortunately, Morey thought he could just pick up Lawson, resign everyone, and call it a day. But now that everyone just gambled on the Rockets being good, the players stopped hustling like they did last season. And with that lack of hustle came a lack of trust, which has resulted in this breakdown of team chemistry.
The importance of analytics
Critics have used Houston’s failures to claim that analytics and the Moreyball approach cannot truly understand basketball, but they are missing the point. The reality is that Morey himself has failed to follow Moreyball.
By just trying to bring back the old team together in the name of keeping the team chemistry together, Morey ended up trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice. He failed to do that, and the result is that the Rockets are now a team with neither talent nor chemistry. They are a disorganized mess which stands around on offense while Harden scores and then stands around on defense letting the other team score.
Given Morey’s track record of success over the years, owner Les Alexander should continue to keep him for now. But Morey should definitely be worried about his long-term future with this team, especially if he cannot find a way to turn things around over this offseason.
Guess the Lakers players!
