An Unnecessary Education on Daryl Morey

Tom Martin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:55:21 -0000

I've been reading the FanPosts lately, and there's been this strange common theme: Some people aren't aboard the Daryl Morey bandwagon. Yes, by choice.

Complaining about Daryl Morey's body of work is senseless and greedy. It's like handing your parents back the twenty Christmas presents that they got for you because you wanted twenty-one.

It's like asking Ted Williams to hit .500. Or blaming LeBron James for the Cavaliers' postseason failures. Or refusing to take $21 million over three years because you've "got a family to feed." It just makes no sense.

Thankfully, this is a lesson for the minority, and as unnecessary as it should be, it needs to be delivered. I'd like for our community to stop embarrassing ourselves. Especially by the time we find a Grizzlies blog for SB Nation. Once they see how much we've been harassing a guy like Morey, they'll wonder if anyone out there has even heard of Chris Wallace.

Just so you know, Lee, Dave, and myself are not the only folks singing Morey's praises. ESPN's Bill Simmons gave Morey his due, writing that Morey should be admired simply because "he is batting .900." Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don't Lie picked Morey for Executive of the Year. Simmons is golden when it comes to basketball, and Dwyer is practically a blogging legend. You'll rarely find more rational opinions out there.

To review, here is what Morey has managed to do over the past couple of seasons:

The Impossible Moves

Swapped an aging, costly, and selfish point guard in Rafer Alston for a young, cheap, intelligent, and efficient point guard in Kyle Lowry. This is extremely hard to do. Impossibility Scale: 9/10
Signed a cheap journeyman in Von Wafer and gave him a chance to compete in the pre-season. Wafer turned into a lethal shooter and aggressive wingman and kept our season from tumbling. All of this, from a guy to whom we paid a minimum salary and lost nobody to acquire. Impossibility Scale: 8/10.
Swapped Vassilis Spanoullis for Luis Scola. From the inter-division San Antonio Spurs. Impossibility Scale: 9/10 + 1 = 10/10. Bonus points for being one of the most badass moves in franchise history.
Somehow found a way to acquire talented players even with Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady taking up 70 percent of the cap. Trevor Ariza is the first player that Morey has had to really open up the wallet to sign. And that was just the MLE. Impossible Scale: ???

The Generally Smart Moves That Other GM's Might Flub

Kept Carl Landry in Houston and out of Charlotte by matching an offer sheet. Oh, and who drafted him out of Purdue? Morey.
Signed James White for an extra year to develop him. Dude scored 26 points per game in the NBDL. Why not spend a few bucks to give him a shot?
Traded Steve Francis in order to sign Dikembe Mutombo.
Re-signed Chuck Hayes. This took more balls than you might think.
Got rid of Bonzi Wells and Mike James.
Convinced Trevor Ariza to come to Houston for the MLE, thus filling the spot voided by Ron Artest. Ariza could have gone to Cleveland and won a championship. But he chose Houston instead.

The beauty of Morey's success has been his ability to get the very most out of the players that he acquires. This, while paying them extremely cheaply. No GM in the NBA could have done a better job building this team than Morey, considering what little room he had to work with.

So, please, stop the Morey hate. If it continues, we might get fired.

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An Unnecessary Education on Daryl Morey