U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, in a letter to NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Friday, wrote that the league’s policy on social injustice messages “appears to stop at the edge of your corporate sponsors’ sensibilities,” especially when it comes to matters involving China and support of the United States military and law enforcement personnel. In the letter, Hawley said Silver has been “deepening the NBA’s ties to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” since Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in October.
Daryl Morey Rumors
Marc Stein: Houston is thought to be one of those teams given Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s recent lament on Reddit: “Sadly we cannot sign Gerald back this year by NBA rule” The Rockets traded Green to Denver in February and thus couldn’t re-sign him this season even after Denver waived Green
Alykhan Bijani: Daryl Morey: “We do think a second training camp benefits us because when you integrate a starter onto a very good team, getting more time to drill and rep things, especially on the defensive end, will allow us to integrate Covington in. And I do think that slightly favors us.”
Kelly Iko: Morey on David Nwaba: “David we think has really good potential. You guys have a good sense of how we play now, and David Nwaba we think fits that very well. Unfortunately, given the rules, we had to cut someone.”
Mark Berman: On Zoom with media #Rockets GM Daryl Morey on number of positive COVID tests within the team & how many will be on the team plane Thursday: “League office sent out a memo last night..We’re not at liberty to talk about the details of all that..NBA has put a good plan together.”
Alykhan Bijani: Daryl Morey: “The strong feeling that Mike [D’Antoni] and I have gotten throughout on our Zoom calls have been of a team with a mission that are excited to do this.” #Rockets
Tim MacMahon: Daryl Morey on uncertainty about salary cap projections: “Our main conclusion is it’s probably not going to impact us too much.” He says Rockets are comfortable with “locked-in” roster moving forward and will have midlevel/minimums regardless of cap numbers.
Coaching for a team with one of the most well-defined philosophies in the league, if not in all of professional sports, Brase has been beholden to D’Antoni’s uptempo style and Morey’s double-down on data. But Brase has been adding some arrows to his quill. Even if he insists doesn’t want them. “I love what coach does here, so that’s my base,” Brase said. “But when you think about where the game takes you? When I first got to the Rockets as intern, I thought it was crazy, but I attributed it to the NBA. Then you find out we are the extreme outlier. “But it makes sense to us. This is our pulse, our heartbeat.”
A real general manager should be able to dominate the CPU, right? Daryl Morey is finding out if that’s the case. And watching him control a team on NBA 2K is actually a really interesting experience. At times, he plays the game much more like you’d expect from a general manager, relying on his own knowledge. “I don’t really know how important the ratings are,” Morey said in the initial draft, selecting Dwyane Wade with the fifth overall pick. “I just have my intuitive sense of how good these players are.”
The rules were simple and were part of the reason that he chose Wade: Morey could only select inactive players through the 2K draft, unless they currently play for the Rockets. So James Harden, shockingly rated at 79 overall, was certainly an option for Morey. And that’s exactly who he took to complement Wade in the backcourt. The Rockets are known for their distinctive small-ball style of play, and Morey took that same approach to the game, though the league had not yet reached that type of modernity yet. Shane Battier (former Rocket) was next, followed by the likes of Nikola Mirotic, Jameer Nelson and Marcus Camby.
Alykhan Bijani: Morey asked if iso doesn’t work, will #Rockets change: “When you have one of the best offenses of all time, no matter how we do it… If we can’t get our defense better, that’s gonna be a big focus…When you have a team as close as us, you’re going to want to keep it together.” pic.twitter.com/QQBuv9QTCD
Joshua Wong: Defending democracy is vital, but @KingJames only talks loud in the US. On China, not only is he silent, he actively shuts others up. He called @dmorey “misinformed” and “not really educated” for supporting #HongKong. All he cares about is money, not human rights. Hypocritical.
Another question that we got from people was with James Harden, they’re like, Look, he’s this mega global superstar. But he’s also pretty reserved in a lot of ways that other stars aren’t. Anything that you can kind of share just about, like what he he’s like as a person kind of off the court and your interactions with him that would maybe shed a light more on the superstar kind of fandom that people have for him? Daryl Morey: I don’t think the media is super fair of him. But you know, people say that all the time. So you can take that for what it is, but I really don’t. And but I think part of it is he he has a tight circle of people that that he trusts and with those people who he knows have his best interests at heart and he’s had a history with them, he’s very gregarious, very open, very smart. Like just this great guy. And with everyone else, he’s not the opposite. He’s just reserved. He’s not someone who is going to be a big media guy or things like that. So, I think that hurts him a little bit, but I can I can tell you privately he’s like a basketball genius. He’s a great quality human being. We’ve worked together for eight or nine years now and I couldn’t have a better partner to try and win a title with and in fact, most days I wake up saying, I’ve let them down because I haven’t gotten him got him the right players to win a title.
Daryl Morey not in the hot seat for Hong Kong tweet
The topic of the Hong Kong tweet has come up again lately. The President brought it up. It came up on your CNBC interview. What would you want people to know about your position about that issue? Tilman Fertitta: “The tweet was seven words. There was nothing wrong with the tweet. That’s why one hour later I told ESPN when I was asked ‘Are you going to get rid of Daryl Morey,’ I was like, ‘Are you crazy? Why would I get rid of Daryl for that tweet?’ I think Daryl’s one of the best general managers in the league. Plus, we truly enjoy working with each other. To this day, we plan on working with each other and I expect Daryl to be here for years to come.”
Tilman Fertitta: “I think I have one of the NBA’s great coaches in Mike D’Antoni. And I think I have one of the best basketball ops groups, Daryl and his whole team. Personally, I love Mike. But I’m going to leave it up to the general manager. I surely would like to have Mike back. If Daryl wants to have Mike back, I’m sure Mike is going to be back.”
Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey thinks the NBA’s hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic could be beneficial to his team’s chances of make a championship run whenever the 2020 playoffs begin. In a Facebook Q&A with team reporter Cayleigh Griffin, Morey said Thursday the multi-month layoff could be helpful to veterans Houston acquired during the season. By virtue of a second training camp, they could get a new opportunity to work their way into coach Mike D’Antoni’s playoff rotation.
“We do feel like our odds have gone up with the restart,” Morey said Thursday. “Because we probably can’t call ourselves the favorite — we just haven’t played well enough to say that — anything that adds uncertainty to the system is generally good for us.”
Mark Berman: GM Daryl Morey (@Daryl Morey) on team’s FaceBoook page, asked for his prediction for #Rockets in 2020: “We’re focused on the title.Short of that will be disappointing. James is one of the all-time great players. My job is to give him the best chance to win the title-Same with Russell”
Drew Shiller: Daryl Morey to Colin Cowherd today regarding former Bulls GM Jerry Krause: “He made a lot of good moves so I respect that. But if you have your best player (Michael Jordan) not liking you, then you are not doing a good job by definition. That is job one.”
Alykhan Bijani: The interaction between Tilman Fertitta and President Donald Trump about #Rockets GM Daryl Morey Fertitta: “You know, it’s funny you brought up about China. I should have realized it was gonna be a bad year for China when my general manager tweeted out “Freedom for Hong Kong.”
Justin Sink: Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta brings up the @dmorey Hong Kong controversy during the White House restaurant meeting with @potus. “Is he still working for you?” Trump asks. “He must be pretty good.”
According to LeGarie and Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, it’s a non-issue. D’Antoni will still be the coach until this season’s end — whenever that might be. (In a follow-up conversation, Morey further clarified that the deal does not expire until the season comes to a conclusion) “Mike is somebody with a lot of integrity and you make a commitment and you fulfill the commitment — regardless of if it goes past (the length of the deal),” LeGarie told The Athletic. “It’s obviously something we have to work out, but he would never, ever walk away from what he feels is a moral responsibility to see it through with his team and especially with his players. He would never abandon somebody because of a technicality.”
To hear Morey tell it, the contract will not have to be re-worked in any significant way. If at all. “I don’t want to go into any specifics, but I think that there’s not much needed (in terms of his contract),” Morey told The Athletic. “That’s not always the case with everything during this (sort of) time. I know the league lawyers are having to work on a thousand things with different legal aspects, and the Players Union and stuff. But in this case, I think things are pretty straightforward.
As for how D’Antoni and the Rockets got to this point and the outlook beyond this season, that’s a discussion for another day. “Mike refuses to get into that (conversation), because right now the focus is on 1) Restarting the season and 2) Seeing the job through,” LeGarie said. “That’s all he’s focused on. As Mike said earlier, that’s all he wants to do is to make sure that he finishes this season as well as possible, and that’s his only focus. The contract stuff becomes a distraction, and he has no interest in even entertaining anything like that at this moment.”
Battier is already the Miami Heat’s vice president of basketball development and he owes a lot of the success to his strong knowledge of analytics. Earlier this week, he credited his time with Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey and assistant Sam Hinkie for acquiring the skill. Battier played with the Rockets from 2006-11. “I was lucky to play for Daryl Morey and Sam Hinkie, who taught me how to look at the data,” Battier told The Athletic. “Analytics is like blackjack. When the dealer has a five showing, what do you do? You double down. Why? Because the book tells you that is the best play at the time and gives you the most chance to win the hand and win money.”
Miami stands as one of the most analytics-friendly teams in the league, a skill that can in-part be attributed to Battier. So how did Battier get schooled in the world of analytics? Rockets general manager Daryl Morey deserves a share of the credit. “I was lucky to play for Daryl Morey and Sam Hinkie, who taught me how to look at the data,” Battier told The Athletic’s Kelly Iko and Mo Dakhil. “Analytics is like blackjack. When the dealer has a five showing, what do you do? You double down. Why? Because the book tells you that is the best play at the time and gives you the most chance to win the hand and win money.”
Rockets to reopen training facility on Monday
Adrian Wojnarowski: The Houston Rockets are re-opening facility for voluntary workouts on Monday, @dmorey says.
The coronavirus pandemic has put a timeout on basketball. It has also put a timeout on the battle between China and the NBA. Now, ahead of the NBA’s mooted restart, the war of words has been reignited and hostilities resumed. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has set its stall out, doubling down on its commitment to not show NBA games even if the season resumes.
Outspoken nationalist newspaper Global Times went further in an article headlined “Naming native Chinese as NBA China boss ‘not enough’ to win mainland market back”. The article cited “prominent commentators and fans” who noted that if the NBA “wants to win its way back to the Chinese mainland market, it should properly handle Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey”. Short of putting his head on a spike, colleagues in Chinese sports media say that means the NBA must fire him – and that they can see no other option.
The NBA on Tuesday named Michael Ma as China chief executive, tasked with repairing relations after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters last October. The tweet infuriated the Chinese government and basketball fans, caused state broadcaster CCTV to stop showing matches, and has imperilled the NBA’s most valuable market outside of the US.
The association of professional teams in the US announced on Tuesday its appointment of Michael Ma Xiaofei as the new CEO for the NBA’s China branch, effective in June. Ma would be the first mainland native boss for the NBA’s Beijing office since it was established in 2008. The new executive is the son of Ma Guoli, one of the founding figures of China Central Television’s (CCTV) sports channel, who helped break the ice and introduce NBA live games to CCTV in the 1990s. The new appointment no doubt reflects NBA’s belief that Ma can get the league out of the situation, given his background, Su Qun, one of the best-known basketball commentators in China and editor-in-chief of the Basketball Pioneer newspaper, told the Global Times.
If the Morey incident is properly handled, the NBA, in the long run, could demonstrate that China welcomes foreign businesses to invest and make money in the country, as long as they respect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Su said. The appointment came a day after CCTV issued a solemn statement on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo, denying any plan to resume airing NBA games. CCTV has not broadcast any NBA games since October 2019. Chinese netizens commented on the NBA official reshuffle, and many said they could not care less about the US league, unless Morey is punished for his misbehavior. “The season is suspended due to the COVID-19 anyway, and I’m OK to continue living without the NBA,” wrote a fan on Hupu.com, a major sports website in China. “We did not and will not forget what he has done. When the NBA and Morey own their mistakes, I will consider welcoming the league back,” wrote another.
Chinese TV still not airing NBA games
In its first statement on the matter in months, China’s CCTV said Tuesday it has no intention of resuming the airing of NBA games as the relationship between the sides remains icy in the wake of Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong tweet last fall. The NBA on Monday named Michael Ma as the new CEO of NBA China. Ma comes from an influential Chinese media family — his father, Ma Guoli, is regarded as the father of CCTV Sports, having run it for 16 years.
On Tuesday, Ma Guoli resigned his position as an adviser to the Chinese Basketball Association. Michael Ma has a long background with the NBA, previously working for the league for 13 years in various capacities. He had been the CEO of Endeavor China. The relationship between the league and China was disrupted after Morey, the Houston Rockets general manager, tweeted in support of anti-government protesters in Hong Kong on Oct. 4. Morey later deleted his tweet, an image that read “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong,” and clarified the intent in two subsequent tweets.
For many it’s unequivocally Jordan, as he’s gone 6-for-6 in the NBA Finals, compared to LeBron’s 3-for-6 record in the Finals. Morey views it much differently, however, but he added a minor detail change to help him make his pick. The Rockets general manager was on ESPN LA’s Mason and Ireland talk radio show and shared his take. “People love to talk about this. For sure LeBron is the greatest human to play basketball. That’s not even a question, but it’s not even fair to Michael Jordan to say that. LeBron is years later and the game has evolved. And every athlete is pretty much better than the athletes were 30 years ago. If you put MJ in the league now, that would be an interesting discussion but if you just want to say who is the best human to ever play basketball, I think it’s pretty obvious.”
The Houston Rockets and general manager Daryl Morey have become pioneers of the NBA’s analytics movement in recent years, which is why they’ve employed coaches like Mike D’Antoni, have played essentially without a true big man and shoot more 3-pointers than just about any other team in league history. With that being said, former Rockets head coach and Hall of Fame power forward Kevin McHale isn’t a fan of analytics and even took a bit of a jab at his old team during a radio interview this week. “You guys are caught up a little bit in Houston on numbers. Numbers do not win games. The one number that wins the game is if you have one more point than the other team. That’s the biggest number. But numbers don’t win games,” McHale said on ESPN 97.5’s The Usual Suspects.
Speaking Monday night on an Instagram Live session with Cayleigh Griffin and television partner AT&T SportsNet Southwest, Morey said: People aren’t going to be back in NBA shape. My guess — and this is up to the commissioner and the plans they’re putting together — is we’re going to have to shorten any plans to a tighter window than people are going to be comfortable with. The reality is, it’s not going to make that big of a difference. You want to get the quality [of play] high enough, but because everyone’s going to be dealing the same ramp up [in activity], there won’t be any relative advantage developed between the teams. Maybe even the first couple of games aren’t perfect, but both teams are going to be dealing with the same thing. … We’re all going to have to do our best in a probably shortened time period.
Speaking Monday night on an Instagram Live session with Cayleigh Griffin and television partner AT&T SportsNet Southwest, Morey said: People aren’t going to be back in NBA shape. My guess — and this is up to the commissioner and the plans they’re putting together — is we’re going to have to shorten any plans to a tighter window than people are going to be comfortable with. The reality is, it’s not going to make that big of a difference. You want to get the quality [of play] high enough, but because everyone’s going to be dealing the same ramp up [in activity], there won’t be any relative advantage developed between the teams. Maybe even the first couple of games aren’t perfect, but both teams are going to be dealing with the same thing. … We’re all going to have to do our best in a probably shortened time period.
KC Johnson: Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who hired Arturas Karnisovas as international scout, told @Tom Haberstroh this: “Arturas is one of the best executives in the NBA. I’m so happy he is getting this opportunity. He was instrumental in our success. I’m also thrilled he’s in the East now!”
Q: In these unusual and troubling times, how do you spend your days now compared to what you would normally be doing at the end of March and beginning of April? Daryl Morey: Normally, we would be stressing about our playoff positioning and winning the game tomorrow night. Everyone is adjusting. Obviously, everyone’s working from home. We for quite a while have used a messaging platform to keep everyone together. It’s not as big an adjustment with the front office just because we’re used to being on the road. We’re used to being remote a lot. That helps. The biggest adjustment is for the players, No. 1 and then coaches. Those of us that are always out on the road scouting or at the NCAA Tournament it is less of an adjustment.
Q: What kind of communication has there been with players? Daryl Morey: With players, it’s pretty intense at the workout level and the health and wellness level. We had guys rehabbing. Luckily, they were at a stage they could just get the workout programs and do them themselves. (Guard Michael Frazier, out with a fractured left forearm, was the only player listed out with an injury when the season was suspended.) They can do workouts directed by Javair (Gillett, the director of player performance) and Willie (Cruz, a strength training assistant) and the crew there. And then John Lucas gives them basketball workout plans as well.
