The moribund Houston Rockets — clearly the least popular of Houston’s three major professional sports franchises — announced yesterday that longtime general manager Carroll Dawson will retire as GM after next season and that he will groom 32 year-old Boston Celtics executive Daryl Morey as the Rockets’ new GM over the next year.
Morey is an interesting hire, to say the least. An MIT graduate, Morey has never been a player or a coach, and essentially has spent his entire professional life developing statistical models for analyzing various sports, most recently basketball for the Celtics. Bill James and the sabermatricians have used such statistical models in analyzing professional baseball over the past three decades, but such statistical modeling remains relatively new in professional basketball. Over the past several years, Morey has been an adjunct professor at MIT Solan in recent years, teaching “Analytical Sports Management” with Mr. James — who is currently a consultant with the Red Sox — contributing as a guest instructor.
Although an unusual hire, Rockets owner Les Alexander should be applauded for taking a flyer on Morey. As noted in earlier posts here and here, the Rockets have been mismanaged for the better part of a decade now and have essentially wasted all of the goodwill that the club had established as a result of their back-to-back NBA titles in the mid-1990’s.
Once the toughest ticket in town, the Rockets now play to small and unenthusiastic crowds in the club’s new, gleaming downtown arena and rarely are even a topic on the city’s multiple sports-talk radio shows. Inasmuch as the team has not even been particularly competitive over the past several years with either of its Texas counterparts — the San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks — this is an organization that desperately needs new blood and life. Here’s hoping that Morey can provide it.