The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Jonathan Feigen Discusses His Q&A With Daryl Morey

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, joins Matt and Ross to discuss his Q & A session with Houston Rockets GM, Daryl Morey

Hardin Hammers. The Beardtum. Springer Dingers. George Springer goes yard. Your home for the Rockets and Astros. Sports Talk 790. And we look very much forward to bringing you those games of both teams eventually. Hopefully sometime this year to finish off seasons.

But that obviously is a big question mark at this point. 131 on the Matt. Thomas show we spend 10 quality minutes with our good friend. longtime beatwriter for the Houston Chronicle, who has a story that you all should go by that hard copy newspaper or subscribe to the digital service at Houston Chronicle.com. Jonathan Fagan with a visit with Darrell Morey. Without giving away the entire essence of the story, give me two or three takeaways from your visit with the general manager. Well, I guess there's sort of three parts. First, just how they're dealing with all this time and when they can't go to offices.

and basically they're doing a lot of off-season type work, draft prep, free agency prep, because whenever, if ever, the NBA season resumes, there won't be much time between the end of the regular season or post-season and off-season. So they're doing all of that, and they do everything. They have messaging apps that they live on. So for front-office types, not being in the same room is not anywhere near the kind of big deal what it would be for players. I asked them a little bit.

Well, I'm not even sure how we got into a little bit of spending. Oh, I did. I asked if the revenue, obviously, for this year, will go down. The Players Association and NBA then has to sort of reach an agreement on the next salary cap, which then determines luxury taxes. There's a chance the Rockets would go from a non-taxed. team to a tax team. And there's this thought out there that based on the last two trade deadlines that they would do what is needed to be done to not be a tax team, to not pay the tax. He strongly

pushed back on that when he said again, which he has said before, but he's never been told to avoid that. He can do whatever move he thinks is right. He went on and on that a little bit, which was interesting, some of his stuff. I asked a little bit of, he was talking about the front office. I asked him about how the front office has changed. Gerson left. They brought in Ed Pinckney and kind of adjusted some of the duties of Chuck Hayes. And I kind of partly brought that up because it flies in the face of this notion that their whole front office is all analytics guys. They have a lot of analytics guys and they do a lot of work and they're very proud of, Darrell's very proud of their analytics efforts that he thinks can keep them cutting

edge even at a time where everybody now does a lot of analysis data analysis. But he is a guy he wants, if somebody leaves who has more of a basketball background, that's what he looks to bring in. And certainly Ed Pinkney does. And so we talked about that. And that led me to ask about the coaching staff. And he had a lot of praise for Mike Dan Tony and expressed hope that they can work it out for him to be back. Because as we all know, he is in the last year of his contract. To a bigger picture, and there's going to be some other coaches around the NBA that are probably on the hot seat. You look at anybody that's underperforming. Do you think there will be, regardless of we have a season to completion, there will be much changes.

Now, obviously the Rockets have to make a decision about coach because he has no years left in his contract. But could you see massive changes in coaching or maybe not because of the time off? Or do you still think that it'll be business as usual for teams that are unhappy with their current coaching situations? I think generally business as usual because you've got some sort of interim type situations, even if they're not described that way. And if there's a team, like say the 76ers, that would have judged the coaching staff based on postseason success. And okay, you need to take that next step. And, you know, that kind of thing. in some sort of a bridge postseason or reformatted postseason, would that be even fair?

Would you even be able to judge that way? The Rockets are different because, you know, people talk about him as if he's on a hot seat or coaching for his job. Well, that's not how we got to this point. They made offers. They didn't come to an agreement on a contract. But it wasn't that the Rocket said, you know, well, let's see how this year goes. They made offers, and it's just the way negotiations go sometime, what was different is they said, I have to get it. Let's just do it after the season. We'll try again. And so either side could say,

let's not. But it's not the same as if they had not tried. They did try to whatever degree, you believe they tried, but they did, to some degree, try to reach agreement. So it's a little different from other situations. But I do think the only effect of what, whatever kind of season might be salvaged would have on any of this, is it fair to judge anything right now? Because this is all uncharted territory. Nobody knows what will happen. And then after they find whatever they choose, what impact did that have? And did this horrible situation have on results? Yeah. And Jonathan, do you think it will be just more of a reset button for the Rockets? Because not only was it, like you mentioned, Mike Dantonie being judged on this year.

I mean, even the pairing of Hardin and Westbrook, even Daryl Morey to some extent. So, I mean, are we just going to say, no matter what happens, or I guess Tillman going to say, no matter what happens, this is just a wash and we'll reset for next year? No, yeah, who knows?

There's some of that. I think, you know, just sort of judging a little bit from Darrell's tone through that Q&A, I think they feel pretty good about where they are, despite, you know, they had the four-game losing streak, and they played pretty badly in a lot of that, and then they finally ended it right before the hiatus

began. But I think they view themselves as repositioned to a way that they prefer. I don't think they're sort of still judging the hardened Westbrook pairing. I think they've decided that works. They've adjusted. James, I think, is continuing to adjust. because his job changes so much, partly because of the way teams defend him, unlike anything we've seen. You know, we never saw a guy getting double-teamed at half-court or even in the back court for a full game. So he had to adjust.

And he's adjusting to different teammates in their roles and styles. But that doesn't mean he's being judged by the organization. Hmm. What do we think of this hardened guy? I don't think that. I think they're past to that part of the process. they seem to feel really good, not just about what maybe they could do if there is a season, but going forward that they have their core signed.

And so they like the way they've been sort of set up. Jonathan Fagan covers the Rockets. He's got a story with Daryl Morey in today's Houston Chronicle. You can check it out either online or buy, stop you're buying, grabbing a paper or the hard copy itself. Jonathan, I have an emotional as a basketball fan and obviously an interest working in the games. in the resumption of the NBA. So I check your tweets. I check Woge.

I check Shams every day to see if there's any sort of updates. I know Mark Cuban did a town hall visit with ESPN yesterday. He's been on television a couple of the time. He's really been the most outspoken owner about how it's very important to get back out there. I think he soft-pedaled a little bit about the return. For you as just a connoisseur of basketball for over 20 years down the NBA level, do you go up and down to about, hey, this sounds like there's optimism and then today is a pessimistic day.

How have you adjusted to reading and hearing from people around the league about whether they'll be basketball again this year? Well, it's kind of two parts. I mean, most of my life, like everybody else, is trying to manage sort of the stress and sadness of the situation. Because, you know, I'm sort of trying to not overload on news, but there's some days where I'm just devouring everything I can read or watch. about situations that aren't basketball, about the world we're in right now. And so it's very important, and I've talked to people about this. I wrote about it a little bit. You know, I talked to Laurel Dantone, who had a lot of insight into that first story I did a few days ago.

And I talked to Keon Dooling, who works with mental health and wellness for the Players Association about managing the stress of this time, that it's a real thing that everybody's dealing with right now. And so obviously I'm like that too. When it comes to the basketball, a lot of it is, it goes back to what Dr. Fauci said is we don't set the timetable, the virus sets the time table. Well, that's true of any plan you can have for restarting a season.

Do you restart it with a play-in tournament or some seeding type tournament to determine things? Do you have a mini regular season and then go into a full playoffs? Well, nobody knows the answers to any of that because we can't interview the virus and have it tell us when it will be safe. And we need, obviously we need the testing to have any idea what the situation is in some future month. But until we get there, we need the medical experts. And when we get there, we need the medical experts to tell us.

Yeah, you can't be putting people all in a gym. And the idea of no more than 50 in a place, well, you can't have an NBA game with fewer than 50 people. It takes more than that. For the NBA, for that particular sport, if you played games in arenas but with no fans, you'd recoup a lot of your television contracts, but it would be at best a break-even situation. And things like Premier League and the NFL probably could make money doing that because of their television contracts. Hockey and baseball would be losing money to play without fans. Eventually, they'll weigh all that, too.

I'm not crazy about the idea of sort of playing in a bubble, having players, staff, coaches, broadcasters all in some Vegas hotel or on a ship somewhere. for one thing, I mean, how do you incarcerate all those people for, you know, leave your families and, you know, who takes care of them, food service and cleaning services? How do you determine that all those people that would then be sequestered if you went to two places with all the teams and staff and everything else that comes with them? How do you determine that everybody is negative? You know, it's just, I don't know that that's how it will happen, but everything in life right now, around the world is on hold. And so how the NBA comes up with a way to restart,

they can come up with ideas to consider when the time comes, but this isn't the time. Yeah, you know, and people get to throw this at me as well. Do you go to Vegas? Do you go to Louisville, Kentucky? Do you go to a cruise ship? Do you go to the Bahamas? That's still putting 1,000 people in one area for a short period of time.

My thought is this, and again, this is just my opinion, that if there's going to be a resumption of an NBA season, if there's going to be an NFL year, if there's going to be a major league baseball season, you're going to have to do it in those venues where they normally call home, probably start with no fans until the coast is somewhat clear, or clearer or much clearer.

But the thought of putting everybody in a gym, like at the Thomas and Mac Center in Las Vegas, it's going to have a summer league feel to it. And that's really not the conclusion of a season. That's just guys just trying to go out and play some basketball games. So I don't know where that is, but I feel like if we're going to get it, It needs to be as genuine as humanly possible, meaning that even though there may not be anybody in the TOTA center,

at least it's the Houston Rockets on their home floor playing somebody in the first round of the playoffs. I don't know how you see it. Yeah, although I don't know. If they do that, the soundstage idea, like it's a made-for-te television event, what do you need an 18,000-seat arena? I guess it would be easier to social distance those who have to be in the arena. they can, you know, have a section to themselves. But I would imagine they would use smaller venues, even like practice gyms and training centers,

where you can still set up cameras and do that work. But it costs money to, you know, as we saw here, when the Comits and Aeros tried to play at Toyota Center, but we're enjoying the crowds, it costs a good deal of money to turn on the lights and put on a game in venues as large as NBA arenas. Eventually, that will be something they will weigh too. I do think, though, none of us were just all talking of ideas. And Adam Silver said any ideas on the table. You have them, you know, we want to consider and think it. You know, I put this in a Q&A I did with readers sending questions in one of my answers.

If Adam Silver was sitting in my home office, naturally six to eight feet away, and I could just ask him, how are you going to come back? he couldn't answer. He wouldn't know. And, you know, so that that's where we are about a lot of things right now. But I think the two things, the NBA does hope it can salvage some form of the season and declare a champion. And it can't do this until there's a real sense of it's safe. It can't be a, well, we're just going to forge a head and whatever damage is done. It's life. No, you can't be that way. I don't think they're going to do that. So they know what they want, but they don't know how to get there at this point. Yeah, last question, and I've got just a short time. I have always been a proponent of the NBA season pushing back two months for a December start and a late August, maybe around Labor Day championship finish. That obviously looks like that's in the cards for at least for next season.

A, does your gut tell you this is going to be the long-term answer? And B, on a personal level, do you think it's best for the league to start the season later? I've warmed up to the idea. I used to oppose it, but you started to see maybe there are some advantages to it. I just don't know. Do people watch through the summer? The summer is when people get out,

and they're not watching television, and they're not watching the playoffs as much. That said, the finals were in mid to late June, so they found a way to watch then. And people watch in so many different ways now than then when that was the thinking. They're not sitting only in their living rooms anymore when they watch.

So that could be something, hey, why not try it and get a feel for this? It would still be sort of a fraudulent test case because it would be after the nation comes back from all of this to where will people act differently? Will they feel differently about going to games and arenas? Will they be celebrating that, okay, the world is starting to turn back to normal and enjoy things? but if they do get a sort of a one-year trial of that concept, it would be worth seeing. It would be something to come out of it. See if this works, as you say, Labor Day for a champion.

I just want to worry about the calendar long-term once we get the games back going. Jonathan, thank you for the time again. We'll send as many folks as we can to your website to check out the article with you and Darry. Thank you for the time, and we hope to bother you again. Hopefully under better conditions next time. Any time. but thanks for that. Yeah, go to Houston Chronicle.com,

and please subscribe to this and other local news outlets because right now, boy, I tell you, local news is so valuable that we all need it to really keep up with what's going on, not just around the world and around the country, but right here. Yeah, for sure. Thank you again, Jonathan. Jonathan Fagan, joining us from the Houston Chronicle on the Rockets Beat.