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//  Saturday, September 4, 2010

Rockets GM Morey Faces Busy Offseason

Thursday, July 2, 2009
Posted by Matt Swiss

Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey has a great deal of decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.  After hearing of the severity of center Yao Ming's foot injury, Morey took it upon himself to search for a potential replacement.

Teams were officially allowed to negotiate with free agents when the clock struck 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning.  Morey wasted no time, showing up at Marcin Gortat's doorstep not a minute past midnight, expressing his great desire in acquiring the Magic's backup center.

Gortat averaged nearly 4 points and 4.5 rebounds during the regular season in just 12.6 minutes per game.  He shot a very efficient 56.7 percent from the field and upped that average to 65.4 percent during the playoffs.  Gortat came up huge in the 7-game series against Boston, averaging 4.3 points in just 9.6 minutes, hitting on 92.3 percent of his shots from the field.

With Yao’s injury said to be career threatening, and Dikembe Mutombo set to retire, Gortat could be a perfect fit for a team that pushed the World Champs to the brink of elimination in the Western Conference semi-finals this past season.  However, after trading away veteran Tony Battie, expect Orlando to make a strong push to resign its backup center as well.

Next up, Ron Artest.  With Tracy McGrady on the trading block and Yao’s future uncertain, Artest becomes a huge project for Morey this summer.  If Yao’s injury is as bad as reported and McGrady is close to being shipped off, Houston may decide to part ways with Artest to simply start over. 

However, if Yao can return by mid-season or earlier and McGrady can stay healthy in a Houston uniform, look for the Rockets front office to make a strong push to resign Artest and work on building a championship caliber team in Houston.

Comments (1) - Post a Comment
you heard it here first
adam at 11:37pm EDT - July 9, 2009


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