‘Chuck’ holds nothing back after Morey aimed tweet at him…
Charles Barkley hit back at Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey on Tuesday night and labelled him as “one of those idiots who believe in analytics”.
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Morey started the war of words on Twitter during Tuesday’s win over the Phoenix Suns where he stated: “Best part of being at a TNT game live is it is easy to avoid Charles spewing misinformed biased vitriol disguised as entertainment”.
Upon seeing it, Barkley couldn’t help but unleash his response and returned fire in a big way as he criticised Morey’s knowledge and use of statistics about a game in which he believes is predominantly about having talent.
“First of all I’ve always believed analytics was crap,” Barkley said on TNT’s postgame coverage.
“You know I never mention the Rockets as legitimate contenders ’cause they’re not. And listen, I wouldn’t know Daryl Morey if he walked into this room right now.”
Barkley explained that even though the Rockets are third in the Western Conference with a 36-16 record and despite stats suggesting otherwise, they were still a poor team defensively.
“Just because you’ve got good stats doesn’t mean you’re a good team defensively. They’re not a good defensive team. They gave up 118 points. No good team gives up 118 points.”
Further, the NBA legend added that previous championship models of the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls and the San Antonio Spurs with pairings such as Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen and Tim Duncan-Tony Parker, prove that statistics are not a sound base on which to build a winning NBA team.
“They say that same crap in baseball, and they put these little lightweight teams together and they never win. They’re always competitive to a certain degree and they don’t win. It’s the same thing in the NBA.
“The Rockets sucked for a long time, so they went out and paid James Harden a lot of money; they got better. Then they went out and got Dwight Howard; they got better…
“The NBA is about talent. All these guys who run these organizations who talk about analytics, they have one thing in common — they’re a bunch of guys who have never played the game, and they never got the girls in high school, and they just want to get in the game.”
Barkley’s argument certainly carries weight as Harden scored 40 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in the win over the Suns and statistics aside, that kind of performance will win you games in the NBA on talent alone. If a team has the pieces in place to dominate games, statistics will certainly play a role but a secondary one.
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