Rockets man: Highland's Daryl Morey is living the dream as an NBA general manager

Daryl Morey appeared in 10 games, scored a grand total of eight points and went a robust 2-for-8 from the foul line as a 6-foot-4 junior on the 1989-90 Highland High School varsity basketball team, which finished with one victory in 21 games.Unable to get many minutes on a bad team, he decided to skip playing prep hoops as a senior."The writing was on the wall," the former Sharon Township resident said in a recent phone interview. "I wasn't going to play at all (in 1990-91), so I just worked."Twenty-eight years later, the 46-year-old Morey, who will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 13 festivities at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth, will earn a reported $8 million a season after signing a recent five-year contract extension as general manager of the NBA's Houston Rockets.The reigning NBA Executive of the Year, who was the first GM in league history to heavily rely on analytics, currently has 2017-18 MVP James Harden, All-Star point guard Chris Paul and the rest of the Rockets in contention to win a championship, but his path to professional sports greatness has been as interesting, complex and unconventional as the man himself.Full name: Daryl Morey.Birthdate: Sept. 14, 1972.Family members: Wife Ellen, daughter Karen, 20, son Scott, 18.Car: "I just Uber."Hobbies: Musicals, table tennis, chess.Favorite TV show: "The Wire."Favorite movie: "The Shawshank Redemption."Favorite actor: Christian Bale.Favorite athlete: Mark PriceFavorite song: "Someone in a Tree," by Stephen Sondheim.Favorite book: "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen Covey.Favorite number: 42.The best compliment I ever got was: "From (baseball writer, historian and statistician) Bill James: 'One of the things that makes Daryl special is his willingness to bet on his ideas, his willingness and his ability to plant them in the soil and bet on them to grow.'"The thing I like most about sports is: "Winning."The thing I dislike most about sports is: "When a win is a high probability, but (the time) before a win."My idea of the perfect day is: "Winning in (the NBA) Finals."Once a Highland and Sharon Elementary School legend when it came to playground or lunchtime games of "Horse," "21" and "33," Morey is an accomplished trombonist, high-level chess and table tennis player, the owner of a master's degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management, the producer of an acclaimed basketball musical entitled "Small Ball" and a lover of theater who dreams of one day retiring, living in New York City and "going to shows all day" with wife Ellen."He's one of the smartest individuals I've ever met in my life, if not the smartest," said current Cloverleaf boys basketball coach Jack Banks, a 1985 Highland graduate who grew up next to Morey on Boneta Road. "When Daryl was little, he would follow around my dad and just ask questions: 'What are you doing? What is that? Why are you doing that?' He'd be in the barn all day watching my dad work on cars or whatever. That inquisitive nature, that's what made him the man he is today."To this day, when he goes to Japan or China, he brings his (table tennis) paddles and he goes at it. He's really good at Ping-Pong. He's heavy into movies and theater and musicals. He's got a lot of layers to him."Life in Sharon TownshipMorey's parents, Fred and Jan, who now live outside Chicago, moved the family to Medina County when he was 5. Older brother Lance was 8 and younger brother Troy was a few years away from being born.Six years older than Morey, Banks used to babysit his neighbor and, on his way to becoming an all-county player at Highland, administer many one-on-one driveway basketball lessons."He used to kick my (butt)," Morey said. "Because he was always bigger and taller, I had to figure out how to shoot on the move. I had to develop all these guard tricks, even though I ended up being 6-foot-4."While those moves never translated into great success at the high school level, they eventually made Morey nearly unbeatable when it came to Horse, 21 and 33."He was a lunchtime legend at 33," said Fred Pollock, Morey's basketball coach at Highland and also a gym monitor when kids were allowed to play following lunch. "Daryl loved to play. He was in there every day."Added classmate Mike Headrick, a former point guard who now works as an anchorman and investigative reporter for KSL-TV in Salt Lake City: "That was Daryl's thing. We went to Sharon Elementary together, and it had these rusty, old hoops. He was always there and he always had a basketball. We'd play 33 or Horse and he was that guy. He was the king of it. He always won."In the classroom, Morey wasn't valedictorian or salutatorian or even in the top 10 percent of his class academically — "Hope for slackers everywhere," he joked — but there was no mistaking he was extremely intelligent and well-rounded.In the 1991 Highland yearbook, in fact, there is a picture of him in his cap and gown with the caption, "The next Nobel Price winner — The ironically big slacker, Daryl Morey.""Daryl was always smarter than everyone else, particularly at math," said Headrick, who frequently carpooled with Morey to middle school and high school basketball practices. "While I was going to basketball camp, he was going to math camp. You kind of knew the direction he was going in those days."Morey, who estimates he scored a 1370 on the SAT, which is the equivalent of a 30 on the ACT (top 5 percent), knew in middle school what he wanted to do for a living, but others not nearly as good at math realized just how long the odds were of becoming a GM in pro sports."Going to Northwestern and MIT, who knew where that was going to go?" Pollock said. "I figured he'd end up being a bean counter somewhere. Nobody knew at that point how (analytics) would impact sports, and I don't think he really even did.""I don't think anyone saw it," Headrick said. "He wouldn't have seen it himself. Those are jobs somebody else always gets. I'm sure he had pretty lofty goals, but to think at that time that being a genius in mathematics would take you to being the GM of a professional sports team, that was unheard of."Morey, though, dared to dream."My career goal was to be a GM in sports," he said. "I was big into fantasy sports and wanted to work in sports. That was really the goal."Road less traveledAfter high school, Morey attended Northwestern University and earned a degree in computer science, with an emphasis on statistics. While in college, he began a five-year stint working for STATS, Inc., a company that also once employed noted baseball historian, writer and numbers-cruncher Bill James."When I graduated, I figured, 'Now it's time to get a job in sports,'" Morey said. "I really tried and couldn't. I was really frustrated, so my get-rich plan was to go to business school and focus on starting a company."That led to MIT, a master's degree in business management and a consulting job with an emphasis on sports for The Parthenon Group, a leading strategy consulting firm."I was trying to get rich because I didn't think I'd have a chance at being a GM," Morey said. "I worked on a bunch of analytics while I was there."In September 2002, Morey got his big break when the Boston Celtics, who were in the process of being sold to a group led by H. Irving Grousbeck, Wycliffe Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca, hired him as vice president of strategy. The sale became official in January 2003 and Morey eventually was promoted to senior vice president of operations."I actually came in as vice president of strategy because they didn't want to scare anyone," he said. "I was the first and only hire of the new ownership. They threw a bunch of stuff at me. They wanted to create a team of people, so I had to do a lot of hiring and firing."Prior to the start of the 2004-05 season, the Celtics hired Danny Ainge as GM. Morey worked with Ainge for two seasons, then was hired as assistant GM of the Rockets by then-owner Leslie Alexander in April 2006, with the understanding he would become GM when Carroll Dawson retired from that position after the 2006-07 season."They hired me with the promise of making me the GM the next year," Morey said. "I had a great job with the Celtics, so I wasn't going to leave without something."Just 33 at the time he joined the Rockets, the married father of two was the first NBA general manager to heavily utilize the same principles as Oakland A's GM Billy Beane, around whom the 2011 Academy Award-nominated film "Moneyball," starring Brad Pitt, was based."There was extreme skepticism, but I had already worked for four years with the Celtics, so that helped prepare me for some of the objections," Morey said. "Obviously, I'm good with data. That's what people know, but I've always been good with people. That's helped me over the years."Those who knew Morey back when he was just an extremely smart kid from Sharon Township readily agree."Daryl's real down to earth," Headrick said. "I know that's overused, but it's true of him. He can talk to anyone, whether he's in the boardroom with a bunch of intellects or just with the man on the street. He can make everyone feel like they're on the same playing field, but I know when I'm talking to him that I'm dealing with someone much, much smarter than me."Added Banks: "He's always been grounded. When he came in for his class reunion — we all know what he's making — all he wanted to do was spend a whole day with my parents."Sustained successMorey is completing his 12th season as Rockets GM, and his track record and five-year contract extension in March, given by new owner Tilman Fertitta, indicate he's going to be around for quite some time.More rewarding is that every team now employs many of the same analytics-based strategies as Morey, who has been able to overcome losing pivotal players to injury and retirement through shrewd and bold trades.In 2007-08, Morey's first season as GM, a Rockets team led by 7-6 Yao Ming and seven-time All-Star Tracy McGrady went 55-27 but was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after losing Yao to a stress fracture in his left foot.That chronic foot problem eventually ended Yao's career and McGrady was traded after undergoing microfracture surgery in 2008-09, but Morey, under whom Houston has never had a losing season while advancing to the playoffs nine times, simply retooled.Many people don't remember, but the Rockets were a defensive-minded team under coach Rick Adelman in Morey's early years as GM, in part because analytical data proved it was their best chance to succeed.As faster, quicker, more talented guards were added — Harden, Paul, Eric Gordon — they adapted and eventually became the fast-paced, offensive-minded team that attempted 70 3-pointers in one game this season, in part because analytics show it is more beneficial to shoot a three than an 18- to 21-foot jumper that only counts for two points."We're really just trying to have the best offense and best defense," Morey said. "On offense, every time down the floor we want to take a shot that's going to get us a lot of points. It just so happens that they are usually threes and drives. We're really just looking for points."Never afraid to pull the trigger on a deal — he has made 223 trades, signings or draft picks in his 12 years as GM — Morey's biggest move came prior to the 2012-13 season when he acquired Harden, who previously came off the bench for an Oklahoma City team led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, in exchange for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, two first-round picks and a second-round selection. Houston also got Cole Aldrich, Daequan Cook and Lazar Hayward, but the key was Harden, whom Morey correctly identified as a future superstar."People say, 'They'll do and trade anything,'" Morey said of outside opinions about the Rockets. "Yeah, we will. Until you have your foundational players, your franchise should be in a state of flux. You need to keep trading and moving players until you get to that point."With Harden leading the way, the Rockets became one of the most explosive teams in the NBA, but they lost to his former team, Oklahoma City, in the first round of the 2013 playoffs. Morey then added center Dwight Howard, but Houston lost in the first round again in 2014.With Trevor Ariza on board, the Rockets reached the Western Conference finals in 2015 before losing to Golden State, which went on to win the first of its three championships in four years by beating the Cavaliers in The Finals.After his team barely made the playoffs in 2015-16 and lost in the first round, Morey hired Mike D'Antoni as head coach and added players like Gordon and Ryan Anderson, yet the Rockets advanced only to the conference semifinals in 2017.That prompted the offseason trade that brought Paul to Houston for seven players, cash considerations and a protected first-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft."You really need multiple foundational players," Morey said. "Coach D'Antoni is probably the best coach ever for guards. (Paul) was available, and we had always targeted Chris. You give (D'Antoni) elite ballhandlers and his offense has always been the best ever."The Rockets won 65 games in 2017-18 and easily advanced to the conference finals, which they led 3-2 when Paul went down with a hamstring injury. The Warriors rallied to win that series and then beat the Cavs for another title."You only have so many shots at it," Morey said. "But day to day, you don't think about it much. Your job is to do the best you can."The high-scoring Rockets are now back in the conference semifinals and will likely face the Warriors again, with the winner expected to have a very good chance of reaching The Finals and winning a title, which would be Houston's first since earning back-to-back crowns in 1994 and 1995 behind center Hakeem Olajuwon.Morey, the analytics guru but people person who writes musicals, plays table tennis and chess and fondly remembers his days growing up in Sharon Township, would like nothing more than to win a championship."It would be everything to me," he said. "Without that, people always will look back and say, 'They scored, but what did they really do?' That's really unfair in the NBA, because eight teams have won about 80 percent of the titles."It's extremely difficult and you only get so many chances. It takes a bit of luck, but it would mean the world to me."Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.