During an appearance on
an esports podcast called Selfmade with Nadeshot, Morey was asked why the Rockets so aggressively pursued Harden in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder. His response,
as noted by Alykhan Bijani of The Athletic, featured some interesting comments about Harden and Jordan:
Why him?
Both the eye test, because he looks amazing, but if you looked at data at the time, once he had the ball in his hands, and it’s still true to this day, I get a lot of s--- because someone asked me “Who’s a better scorer, him or Michael Jordan?” It’s just factual that James Harden is a better scorer than Michael Jordan now.
Based on the math?
You give James Harden the ball and before you're giving up the ball how many points do you generate, which is how you should measure offense, James Harden is by far No. 1 in NBA history and he was No. 1 even at the Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s just he was coming off the bench and he was a little more hidden. So you needed good data to suss that out. So we knew he had that amazing skill to be a scorer.
People probably aren’t going to like you saying that.
No, people hate it. The counter-argument is reasonable. If you put Michael Jordan on a team now, he would do more than James Harden. That’s possible, but if you’re just saying NBA history, if you give this guy the ball, how much does his team score after you give him the ball before the other team gets the ball, it’s James Harden. I know that makes people mad, it’s just literally a fact.
