Rockets GM Daryl Morey co-wrote a musical about a basketball player named 'Michael Jordan'
So, the musical that Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey co-wrote sounds interesting.
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The longtime GM, famous for lending credibility to the NBA’s statistical analytics movement a decade ago, is apparently a ferocious fan of musical theatre. Encouraged by his fervor, Morey teamed with playwright Mickle Maher to cobble together a basketball-themed plotline titled ‘Small Ball,’ as the Houston Chronicle’s Hunter Atkins recently reported:
The premise: The people of Lilliput, a fictional island nation that appears in the 1726 novel “Gulliver’s Travels,” want to join an international basketball league. But to be competitive enough for that, they import “Michael Jordan,” a man who turns out not to be the NBA Hall-of-Famer but happens to have the same name.
This merger of his life passions is not a pipe dream. Morey said the show will debut in Houston within 18 months.
“It’s definitely happening,” he said.
It definitely is.
Morey has enjoyed a fantastic career in Houston, working through what should have been franchise-altering health setbacks to former stars Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming on his way toward seven different postseason appearances placed during the headiest of the Western Conference’s prime years.
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Though Morey has yet to win a championship with the team, he’s earned league-wide respect, and his current club (featuring first-year Houston coach Mike D’Antoni) flipped over to a 24-9 start to the season following Tuesday night’s win against Dallas.
The GM is a noted musical maniac, though, as confirmed by his discussion with the Chronicle:
“I really get transported when I watch these things, almost like I’m part of the show,” he said.
The feature, which was released before George Michael’s too-soon passing on Christmas, points out that the MIT MBA owner owns a taste for the style that dates back decades:
He celebrated his discovery of a rare 1970s “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat” recording released only in Britain like some might the lost Bob Dylan basement tapes. He also adored the 1980s pop music of his teenage years. He showed up in high school praising “Fiddler on the Roof” one day and “Purple Rain” by Prince the next.
“Something about Daryl, which was unique for his age, he really didn’t care what anybody else thought about the music that he liked,” [childhood friend Terry] Orcutt said. “He would come to school with a cassette tape of (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s) ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and George Michael’s ‘Faith’ album. He liked it because it was good music.”
Morey emphasizes that point when he explains his love of theater.
“I have zero interest in who plays the parts,” he said. “I don’t like actors.”
The last quote possibly acts as an interesting insight into the executive often charged with putting players – and not necessarily people – together to form a team.
This isn’t to say Daryl Morey is any more or less dispassionate than other general managers in pro sports, there’s no evidence to suggest as such and the sort of superstar disharmony that rocked the Dwight Howard/James Harden-led Houston Rockets of last season is altogether too common in NBA circles. Daryl Morey is hardly from the Bob Whitsitt, chemistry-be-damned, school of team-building.
What will be less interesting but significant in Morey’s musical hopes is the length to which Michael Jordan might be willing to lend use of his rather famous name – already used by actor Michael B. Jordan – as a crutch for the premise of the piece. One wonders if a relinquished second round pick, or several other “cash considerations,” might be enough to let the Charlotte Hornets owner do business with our league’s would-be Andrew Lloyd Webber.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
