All i am saying is we have a good supporting cast being built up and the next 2 seasons i'm pretty sure we are going to get a top 10-12 pick
OKC is unique. 4 high draft picks --> Harden, Durant, Westbrook. It takes more than planning, this is incredible luck, as well as accomplishment by the coaching staff. The only other time when something similar happened was the Bird Celtics. Auerbach had 4 high draft picks within several years, and ended up with Bird, McHale and Cedric Maxwell. If you want to compare the Rockets to someone, compare them to the Pacers. This is assuming the picks end up fine. The Pacers have been building through mid round picks for a decade. Basically, the Pacers never tank, they get 10-20 picks, draft well, then do some trades, sign a few veterans, take some risks, and end up as a 50-60 win deep playoff team. That's the Pacers model, they've been following it for decades. The Rockets are pretty much doing the same, just more aggressively and in a bigger market.
And that in an of itself shouldn't give you any reason to believe our path will follow OKC's. There are teams that perpetually draft in the high lottery and don't do squat.
You clowns are quick to pull one garbage player out of your asses just to make a point. The chances that all 4 of our rookies ending up like Langhi are 0%. Tell this crap to the experts that were gushing over our rookies the entire summer league. Tell it to the thousands of fans they had in college. The reason Lamb was #12 is because scouts were saying that he was too laid back and he didn't look good in his second season. Having to defer to Drummond had a lot to do with that. We all know Royce's story. Jones was just surrounded by many other stars and somehow got lost in the mix. He too at one point this summer was considered a top 10 pick. Like Lamb, he too dropped late in the pre-draft process.
Exactly. Being in the top ten each year and easily become OKC! Yeah, how's that working for Sacramento or Washington or Charlotte and those teams? Miami and OKC better look out! These teams are on their tails! PS: Postbadlee is still a clown.
I have never been so insulted in my life!! Well, except that time a guy insulted me about the way i live my life.
It doesn't matter WHY these players were taken where they were taken, the fact of the matter is that they were taken there. We can be "homers" all we want and say we got 4 guys who should've been top 10 all we want but the fact of the matter is that we didn't. OKC got 3 players (Durant, Westbrook, Harden) that would've been AT LEAST top 10 if not top 5 in almost draft except maybe the 03' monster draft. I'm not saying at all that we don't have good players, because we do. I for one have been for 3 years a huge fan of Jeremy Lamb, but we shouldn't let our Rockets Red colored glasses get in the way of the fact that we have 4 top 20 draft picks and not 4 top 10.
Cat, There are never any garuntees that a player will meet his potential but using Dan Langhi as a comparison is not apples to apples IMO. Langhi was in his second year at the time and did not have the complete set of dominate games that we saw from our rookies this year. I only remember him really dominating in the one game against Utah. What I remember (and it's been a while) Kenny Thomas playing after a dog bit but looking as if he were completely board while he was on the court. I remember the Rockets playing Utah during the game that Langhi went off. I remember the broadcast spending way too much time interviewing Rusty Larue and I remember AK47 outplaying Langhi and the Jazz winning. By comparison this years Rockets players DMo, Lamb, White and TJones are all rookies not 2nd year players. Also they are all high profile players that at different times were viewed as having lottery talent with very high upside in a draftt that is widely considered a very talented draft (time will tell) while Thunder Dan Langhi was a 2nd round pick never viewed as a hight upside talent by scouts in what is with out a doubt one of the worst drafts ever. I keep seeing the Langhi example as a reason not to get excited about our rookies and it just does not seem like a very fair comparison. At the end of the day all the rookies are just potential and may never pan out but there are a lot of reasons to believe that they will.
Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but didn't the Celtics draft Bird with a late-round pick (I think it was a first rounder) while he was still in school -- and since they had his draft rights until the next draft, they signed him once the college season ended. I think the rules were changed after that.
Actually the Celtics drafted Bird with the 6th pick Spoiler Larry Bird's Wiki Page: The Boston Celtics selected the 6'9", 220-pound Bird 6th overall in the 1978 NBA Draft,[18][19] even though they were uncertain whether he would enter the NBA or remain at Indiana State to play his senior season. Bird ultimately decided to play his final college season, but the Celtics retained their exclusive right to sign him until the 1979 NBA Draft, because of the NBA's "junior eligible" rule (allowing a collegiate player to be drafted when the player's original "entering" class was graduating and giving them one calendar year to sign them, even if they went back to college)[20]. Shortly before that deadline, and after bitter contract negotiations, Bird agreed to sign with the Celtics, inking a 5 year $3.25 million contract which made him, at the time, the highest-paid rookie in the history of the NBA[21][22]. Shortly afterwards, the NBA draft eligibility rules were changed to prevent teams from drafting players before they were ready to sign[23]. The rule is called the Bird Collegiate Rule.
