Miami got handled in the Finals against the Lakers. Miami in the West would never reach the Conf Finals. Now with Brooklyn going off I don't see how Miami gets past Philly and the Nets at all this year. But you are right... any given playoff bound team can get hot at the right time
It's not a given that this rebuild has to take a decade as many keep insisting ... This superstar-driven roster-building era has proven that teams can cycle from one contending core to another very quickly: MIA - went from LBJ-Wade-Bosh in 4 straight Finals to last year's Bam-Butler-Herro Finals squad in what ... 2 years? All it took was smart drafting, none of which were top 5 picks, and convincing 1 FA among the league's top 20-30 players to sign LAC - tore down the CP3-Blake-DeAndre playoffs staple with some trades to acquire future picks and young role players Those pieces (and cap space) built the foundation which attracted Kawhi & PG13 and formed a whole new contending core ... again only 2 years later IND - on a lesser scale have done well after PG13 pulled his Harden demand and rebuilt on the fly around Sabonis They're at least as much a contender right now as they ever were when George was the centerpiece, and they didn't have to bottom out for years and years as a laughingstock NOP - their hands were forced into losing arguably the best C (Boogie) and PF (Davis) in the NBA simultaneously Yet are probably already better off going forward with their new Zion-Ingram-Lonzo trio Of course there are just as many examples (or more) when a team lost a superstar and spent the next decade in lottery hell ... But it is not hopeless I remember feeling much worse after the basketball gods robbed us of our own 'next Shaq & Kobe' window before either Yao or Tmac turned 30 ... And then we turned Kyle Lowry into a future 1st, combined that w some other scrap parts, and watched a 6th-man blossom into a generational scorer before our eyes I think the most critical factor is having smart management in place to identify the right parts as they come along So far, I think Stone and Silas have done as well as can be expected considering the sh!te hand they inherited
To me the only sad part is the Russ trade picks they gave up. we could be embracing the suck here. Instead it’s a lose lose absent some miracle.
I like Stone so far. But (with a nod to your MIA and LAC examples) I worry that Fertitta isn't the kind of owner that the next Jimmy Butler will want to come play for.
Harden is a whining lil b**** who quits when he doesn't get his way. He ain't gonna win nothing in NY. He's a loser and a quitter. And he's he fat cuz he eats too many honey buns with rappers.
Not this year. We are looking at a top 10 pick regardless. Worst case scenario is our pick ends up in the 5-7 range.
We are retooling and rebuilding. This is just the cycle we are in. We are developing to get back 8n the contender picture. The covid affect also makes it necessary but we will get to where we need to be we just have to stay the course
we don’t keep that pic then. That’s the problem. We only keep our own pick this year if it’s 1-4... or somehow worse than OKCs (which doesn’t seem likely at this point....)
We have more talent than OKC. As bad as we are this season, OKC will probably be worse. And if we get a lucky pingpong ball bounce, we get to keep the pick anyway.
Need to trade dipo for that #3 pick, and tank. Rockets would get the 3,4 picks of the draft. Screw This left overs team that was created by James Frauden, need to dump everyone and rebuild. John Wall? Let him ride the bench and send out some of those worthless draft picks to move his worthless contract. Rockets need to remove everyone not named C-Wood, and rebuild. I see blockbuster moves at the deadline to clean up this leftover bs experiment that was leftover from Daryl Morey.
We're also not winning with Fertitta as an owner who knows Nothing about basketball yet thinks he does! He's not attracting any free agents out there too! So ya Harden liked to eat but unless we tank hard and accumulate some really good assets kiss Superstars in Houston goodbye.
Two of these were in glamour markets, the third one did not rebuild to any real sort of contention, not even conf finals, and the third one got the #1 overall pick in the deal for that year and they still don’t look very good and have bad roster construction.
lol some of y'all posting in this thread have never been through a rebuild and it clearly shows. If you started following the Rockets when Harden came to Houston you've been spoiled out the ass with postseason appearances that actually resulted in getting past the 1st round.
I'm not too down about because I look around the league at the young players and see the next generation of greatness. Lebron, KD, Harden all gonna be old farts or retired by the time we get back to contending again. We gotta look forward to the future.
