Ben DuBose: Fertitta’s goal is limiting the “bad years” to one or two seasons

I sincerely hope there's a plan B for Stone and/or Tilman in case the Rockets don't keep their pick this summer that will limit the sucking to 1-2 years.

 

You can go back and look at the thread announcing the trade. Yes, there were lots of people excited. But most of the more respected members of this community, including Clutch himself, were INCREDIBLY averse to that move the second it started. I wouldn't put myself in the category of one of the more respected members of this community, but I myself was decrying it the same day and even openly questioning if I could cheer for a team featuring Westbrook. You can check the receipts. And definitely go back and give another listen to the Clutch/Bima podcast on the topic. THEY MERCILESSLY RIPPED THAT TRADE!

 

For the record, the guy who quoted Tilman as saying that was Tim MacMahon.

Tim MacMahon has also reported that Harden informed the Rockets in 2019 that he would demand a trade, if they didn't acquire Russ.

You all can believe whatever you want, but don't pick and choose. If you're going to say Tim isn't credible on that subject, I guess you can do that, but be consistent and don't use his anecdotes solely when its convenient to what you want to believe.

 

Pretty much impossible unless they land a steal in the draft or flip the picks for a star.

Unless Tilman’s idea of not sucking is signing a bunch of mediocre FA’s and competing for the 8th spot in the West.

 

Most of the hate for the trade had more to do with the cost than the player swap. Selling our future for a shot at Westbrook. If it were just a player swap though I think there would have been more indifference towards the trade. People really have to go back to that playoff series against the Warriors. A lot here were not happy losing that and a lot of the blame then was pointed directly at CP3.

If CP3 were 28 or something then yeah, you just shrug and go maybe it's an off year for him and move on. But he was 33 that year and people had every right to think that maybe he would just get worse as he aged. That was a very rational thought and likely would have been true if CP3 didn't change his lifestyle to accommodate his aging body.

I guess my point is and has always been that Tilman didn't just blow the team up for no reason and he didn't do it to be some evil owner that just wanted to do it for funsies. He saw an aging player underperform and wanted to swap him for a younger star player. He took a huge risk that really bit us in the butt and could put egg on our faces if we don't get a top 4 pick...but sometimes these gambles work out. I think he had an emotional reaction to losing at home in a big series with a Durantless Warriors and just didn't see Harden-CP3 core as championship material. He thought the window was closed and made a desperate move to open it.

I just think some people are being a little hard on him as an owner. His team has had ONE bad season and it's after he's traded his star player away. When we have years and years of suck, then start the 'Worst owner of the NBA' conversation, but right now for all we know the moves could work out. Cade could be Grant Hill 2.0 and could recruit prime Zion here in years and deliver championships, who tf knows. People were clowning owners like Cuban, Jennie Buss, Jim Crane at a point in time too. If he says they have a 2 year plan, they have a 2 year plan, lets see how it works out.

Right now, it's fair to say he's made mistakes that contributed to this bad season...but it's unfair I think to act like he's the worst owner ever. Not when Dolan is around at least.

 

Because there are other extremely credible people who have explicitly said otherwise. Someone can say over and over again that they won the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but it doesn't mean that it happened.

I'm not interested in relitigating this debate, I think everyone at this point is fairly dug in on their view of how it went down, and that's fine. We can agree to disagree. Short of a recording being released or a transcript of the organization's Slack channel, there's no way to "prove" either side.

But let's not act like people on the other side are ignoring evidence. They simply came to a different conclusion.

 

I agree the issue was the cost more than the swap.

Also, for me the whole thing is hypothetical.

People act like if Les was here we'd be doing much better but do yall really think Les would have tolerated what Morey did? Les, the guy that pimped the Rockets out to China as much as he possibly could? Say what you will about Tilman but he didn't part ways with Morey over that even though it cost him a crap ton of money. I'm pretty sure Les would have taken that china thing a lot harder than Tilman did and who knows if it would have led to Morey's dismissal but I wouldn't have been surprised if it did.

At the end of the day, Harden was getting antsy for a championship and I think had we not won it last year (and CP3 or no, we're not beating that Lakers team IMO) I think Harden would have been looking for his exit to go win a ring. I don't think that changes, he's still ambitious enough to want that and I don't see how Morey brings him another star here with what we had...even if you ignore the Russ trade, imagine it doesn't exist...what do we have there to get us another star? Butler was the last chance to create a 'super' team of sorts after that it was desperation moves.

 

its funny how some folks conveniently just disregard from the nightmare summer of 18 when he was able to make moves under his watch til now. you're already pass the point of 1 or 2 seasons bad. Both seasons of transactions were a pure disgrace. You just happen to get gifted with a mvp player in his prime and destroyed it as fast as anyone in history. Becoming the worst owner in the league. Now we'll just add years and years of being pathetic with him as owner because yeah he's that stupid and has no business owning a professional sports organization

It's gonna be like years from now and we're still going to be reading the bootlickers with there excuses and nonsense of lets judge tilman from this point on. he's not that bad trash.

 

I didnt need Tim Machmahom to say it, the man went on TV and said he forced the deal through.

 

It was still a mistake to swap out Chris Paul for Westbrook straight up. Westbrook had been declining the year prior to that. I wanted it to work out and I thought it could but Westbrook just coulndt bring superstar or even all star production when he was here. He got outplayed by Rondo man.

 

As would many owners, IMO, if their superstar player and cash cow had made it clear that he would demand a trade without acquiring that player. That's like solely blaming the guy who commits a crime while having a gun pointed at his head and being told to do it.

Some of y'all don't believe that aspect, and that's certainly your prerogative, but the reporting is out there.

 

With that said, you could convince me that Tilman got impatient and rushed the negotiations to the finish line. Perhaps if Morey is allowed to play hard ball, you could've saved a pick and/or swap. While I don't know that to be the case, it seems plausible.

What I don't buy is this notion that Harden was fine either way, but Tilman pushed it through, anyway. That goes against everything that I've been strongly told, and it seems that MacMahon and others have heard the same.

 

It's much easier to blame the unlikable villain character that they already don't like for non-basketball reasons than it is for them to blame their hero Harden.

 

I wasn't excited about the deal, I was just disappointed at Chris Paul easily turning himself into an albatross contract. Had he not done that, I'd argue we wouldn't have traded him or we would've traded for someone better or on a friendlier contract, or steal some picks on the transaction.

It was a lot more people than just fans who felt that they had no option but to trade him.

 

I thought the Westbrook contract was a bigger albatross the day we made the trade and was absolutely bewildered as to why we gave up so many assets to take on a worse player on a worse contract. You can go look it up.

 

That's actually the worst case scenario IMO. Imagine if they threw 18M a year at like Duncan Robinson and traded 4 1sts for someone like Jerami Grant. We'd make the playoffs but a team like that would go nowhere. If we want a real contender we have to be patient.

 

I'm not sure I like the attitude of this Ben DudeBros guy.

 

I dont doubt that Harden wanted the trade done. But I believe Daryl had the situation under control and so did Dantoni. Two guys who absolutely did not want to trade for Westbrook and what Nook says confirms that for me.

Im not gonna ask who your source are but its pretty clear to me that most people Monte, Morey, Dantoni and Harden who were close enough to know the ongoings of that deal are no longer here. Im sorry but I no longer trust most things that comes out of the mouth of this current organization.

 

@Clutch was adamantly against the trade and made that perfectly clear. The cost of the deal was staggering and stunned almost everyone, as I recall, but Clutch's strongest objection initially was that exchanging Chris Paul for Westbrook, who's game he had never liked, was a mistake of epic proportions. Forgive my own melodrama, but what we paid OKC to make it happen was like twisting the knife after delivering a blow that would prove fatal, insuring the pain was as bad as it could be before the victim died, the victim being our team.

Clutch thought Westbrook was a terrible fit. If memory serves, @BimaThug wasn't crazy about it either, but @Clutch simply went ballistic. As you point out, he had company. Many of us were against it at the time. Even so, the end result proved to be worse than I could have imagined back then. We're looking at much more than "one or two bad years," in my opinion. I'd love to be wrong. Like everyone else, I'm hoping that we end up with a top 4 pick in this coming draft. It would certainly help speed what will likely prove to be a long rebuild. Fingers crossed.

 

I can promise you that you're wrong about Morey not wanting to trade for Westbrook. I don't think he valued Westbrook at the price he ultimately paid (CP plus two picks, two swaps), but I have on very strong authority that he absolutely preferred Russ to CP, at that juncture. I don't know either way on what MDA thought, but typically he wasn't involved a ton in those types of roster decisions.

Anyway, I'm not saying you're totally wrong, I'm just noting that there's a lot more gray area to it. Is it possible that pressure from some combination of Harden and Tilman rushed things, and perhaps forced the Rockets to give up an extra asset or two, relative to letting Morey decide everything solely on his own (and on his timetable)? Yes. But it's an overstatement to suggest that Harden was fine with no deal, IMO, or that Morey did not want to trade for Russ. There's a middle ground there.