Yeah I can see that for sure. Still not sure he has the face up or outside game……yet. But the defense, frame and athleticism plays for damn sure.
yeah for sure his face up game needs work. They're trying to develop that for the next level but it'll definitely be limited as far as this season goes
I thought we would compete for a play in spot .... I also thought we’d have wall . In hindsight , tough to say that he would be the difference between 15 seed and 10 seed ... but who knows how the season will progress . I’m pretty sure we would have looked a lot better if we started say .. wall , Gordon , Tate , wood , and Theis . (To be fair , Theis hasn’t been great either ) ... but that would be counter to the goal of developing young guys? oh well . We threw green and kpj to the wolves a bit . And when your guards are that green defensively your whole team D will suffer . (So tough to tell how good Theis actually is on D) what pisses me off a bit is that I think you coulda gone for the wins (vets play ) early on and still shifted to development (and woulda lost plenty anyways ) after letting the young guys settle in . I don’t want us to get used to the mindset that it’s better to have higher draft position than trying as hard as possibly to win every game . We’re going to be a young team for years ... the way we are going to have to win games is to outwork and play harder than the other team . 10 games in ... I just wanna see improvement.
If you look through my original post, I quote both 76ers and Nuggets --two teams that won games by the way -- but combining both dismal efforts is a problem. And the chase is on because if you look at our road splits (again, see the OP), we are terrible at shooting FTs on the road for some reason and our TOs are higher on the road as well... Maybe in 10 games we'll improve, but this combination of 9 losses, high TOs (many of which are unforced), bad FT shooting, and generally low FT attempts, is all fairly bleak. Now I like these players, I see the potential, I'm more optimistic about their growth than most, but this careless play has to be called out. And I don't think we should be content hiding behind, "we're just young." I think it's more than a feeling and if these categories get worse, yikes.
LOL. This thread has already turned into a debate of who to take #1 next year. It isn't a good sign when that is being brought up 10 games into the season after the Rockets had what many called the best draft.
In October 2012, yes, Harden became a Rocket. DM started as GM in 2007. From 2007 to 2020 under Morey the Rockets never had a losing record. 55-27 53-29 42-40 43-39 34-32 45-37 54-28 56-26 41-41 55-27 65-17 53-29 44-28 Rebuilt after the loss of Yao Ming and Tracey McGrady without tanking... Every year an above average product without exception. During that time he had to put together players, coaching, staff etc. that mixed in a way that could produce a winning record. My argument is we had a lineup of players that could have been turned into a competitive team. Instead we gambled. Foolishly IMHO because high pick rookies often don't pan out, are injury prone or simply leave for a big market team. Morey's method had a much higher success rate.
Not a great sign, no. But it is pretty damn early. Plus we're gonna suck this year might as well discuss it for next year.
So what do you think the GM should have done when both Westbrook and Harden forced their way out? Trade for Ben Simmons and John Wall and win about 40-45 games? You know, like Morey did in 2009-2011? Morey didn't win more than 45 games during the years after Yao and before Harden. Is that what you want us to be?
Hopefully, there's more going on behind the scenes than we're hearing about. As some poster said here a while back, the Rockets games this season aren't really games but intense scrimmages. I completely agree with that, and I hope there are some highly productive practice sessions to go along with these intense scrimmages.
given that we were dealing with the thunder owning our own picks, I think tanking was the right direction. however, I don't discard the "staying competitive" route as illegitimate or wrong. playoff teams put themselves in position to be attractive to star players. morey stayed competitive and put us in a position to acquire harden and Dwight. after Dwight left they didn't tank, they stayed competitive signing gordon and ryno. once again staying competitive attracted CP3 which then made us a contender. either way is possible.
Yep. You think Harden would have signed with Houston if we were a 17 win team? Nope, nobody would signup for a miserable train wreck who is about winning. Chris Paul signup for a 17 win team? This is one of the reasons some teams remain in perpetual hell. When you sign up your team and fans for hell all that has to happen to keep you there is: 1) your high picks don't pan out, 2) your high picks are injury prone, 3) your high picks leave for whatever reason, 4) the picks don't develop until they are close to free agency. Teams potentially in perpetual hell are not attractive to free agents or released veterans. Right now our only option is to force players to be here via trades or picks and those players will be looking for the exits the second their plane's tires hit the runway. PS: The Oladipo, Wall routes were massive mistakes. I can't imagine worse trades to dismantle the team. Our method was to bring in highly injury prone players and roll the dice. Problem there is if they are injured again nobody wants them and you have to give them up for almost nothing. (exactly what happened btw)
I get where you are coming from, and I don't totally disagree. I generally don't like tanking. But I also don't like being trapped in perpetual mediocrity treadmill. Being stuck with a second or third tier star as your franchise player is like that. You always win in the lower 40s range, fighting for one of the last playoffs spot and getting bounced in the first round, and never having any high picks. We've been there during the Francis era and the post-Yao/TMac time. We were lucky to land Harden. (BTW, he didn't sign as a FA. We traded for him on OKC's stupidity. I don't think he would have signed with us had he become an UFA from OKC.) And when he forced out last year, we had a choice of getting a second tier guy or starting from the ground up. Which star player you think we could have got by trading Harden? Could we build a championship contender with that kind of guy?
You and I have a very different definition of mediocrity. I don't consider getting to WCF twice mediocrity. The very bottom of what can be considered mediocre would be 1st round of the NBA playoffs. I was actually excited about the rebuild that followed the Yao-TMac era. If you're excited right now, you're probably not a huge Rockets fan. Right now I'm wearing a hat w/ the Rockets emblem on it in the least visible way possible. Coincidentally it's also a very popular hat being sold by NBA.com because we ****ing suck and will suck for a while.
