Jabari has not played a minute of pro basketball yet and people are celebrating already. Jalen had an awful first half and a good second half of his rookie year and looked good. That is not a whole lot to get excited over though. The Rockets will likely have the worst record again next year, hopefully they get the top pick. The reality is they have maybe 2 guys that can be cornerstones, and one has not even played yet. Most of the board is really over valuing the other pieces we have, they are pretty nice, but its mainly because they are young and have an opportunity to develop. Some of the other players people are excited about have huge red flags and can implode at any moment. Everyone talks about KPJ inevitably causing issues, but JGup is pretty much the same, if not worse. It is odd that it is not talked about, but JGup was dropped by Kentucky recruiting for a reason, it was said he was one of the worst people they have ever encountered. It wasn't even the in depth character checks it was literally how he treated people right in front of them, that was before he even got into the league. Tyty seems like he is a good dude and may be good for the locker room, but the stuff that went on at Kentucky with him and his handlers hiding stuff about his eligibility to protect his draft stock, I am not sure what to expect from him. Sengun looked good, but again he doesnt look like he is a complete player, and is still very young, we will see if he develops into anything. The reality is we have tanked 2 seasons now and have 2 NBA players from it, I am not sure why we would celebrate at this point. We would need a generational talent to really change things, and we do not have one yet.
Right now it appears Tilman is executing a rebuilding plan to perfection because this is the easy part, lose games and don’t spend money. He is great at that. People assuming this rebuild ends with Tilman signing up top tier FAs next season with all that cap space are forgetting that even if FA’s wanted to come here, it not like we are loading up the cap and then going deep into the luxury tax to sign our rooks. If Tilman wouldn’t pay luxury tax to maintain and improve a 65 win team, he ain’t doing it for a 25 win team with a bunch of rookies on the upswing. If we have max/near max rookie extensions for Green/Smith, extend Sengun, and keep several of KPJ, Chistopher, Garuba, Eason, and Washington with raises, guess what? That’s the $80mm of cap space some of us think is going to two max slots.
Christopher worse than Porter? What high school, college and NBA team has Josh been kicked off of? What woman did Josh physically grab and pull out of an apartment by her hair? When did Josh have NBA security remove him from the arena? When did Josh start a fight with his coach and quit his team and leave at half time and drive off? When did Josh have an assistant coach publicly say he treated people poorly?
Imo... Morey was only having discussions as a dog n pony show for Harden... there's no way in hell DM wanted WB - not an analytical way in hell... but gotta keep Harden happy and look like we're taking his desires seriously... iirc they even told Harden it wasnt gonna happen - and he was cool with it... DM was ready to happily walk away - appearing to have done his due diligence... but then Frittata stuck his nose in... he already thought CP3 was among the worst contracts in the league... My basketball ops [operations] got maybe a little weak at the end, and I just said, ‘We’re doing this. We are going to make the change. We’re going to go after it and roll the dice. We’re going to find that 5 percent.’" When the owner says "I support the decision of my ops guys" - he's being supportive... When the owner says "we're doing this" - he's forcing his way... sooo... I blame Harden for pushing us to explore the swap... I blame DM for trying to be slick and appear to entertain the prospect instead of just shutting it down at inception... and I blame Frittata for stupidly pulling the trigger... so plenty of blame to go around...
I am guessing you have not read the college recruiting notes on the kid? Maybe he has a better PR team than KPJ, but Kentucky knew what they were doing when they dropped him, surprised that is all you got from everything I wrote, but yeah KPJ is an issue too and that just proves my point further that we are not even close to competing if we are going to get into an argument of who is more of a screw up and potential to blow up. People talking about play in this year are in for some disappointment.
Fertitta needs apologies from most of y'all. Did he screw Harden/Morey Rockets? yes. BUT MAYBE… just maybe… he couldn't stand a superstar drinking and going to strip clubs every other day + gimmick Morey tricks just the same as some of us too. Maybe he wanted to change the culture and obviously looking at the direction that we are going hard work and team-oriented players are a big part of that You see that EG that didn't have fun during Harden regime suddenly loves being here, and trade gossip stopped? Notice how John Wall didn't make one fuss about not playing? Both seem to be fitting our new culture rather than the old one
I blame TF too as a mistake to do it. How did it get to him? If Morey wasn't wanting to do it you don't bring it up. If TF catches word around the water cooler you just tell him the analysis says not to do it. When you leave the door open a crack to a rookie owner you're asking for trouble. His logic being the status quo isn't working so doing something might help. Doesn't mean it will. The bigger issue was the draft assets sacrificed. That was terrible negotiating handled by Morey who had little leverage and should have walked away... he could have gone to Tilman and said we tried but the cost was too high...
I think we can all agree TF made a mistake in the Westbrook trade. If you can't accept it wasn't his idea and someone put it in front of him then there's just no saving you...
Change the culture.... Take me back to a superstar drinking and going to strip clubs if the alternative is a player using the coach as target practice and bailing on his teammates and leaving the arena at halftime, or a player sulking on the bench and refusing to help his teammates on the court when asked to. Can we please change the culture back! plz.
I don't want KPJ here either. And I am 100% sure they will trade him once his value goes up. Feritta is not paying this kid
