Every draft is different and so are the dynamics. At #4-5 I have more of an ability to trade up than I do at #7… I also have more players to choose from and I personally see a decent sized drop off after 5 in this draft… someone like Black or Smith or Walker or Whitmore will emerge years later as better than someone in the top 5, but that is 4-5 guys vying for basically one spot. Also there is a difference, if there wasn’t, teams would be dumping picks 4-5 for picks 6-7 for virtually no additional value. Is it POSSIBLE the utility difference between 5 and 7 to the Rockets is nil? Sure, they may decide they love someone that would still be there at 7… but again, we don’t know that and really shouldn’t count on it.
Rockets say “we tanking -rebuilding- looking for development” Y’all “Bish all year about losing mentality and Silas should be fired” “We should be winning games” Rockets “ Win games, players show development” Y’all create threads like this
You do realize there are two camps in this argument right? Is it possible the OP is on the tank for Wemby side?
So it is mainly about trade value, which I understand but think you are overvaluing. The top 3 aren’t trading down even to 5, so you are hoping for a trade up by someone else. It’s possible and value at 5 is marginally better than 7, but maybe a difference of a few 2nds or a future highly protected 1st. As for it being an “X-player draft” and “getting your choice” … they say that every year and every year the eventual player rankings from roughly 4-10 have almost no correlation to draft position. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter at all … but I am saying it doesn’t matter very much. Also, 7 only happens if 4 teams leapfrog you. Again, not very likely - a 7% chance. The OP is freaking out because the odds of the 6th pick go from 20% to 26% (we’re not finishing last). It’s silly.
U can lose games and still play hard. Most of the season when we lose, our players just look incompetent
So many fans on this forum are absolutely insufferable. You will go out of your way to cry about anything. Must be a miserable way to live.
Ote is a joke league, comp is prob even worse than AAU, funding is orinarily thru tiktok and commercial sponsors and there are lots of gimmicks like driving the players around on limos and other shenanigans. Twins are the oldest and really only prominent members of that league thats why it gets no coverage.
How you know they arent playing hard? Thats just you seeing want you want to see. No **** a team that loses a lot of games is gonna look incompetent. Can you name a team that plays great all the time but somhow gets worst record? Wtf.
When we are getting a$$ blasted and down 20 pts in some of the losses we taken this season, it's kinda hard trying to convince folks our players are putting 100% on the floor. If our goal is to tank for wemby, we can have close games where we look good and then just ease up. There's literally no point in winning if we aren't aiming for play in.
When the team that ass blasts you are championship contenders and you have a team full of rookies and 2nd years its not a surprising result. It also doesnt mean they arent playing hard, they are just overmatched. Dont you think if this team has ability to be competitive with contenders they should also be contenders? You make zero sense.
We also reduced our chances of getting the 5 pick Time for stone to step up and bench guys Silas and players are not supposed to tank
I give them that, this whole half tank, half Silas sucks, the rest is confusion and brave heart wins. It has been entertaining soap opera.
It’s probably more important that Jabari, Jalen, and Sengun are better NBA players because of the back end of this season than it is that we have better top end lottery odds. THAT BEING SAID… there’s still a lot of KPJ and Tate happening. Both guys could still develop beyond where they are at sure, but that doesn’t mean as much as the difference in a guaranteed top 3 pick vs 6 or 7. Tate getting marginally better doesn’t have the organizational value that a top prospect like Jabari better does. It does suck to have endured what we endured to then in the last couple weeks of the season to start pumping out wins in meaningless games for other teams which costs us a substantially better prospect in the draft. This is also a reminder that Stones theory on having “too many 1st round picks” is severely flawed. When you are in a rebuild and you also need prospect to develop which means trying to win, you need as many cracks at the bat that you can get since it’s possible you won’t be able to guarantee a top 3 pick if you can’t rely on being the worst team.
I just can't get myself to really like any prospect outside the top 3. The Thompson twins -- all they've done their entire lives is play basketball, and yet they can't hit FTs? Cam Whitmore - looks like a 3-without-the-D prospect. Nick Smith -- way too raw for my tastes. I do like Jarace Walker, but I worry about his upside.
Yup. Unfortunately looks safe to say the Rockets are ready to ruin their draft pick in the most important draft of 20 years.
This is not the “most important” draft in 20 years. It just has the most important prospect and a nice top 3, and the Rockets have affected their top 3 odds whatsoever.
It's perfectly understandable if you know the team's average starting line up is younger than a D1 college stetting line up. I still can't believe people think tanking involves effort on the court. Dude, players are playing for their careers bud. They will not accept having management tell them to go on the court and miss shots or something. That's silly. No NBA player is willing to sacrifice their careers for that. Tanking involves playing young players that need development or a bunch of scrubs. It's about who plays on the court, not how hard they play.
I understand where you come from, but I don’t fully agree. KPJ and JT playing well is good for the team and for the other guys. This is not the Christian Wood situation where he wanted to be featured and be paid franchise money just because he was the best player on a trash team. KPJ and Tate are paid supporting player money, they are good parts of the infrastructure needed in place for a franchise player to be plugged-in. Where we get our top-dog is still the issue. Sengun and Jabari have shown flashes of top-dog, and have some of that top-dog edge to them, but they still need to make major leaps. Green has shown top-dog athletic talent, but doesn’t have top-dog edge, so I don’t have much hope for him. Then, we have more shots in the draft, for sure this year, and in the next few years as well. Then, we have lots of CapSpace that can bring-in a top-dog at some point. Lastly, someone like KPJ can still make a late leap, a come-from-behind run at a top-dog status. Some players take time, he;s got top-dog potential in him, but it hasn’t happened. It may never happen, but a late bloom is not completely out of the question.
