Give Stone his credit

You obviously work at TC

 

thought so too, it's like they've been paying the media not to put any spotlight on them, lol

well until Victor was given to them lololol

 

prolly the best gm since the dude that got us dreaming and yaoming.

hiring smilas for 3 years was genius.

 

The Silas hiring definitely was one of Stone's worst decisions.

 

holy hell i have made this exact post. especially the 4th paragraph. They were trying to lose and were doing blatantly. They may have done things differently here or there if they had not made the paul/westbrook trade. But they did and now the losing stops as far as trying to. Maybe it doesnt work out and the youth is subpar and will only amount to mediocrity. There is a chance to that they are great collectively though. Im excited to see what happens and am cheering for Rockets drafted talent instead of traded for talent. More fun in my book.

 

Somebody should make a thread with a poll on how many wins do we want to get out of the team with the pieces we have so far instead of the back and forth of whether Stone being a good tank commander &drafting according to what the popular consensus expects of him is good performance or not.

Should probably be @DreamShook so he could preach a bit more about importance of culture and chemistry and how most recent dynasty and most recent championship team didn't have top 4 picks for 3 straight years and did amazingly anyway.

There is also the whole question of whether someone like Kawhi leonard or even the 1st pick Kyrie Irving is able to blossom & win a ring unless they are in a right environment that is GM's job to construct.

 

On a smaller scale, Stone lucked into getting the 2nd pick, the 3rd pick and now selecting Whitmore.

It is not Victor but other than Victor that has to account for something.

Stone is a lawyer, he did what he could......other GMs were GMs for decades.

He obviously went for athleticism, star potential first over fundamentals, that is the gripe I have with him.

Prior to him, I had a problem with Morey because he did not value chemistry and picked undersized players.

 

He is still an attorney to me.

 

Stone has done a good job accumulating picks, and several of his swaps have worked out very well so far. (Sengun and now Whitmore)

But he has yet to be tested on his roster-building skills. Now that the Rockets are no longer tanking outright, we'll get to see if he can sign or trade for the right experienced players and construct a viable lineup to complement the promising young players he's drafted.

Until this happens, it feels to me like he's only done half the things expected of a GM.

 

I give him an A- for the first phase and the only major issue I have with it is he did not place sufficient value on how maintaining a decent culture through the tanking could make free agency and Phase 2 easier on us.

All in all, we're rich in every way. Excellent basket of young players, some future picks, lots of cap space, no bad contracts.

Of course we have to see how it pans out, but we're talking about Phase 1 and you don't see how it pans out in Phase 1. This phase was about creating opportunities for the future and getting rid of all dead weight. For what was supposed to be done in Phase 1, it's an A- for me.

 

The mission was tanking, and in broad strokes, mission accomplished. We collected a lot of talent. I give Stone's front office a B+ on how they handled the draft. I don't have any problems with Green, Smith, or Amen as the top picks, and every mid-first rounder has been an excellent value so far. Would have been nice to get at least one more hit in the late 1st round or 2nd round, but the odds there are always very low, so I can't hold it against them too much.

My biggest complaint would be that I feel like it didn't have to be as painful as it was--would have been nice to wave goodbye to Silas a year sooner, and I think having some more last-legs veterans probably would have been helpful as well, just so sh** didn't have to be so ugly all the time. In particular, I wish KPJ hadn't been handed in the reins to the point guard position and had been played as an undersized SF or a 6th man off the bench instead.

A D-Rose, Goran Dragic, Rajon Rondo, or somebody like that wouldn't have moved the needle much on the tank, but would have steadied the offense a lot more and provided some veteran leadership just to help everyone know what they were supposed to be doing. That's probably my single biggest complaint.

 

You should never give credit before seeing results.

Right now the Rockets still have one of the worst teams in the league. Sure there's a lot of really hyped up young highly athletic guys on the team....but no actual results.

If ANY of the hype machine players actually pan out and the Rockets start to win, then we should give Stone some credit for it....but not until that actually happens.

 

Agreed. Stone is an incomplete. We won’t know until, at the soonest, this year pans out.

 

Given who the owner is.....Stone got tons of credits.

 

Stone has done the easy part as well as he conceivably could. You can quibble with the Green over Mobley pick but otherwise he took what was expected.

However the hard part is when you stop tanking and try to win. In this we have no idea how good he is.

 

Because of Daryl Morey trading all those 1st Round Picks for Years and Attach it to the Bad Contract.

Trade away Jeremy Lin and 1st Round Pick for Lou Williams, Good Trade but Hurts us Today

 

Because of Daryl Morey trading all those 1st Round Picks for Years and Attach it to the Bad Contract.

Trade away Jeremy Lin and 1st Round Pick for Lou Williams, Good Trade but Hurts us Today

Chris Paul for Russell Westbrook and Many Picks and Swaps. Next Year 2024 Pick isn't Ours, OKC Owns It