Letting him go for nothing? He hasn't even proven himself to be worthy of being on a nba roster. Yall hold Stone to IMPOSSIBLE standards no other GM faces lol. We are in the driver's seat of 3yr rebuild
Um, but we have better assets now than before. How do you complain about Stone not drafting well, but whine when he ships off the assets he previously drafted. NOW TyTy's a potential Allstar? Yall keep moving goal posts bc you don't care for Stone personally. But he's done a phenomenal job acquiring young talent his tenure here
I never complained about Stone not drafting well, and I never said TyTy is a potential allstar. Quit putting words in my mouth and don’t respond to me if you’re going to make up a bunch of lies.
Count me in on the fire Stone group. We did all this losing to trade 3 first round picks ans a future all-star in KMJ. Even if that isn’t true he is definitely one of the most exciting young players in the league and Stone just gave him away.
Martin is not close to a all star status, he is a athletic, energy player on the bench….good player though. Value? Knicks traded Obi Toppin to Indiana for 22nd round picks….they are the same player…athletic, high energy bench player
There's no way to tank this hard and have a good culture, with average development that also leads star FA's to sign somewhere. No one on this planet - even a Jerry West - was going to land a star. You have to spend 90% of the cap. You sign the best players available to you on tradable contracts, which is exactly what we did. FVV and Lopez are championship elite role players, that was the best thing available to us and we went for it hard. FVV is going to be an expiring contract after this season. Dillon Brooks is on a rare declining contract. Londale is a 1 year contract. There is no way that any team that is blatantly tanking is seeing good development in the young players. Jeremy Sochan averaged 45% FG, 25% 3PT and 69% FT. He picked up 5.3 rebounds in 26 minutes which is below average. He had 2.5 assists to 1.7 TO's which is just good. He idolizes Dennis Rodman, a guy who wears wedding dresses, paints his nails and shows up to games hung over. I have no problems with these things, but I've heard too often from people just how brilliantly they can decipher the future based on Green painting his nails. Pop did NOT bench the players who gave less effort. He just kept working on them. He kept playing his highest value prospects throughout the season. Just about the only thing he did was get his team to pass the ball a lot (they finished 5th). The New York Knicks and Miami Heat averaged about as many assists as us. It's an illusion. There's no one in the world who can rob a team of vets, rim protection, point of attack defense and competent playmaking in the whole rotation and not end up with ugly, disgusting basketball by players who are less motivated by your yelling every day. That's just how it goes when you strip your team of core functions and veterans to a historically extreme level. Something has to give, everything else can NOT remain constant. What we discovered was in this experiment: yes, there is a point at which you can make even the most motivated competitors feel less motivated. It was the most demotivating strategy in NBA history next to Hinkie's Sixers. Try to practice some acceptance. We wanted a fast rebuild (3 years). In order to achieve it safely, we had to sacrifice the speed of player development and the product on the floor. We had to sacrifice the ability to have decent backups so that when you hold a starter accountable there's someone competent to come in. When KPJ would give up on defense or pound the ball for 15 seconds on offense, if you bench him you have to play Nix. When Sengun is showing his age protecting the rim, your backup is someone younger than him and undersized in Garuba/Jabari. When Eric Gordon doesn't give a F on the court, the guy who comes in for him is a hard worker who is terrible at making layups in Eason. Try to practice some acceptance. We looked at the plan and said: this is going to slow down our development and look ugly for long stretches. We knew it would mean in the summer of 2023 we're not going to get an elite player to just sign up to our team when there are other teams willing to pay them roughly the same amount of money (the max). IS IT WORTH IT? The organization took the risk and said yes it's worth it if in just 3 years we will have plenty of still-young players, draft picks and a crazy amount of cap space. We would pick up the development of the young guys after 3 years. Were there mistakes? Of course there were mistakes. Was Bob Myers not around when they paid Poole? Was Riley not around when they paid Duncan Ferguson? Was Jerry West not around when they built their team around a player with a degenerative knee? A tanking team is a sh*tty dark place to go to work no matter how much money you're making. Everyone hated it. The players and even Silas hated it as much as you hated it. Sometimes you gotta take the medicine. It's not my favorite plan, but it's not supposed to be my plan. It's Stone's plan (and now Udoka's plan too) and I'll judge them by the results of THEIR plan based on what THEY promised. Some of you are still stuck on why they didn't choose your plan. That's irrelevant. It's ancient history. There's nothing going on right now that isn't part of the plan. The good news is the culture has been shifted faster than any of you expected. Don't act like 90% of you didn't behave as though the culture would take years to change. It's done in a matter of months and there will clearly be no remnants of that past life coming with us. We're now in position to build a team that can truly allow the blossoming of young star players and also to build a team that's near .500 who a star can see as not too far from being a contender. It's a team that will play "the right way" next season or whoever doesn't like it will get banished. We have a few future picks we can send out in case high quality upgrades become available. Stop acting like if you ran this rebuild we would be any further along. We might be "playing right" but take 2 more years to do it, but you're absolutely not doing it right and finishing the job in 3 years. Get over yourself. Stone has done some good things and some stupid things. These are all minor issues in the grand scheme of things. The big thing right now is just to figure out if this young core is worth anything when a good system is in place for the FIRST TIME. No, you do not have the magic eye that can differentiate future stars from busts. All of us will be wrong about some. It's a coin flip still. We cannot skip past this part. Jesus there's so much to look forward to on this team. What the hell will Sengun be able to do with a coach who teaches great fundamental defense and is excited about using his playmaking? What will Jabari do with confidence and set plays in which he flourished late last season? What will Green do with more strength, getting benched if he doesn't play defense and way more spacing? What will the offense look like under the coach who demands ball and player movement more than 99% of coaches in Rockets history? What will the defense look like when there is enough depth to come up with a rotation of 8-9 players who will happily try their best on every play? It's sad to see how fanhood has changed. The biggest problem on this message board used to be homerism. Somehow, some way it's going inverse and our board is the most negative about the Rockets of all the places in the NBA. Others are NOT sh*tting on us and making fun of us more than we are. Others are not more pessimistic about our future. We're collectively the most pessimistic analysts of the Rockets in the world. Practice some acceptance of the situation and focus on the massive opportunities in front of us that can swallow up the tiny things you're worried about. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We'll then try a different plan, likely more similar to yours. If it works, we will have nailed one of the fastest and most successful rebuilds in NBA history. This is a great time. Being fan is about fun, it's not about being right.
I think this is a bit harsh tbh. People are just venting about a pattern of mishandlings by the front office and Stone… but it doesn’t mean that the old school curmudgeons on the GARM aren’t excited for the season to see what we got. There’s a pattern with Stone (Oladipo trade, EG trade, EG trade 2.0, now with Lopez) that clearly shows his weakness as a GM who writes checks his a$$ can’t cash, and has now ended up with egg on his face multiple times. However he does have some clear skills in his expertise of cap maneuvers, contracting, and maybe some data/analytic understanding that has helped with the draft etc. I think most people are fair in their criticisms BUT when it comes to firing him there’s two schools of thoughts: 1. This is not a “learn on the job kind of gig”. The Rockets should have hired a senior big respected name to be asking the hard questions and pushing back on Stone or overruling him if not taking over if he screws around. 2. There’s some talent there with this rookie GM so we should take the good with the bad and just believe in his talent. I happen to fall in camp 1. But it doesn’t mean that people in camp 2 are wrong. Maybe he is the next great mind in sports management. If he is then maybe he does deserve a longer leash. Impossible to say yet. I personally just believe through my experience in corporate America that this is a relationship business and those flaws he has in his ego, etc. can be fatal flaws in an unchecked senior leader role. But that’s just me based on my experience and I think most of our fellow GARM vets are pretty fair too in our criticism…. however we are all going to be excited for the season regardless. Let’s cut everyone some slack here. If we all can evaluate the good, and the bad of Stone then maybe we should cut him some slack too where it’s fair to do so. But being a professional sports GM isn’t like being a teacher or nurse. This is the most enviable job in the world for many. It’s a role that is supposed to be operating in a highly critical space with zero room for error. Let’s not forget that fact as well. Stone isn’t a nurse who didn’t set a bedpan correctly one night or something. He’s an NBA GM. It’s totally fine to be critical.
You're impressed because Stone acquired talent after being the worst team in basketball for 3 years straight? Also, we shipped our talent for Dillon Brooks. You hiring? I could use a second job where I get paid to do nothing.
It was a miniscule trade bc of the young guys we brought in. Nobody cares about replacing Tyty & Garuba. You're nitpicking
Yes, I'm impressed he had the COURAGE to successfully tank & rebuild for 3 years. The same way Pop did it in San Antonio. Is SAS fire they're gm for having the worst record last year too? Or are they geniuses bc they got Victor? Tell me which one is it
Yes, I'm impressed he had the COURAGE to successfully tank & rebuild for 3 years. The same way Pop did it in San Antonio. Should SAS fire they're gm for having the worst record last year too? Or are they geniuses bc they got Victor? Tell me which one is it
What you're saying is that Stone has made some mistakes. All GM's make mistakes, no one is winning even 75% of their trades over the long term. Especially not with this challenging situation we're in. The truth is that he may be plus or minus 15% different than other people in making mistakes, but that's not the determining factor in his career. The determining factor in Phase 1 was how quickly can we get to lots of picks, young players and cap space regardless of the cost (culture, development, time). Done. Phase 2 it's: how quickly can we become a respectable team without being financially locked into being just a respectable treadmill team. So far so good based on what he can control. Stone passed his boss' test in Phase 1 with flying colors. If someone has a problem with that, then their problem is with Tilman really not with the coupel of risks gone bad with Stone. Phase 2 season hasn't even started. So what's the problem exactly? Would it have been better to hire a better GM? Sure, but no great GM was joining the Rockets after the way Tilman slowly shed contracts, everyone lied to get out of his organization and we decided to embark on a rebuilding plan. That's what we had. We could have hired some mediocre old dude, but that guy was not going to get every decision right either. That's why he's available to us. This is not to say Stone is doing great. This is just to say the biggest part of his report card is right now inconclusive. It's absurd to be in up in arms about where we are just 3 years into a rebuild that started after we put ourselves in the negative through the Paul-WB trade. If all people are saying is that he made a blunder or two, sure. Let's be real though, people are acting like not committing 1 or 2 blunders would make all the difference in the world. That's total BS. Overall - looking at victories and blunders and plan and benchmarking - we are a team full of potential, flexibility, talent and now culture that could have done a couple of things better.
I want to see this same energy for Udoka at the end of the year if/when they win 30 games or less after HE took the wrecking ball to it. Stone just put his feet up on his desk and is snacking on a proverbial apple this season. If this thing works out Stone will look like a genius and if it doesnt he's positioned his chess board beautifully in terms of self preservation.
Going into year 4, as I look at all the teams that made trades to get better, it’s clear our GM just can’t pull off trades to help this team. I’d love to find out from an insider, what Stone and Patrick’s reputations are like around the league. It’s materially relevant because a poor reputation would undermine our ability to make trades and sign good players.
You are one of the few still standing Stone stans. This tells me it is not rosy for him. Heavy pressure on Van Vleet to lead a team like that for 2 whopping years.
With FVV it’s kind of like what we asked Eric Gordon to do. Lead this young, terrible team. But for FVV, the only real difference in the team from last year (minus EG and KG) is Dillon Brooks. It’s not a good team and FVV is not a miracle worker.
