A new GM becoming top 10 in a matter of 4 years seem pretty slim..... How fair are you being here with your standards? Also feels to me you are more judging the minor moves than the big picture or major moves. Tilman clearly gave the blessing to tank and Stone did a pretty good job in putting the Rockets in the best position to tank. The 6 remaining FRP will be the ones to ultimately decide things, through development or trades. This is the season where Stone's action will actually start to bear relevant fruit and should be judged as such. I don't think organizations tank and then immediately hold their GM to top 10 standards in the first offseason they pivot. I think if the roster sucks this season then there will be a good chance Stone is fired next offseason.
Mediocre at best? No, I don't think that he is mediocre at best, I think that he has the potential to get better. Right now I would say he is "fine", but if an elite GM candidate became available, I would consider replacing him. Stone is good at laying out plans, but not as good at the details. He has so far avoiding any major blunders, but made a number of smaller blunders.
You're misinterpreting me. I'm not saying "a GM needs to definitively prove he IS top 10 after 3 years or he's fired." That would be crazy, given the cycle time of transactions. There are a lot of non top proven top 10 GM's in the league who haven't proven they are great yet but haven't foreclosed themselves from doing so: Brad Stevens, Zach Kleiman, Joe Cronin, Nico Harrison, others. I wouldn't fire them. I'm saying "if at any point you become sure a GM definitively ISN'T top 10, whether it's after 1 week or 10 years, you move on". At this point, Stone, Troy Weaver, Karnisovas, Kupchak are in this category for me. We don't know if Stone is 12th or 25th best, but there are issues and mistakes that foreclose on the possibility of Stone being a top 10 GM, in my opinion. The goal of hiring a GM or coach is to get one of the best ones and have them in place for a looong time. Everyone who isn't one of the best ones is just chaff you want to churn through. Do you think it's possible, in any environment, for a top 10 GM to have had the developmental issues, cultural and reputational problems, and transactional blunders the Rockets have had under Stone? I don't think so, hence we look for the next guy. If you do, we disagree, but that's cool.
You can really make the case that Stone's greatest success is just convincing Tilman of a 3 year tank plan and sticking with it. It is not easy to get an owner to commit to that so kudos to Tilman for sticking through it.
Right, so if we have reset the culture a few months into the season, what else was Pop doing that took 2 years? So they tried hard to get Lopez. Big deal. Minor acceptable mistake. Jabari Smith improved over the course of the season too. Still on the season, Sochan was around what he was expected to be when drafted. Did the Spurs create something out of nothing? No. It was just regular. Oh I don't agree with this. Did they pick harder workers? Sure. Did they have more upside talent other than luckily landing Wemby? Nope. That's the trade off. They also drafted someone who showed his d*ck to a few people in the organization. You are incorrect about effort not being an issue with them. There are several instances last season when he talked about his team only giving 24 or 36 minutes of effort. Spurs fans complained about it. They had more hardworkers than us and gave more effort than us. They were NOT able to motivate this team to give championship level effort - because tanking is flat out demotivating. I think it varies. The worse you tank, the harder to maintain the motivation. When you understand that the roster was built to not be able to win games, it makes motivating yourself difficult. Michael Jordan would have been demotivated to do anything but jack up shots on our team. How would we punish them? By playing Nix? Christopher? The team was stripped of these options. We already gave too many minutes to Nix. The solution would have been to sign someone to the vet minimum who would give us professional minutes. But more professionalism results in more wins. You're missing the point. I'm not comparing them. I'm using 3 examples people love and worship. Those guys make mistakes too. So saying Stone made a mistake is not sufficient narrative to call him a failure that needs to be fired. That's not how culture works. The culture is part of the organization. If those guys don't fit the culture, it's clear they will be moved. The way Udoka and Stone have talked about this phase makes it clear these guys have to fit in, be professional and play hard to be a part of this team. The signings we've made demonstrate that too. The culture has changed. It's time to see who fits. I don't know who will and won't. Hey, I have several issues with the cost and choice of players. I'm just saying that you're combining two things: there are mistakes and there is the premium on being a 20-win team for 3 seasons. If we hadn't been a 20-win team for 3 seasons, we'd have a way smaller core and would have to tank longer. Doesn't happen in a vacuum. These guys are expensive to us however he did a decent job. Brooks on declining contract. FVV 2 years only. Landale 1 year. I believe we can still make one more signing. It's not amazing but given it's unavoidable we will overpay, the amount by which we overpaid is resonable. Subjectively I would have preferred Grant Williams over Brooks but the guy who coached him didn't prefer that. So let's roll the dice. Sorry but that's pure luck. Take Wemby out and these guys were headed nowhere fast, grooming a bunch of role players "the right way". They've been 30 wins for 4 years now. If they had gotten the 3rd pick they would be the least promising young team. Kings? Magic? Warriors? Nuggets? Sixers? How long will the Wizards be? Pistons? Thunder? Last season the Thunder made the playins and that was hailed as a great achievement after 2 previous years of tanking. That's the team that sucked the life out of our assets just before we started rebuilding. You forget Stone started in a negative hole thanks to the Paul-Westbrook trade. That we look likely to win 30-something games after 3 years of tanking is not elite but it's very good. My point remains... we can not make this assessment till we see this coming season unfold. We need a top 5 player, but we don't need that player to look like they're top 5 in the NBA when they're 21. That's not what happened for most champions.
Developing and drafting players? When does a series of minor mistakes become a major mistake in the aggregate? The Rockets have lost the equivalent of at least 3 first round draft picks since Stone has become GM because of losing trades, not trading players when he should have and miscalculating the value of players. He poorly handled Oladipo, Allen, Wood and Gordon to name a few. He sold low on every one of those players. There were multiple #1 picks that he had on the table that he never got because he over played his hand. He also did not take on contracts for future draft picks or draft swaps, he actually traded out salary to clear cap space, and lost out on value there. He had the option of Caris LeVert or Oladipo, and took Oladipo and missed out on value moving LaVert. You add all those small mistakes together over 3 years, and that is a lot of value lost. No one is perfect, but Stone has left a lot of value on the table. Sochan was better in year one than I expected, and I think a lot of people did. He was taken at #9 and only turned 20 like a month ago or so. He had zero offensive skills when he entered the NBA. If there was a re-draft today, he would go higher. The Spurs tend to develop players that outperform their draft position. Not always, they took a kid a couple years ago that got in trouble and didn't amount to much - but he is the outlier. As for Jabari Smith, he was severely restricted with the Rockets most of the season. He had complaints about how practice was commandeered by KPJ, he had issues with how unfocused and inconsistent the coaching was as well - and his own head coach did not know how to use him. No team is perfect - the Spurs took an 18 year old in the late lottery that is no longer playing basketball. They drafted another 19 year old in the first round that did not practice hard and they cut him over it. However, they also took Keldon Johnson at the end of round 1, they took Devin Vessell, Jeremy Sochan, Tre Jones and Malaki Branham and that is a very good group of players, especially for where they were drafted over the last few years. As far as upside players go - Jeremy Sochan has an incredible upside. A lack of effort for the Spurs is not the same as a lack of effort for the Rockets....... compared to 90% of the league, the Spurs gave effort last season. You can have a team that lacks motivation compared to a winning team - having a poorly coached team with poor culture is something completely different. It is all a matter of degrees. Yes - you play someone else. You can even sign a veteran well past their prime to get some minutes who will provide effort, even if they are poor at performance. What you don't do is what the Rockets did. Stone did not make a mistake - he has made a number of mistakes, he has just so far avoided a massive mistake. Some of that is luck, some of it is that he is risk adverse, and that has pro's and con's. You now have multiple young players that have grown accustomed to not being held accountable at all. Hopefully they grow accustomed to Udoka - but the time they spent in a cultural cesspool with no accountability, terrible practice habits and a lack of teaching basic fundamentals isn't going to suddenly vanish. I am not saying it won't work - it very well may, I am saying -YET AGAIN - Stone did not pay attention to the details. Of course being a 20 win team with a questionable owner and GM is going to mean the Rockets have to be a premium. However this need to spend almost all of it on players to compete right away is really flawed. There were other options out there. Luck always plays a role - the Rockets are lucky they didn't lose their draft pick the year they drafted Jalen Green.... the Rockets were lucky that Cam Whitmore slipped to them in the draft. The Spurs are lucky that they got Wemby. The Thunder and their rebuild is ahead of the Rockets. Their GM maximized his cap space, drafted well and had a coach that develops young players and a culture that is open to innovation. The Blazers are ahead of the Rockets as well....... the Magic are arguably ahead of the Rockets as well........ the Pistons? A lot of this success will comedown to whether Cunningham is healthy, but they certainly has as much young talent as the Rockets - but it doesn't fit as well....... the Kings were terribly mismanaged and now are competitive after getting a real GM and scouting department ...... the Wizards? Who knows, it is early - the Sixers are not rebuilding - their rebuild has at least gotten them to the ECF. Over the last three seasons, the Rockets have had the following picks - #2,3,4,16,17, 20, 23, 24, 29..... 3 of them are not even on the Rockets anymore after two full seasons of play since Stone took over. Stone hasn't been terrible like some claim. He has thus far taken the player projected to go where he was picking at the top of the lottery... he made a deal to trade up for Sengun that was excellent... he took Eason who is promising - but he also has had duds and so far neither Green nor Smith have lived up to their draft position - but I think they ultimately will. Stone has been "okay" so far, and I don't give him a higher grade because of how many assets he has wasted opportunities to get.
Stone should eventually be fired but I think Ferntits made the mistake to go all public to announce Phase 2. Should not have done that before 2 years have passed at least.
This - Tilman when he bought the team said that he could not imagine ever tanking or bottoming out. Stone convinced Tilman it was the right course going forward, and he got him to agree early on and to follow through with it. Stone also deserves credit for getting Tilman to have some degree of confidence in him and to listen to him - Morey never was able to get Tilman to not meddle, so he left - Stone so far has juggled that well. Stone also deserves credit for not making any massive mistakes - it sounds like faint praise, but it is important. The issue I have with Stone - is not his plans or even his scouting or relationship with people - it is that he doesn't do well when it comes to the details... and over time those details really add up. For example - I look at the Spurs, who were involved in the Williams signing for Dallas....... SA got a 2030 pick swap with Phoenix..... that may turn out to not matter, but there is a legitimately good chance that will have value. The Rockets lost assets trading away two first rounders from two years ago, when they really should have gotten something for them positive. The Allen trade, the dumping of a Nets players contract in the Harden trade..... over time these things matter, and rebuilding teams should be gathering these assets and winning these trades, not losing them.
If the deals are all done he should be fired. Dumping 4 seconds and 3 guys you drafted in the first round and never gave a chance to develop so you can pay Brooks $80MM is an all time terrible move.
Isn't it possible that JC, Garuba, and TyTy were just misses and their value depreciated? Losing the second round picks is disappointing but only because they are used as currency for trades.
This feels like Bill O'Brien scapegoating Brian Gaine all over again. We want a carpetbagger coach so badly that we make concessions in his hiring process to give significant say over roster management. The GM becomes a puppet GM to make happen whatever the coach wants, regardless of cost. Then the coach sows even more seeds to place the blame on the GM at the first sign that things are not going 100% according to the best case scenario. After the GM gets fired, he takes over as de facto GM and makes even more, absolutely value-blind moves that set the franchise back 5 years. Finally the Tommy Boy owner wakes up to the con, gets rid of the GM/coach, but it's already too late. Era lost. Gotta start back from scratch.
You're giving him too much credit. Those moves were made to pay someone who didn't even sign with us, with no backup plan.
Maybe they were misses but it's almost impossible to know based on how bad the situation was last year. As the true tank commander it was Stone's job to maximize those 3 with better coaching and he failed to do so.
