Rockets trade TyTy Washington and Usman Garuba + stuff to Atlanta for Alpha Kaba

Green, Sengun, Jabari, and Eason are looking like decent hits. Meanwhile the late 1st rounders like Garuba, Christopher, and TyTy are always a crap shoot. Maybe you could have nabbed Bones Hyland or local kid Grimes but at this point they're only decent rotation players, nothing amazing.

Amen and Cam are looking really nice at the moment so overall I think this newish (post Morey) Rox FO is doing pretty well.

 

you’d have to be a complete idiot to screw up 5 lotto picks. Morey found NBA players in the second round more than once.

Stone doe not have me sold

 

the kid had to eat a beefy buyout from Real Madrid and can’t even get his full rookie bag… Hope he plays well at the FIBAs and hitches onto some team and some $$$

 

Lol. That's cold-blooded!!

 

I am sure he gets a decent salary from a top European club.

It is not like he has to go through being waived after being waived.

 

I don't .... they made a few million each for being fringe NBA players.

Now they'll go make a pile of $$$ in an overseas league.

We should all be so lucky ....

 

Remind me again who passed on Kawhi for Baby Melo? Also who picked Capela over Jokic? At least Stone has never passed on a generational talent Morey did it twice.

Stone>>>Morey when it comes to drafting.

Stone also found players in the 2nd round ie KPJ and KMJ. He also found a pretty good player with low first rounders like Sengun and Cam Whitmore which Morey never did. Oh wait he did draft Nicolas Batum one time, too bad he traded him for Donte Green and Joey Dorsey. Let's not forget Jeremy Lamb, Royce White, Jones and Sam Dekker.

 

Every single GM picked someone over Jokic, including the Nuggets themselves. Some did it twice...

 

as a destiny only fan. I laughed out loud.

 

Garuba outplayed 99% of Spanish basketball players (among the best non-US players in the world) at the under 14, under 18 and Real Madrid B levels. He then joined as a rotation player the senior team as the youngest ever to step foot on their court, despite having 0 offensive skills (i.e. with hardworking defense, unselfishness and rebounding). Real Madrid is one of the best non-NBA teams in the world. Being tall is not rare. Doing what Garuba did is rare.

I don't know Tyty's background that well, but I'm sure it wasn't just good luck.

I don't know how you can call their earnings lucky and then be so sure being waived is earned rather than luck. These guys earned every penny they've ever made. They weren't born into rich families nor inherit any wealth. When you make money like that, you will have earned it too and people will say you were lucky. You're going to flip those people off and go enjoy the money you earned.

 

Players aren’t paid for their worth - it’s not even about them “earning” the pay. A team pays for the right to not have you play for another team. It’s a calculated risk - sometime the team comes out ahead, sometimes the player. If a player doesn’t meet expectations - I think it’s more a commentary on the team misjudging talent rather than the player pretending to be something they aren’t. I think injury is the only exception to this rule - but of course teams are insured financially against that risk in most cases.

 

So what a miss is a miss. Rockets were even looking for a center at the time but picked Capela over Jokic just like they picked baby Melo over Kawhi and Donte Greene over Nicholas Batum.

Maybe if Morey didn't keep trading away our picks for washed vets he'd have had the chance to draft Jokic instead of the Nuggets ever thought of that?

Morey started his first couple of years with solid drafts like Brooks, Patterson and Landry but after that was highly ineffective as a drafter, to say you aren't happy with Stone's drafting and then use Morey as an example is just being blinded by nostalgia.

 

Did anyone say that? Certainly not me.

 

Yes, players who can get to that level have to work very hard to reach it. But I think when people say NBA players are lucky they mostly refer to their physical gifts. Being as tall as they are is rare. (How many people you personally know are taller than 6'6?) Being tall and coordinated enough to be a professional player is extremely rare. And those attributes are born with, not work for. 99% of people would not be able to earn a living, let alone millions, by playing basketball no matter how hard they worked on it.

 

Our lives are all dependent on Destiny.

 

Anyone who is above 6 ft 2 or 6 ft 3 is not considered an average tall human.

If you nurture kids and their basketball interest early on, it is not as hard as you make it sound like.

The parents have to be really tall though.

But alter your angle and make basketball hoop stand lower and shorter humans can play it.

 

It's less than 1% of tall people doing well in euro league or making the NBA so I don't buy the idea that it's not earned. These are the tall people that work as hard as the short ones.

 

Not just tall. It's also the athleticism. Garuba looks kind of awkward by NBA standard. But he is more athletic and coordinated than the vast majority of tall people in the world.

Again I don't deny that they work hard. Just that it is also true that they are lucky to be born with such body. Without it, it wouldn't matter how hard they work. Luck and hard work are not mutually exclusive. Why do you have to dichotomize them? You need both to be able to get to the tip top of the world.

 

Kind of surprised no one has posted this yet but Sam Vecenie & Spins talked a bit about TyTy's release and more meta how hard it is for late first rounders/small guards in today's NBA - using his release(as a decent player) to connect the dots of larger trends about what teams value in today's NBA.

It's good context for those who need to see the big picture of the usefulness of those players in the modern NBA and they also make a case for those types of players staying in college longer to develop their skills because NBA teams tend to not want to invest time in developing them if they are undersized.