KOC: Rockets have had conversations with Memphis about trading down from #3

Since Eli Witus has been in the building.

 

Competent GM? Our rebuild has been extremely competent under Stone

 

Has it?

We've had 3 top 3 picks in the past 3 seasons without landing even a single star player, we're still not a playoff team, AND we're stuck with Dillon Brooks for 3 more seasons.

Is that how we drew it up?

 

To teach the kids a thing or two about flopping?

 

20+ win season, great young core, great coach & draft capital for the 5 -7 years. What else does a successful rebuild look like? Lol

 

Stone's saving move as a GM was hiring the right guy as coach at the right moment. The whole thing would have fallen apart if he had hired almost anyone else.

I'm not sure Stone can hang his hat on his draft resume since he's had to draft the BPA so often. The Green, Smith, and Thompson picks were pretty straightforward. Cam was the obvious choice as he fell down the board.

The analytics on Tari and Sengun made those good moves, so he gets points there, but he loses in my mind for picking Josh Christopher in '21 with that #24 pick. Better guys were available, and Garuba at #23 didn't work out either.

We will find out how good Stone and company are at evaluating talent this year with the #3 selection.

 

I'm not sure I'd call the "young core" great, I think solid is probably a more accurate term since there are no stars among them. Collecting 4-5 young role players is fine.... but a successful rebuild requires stars.

 

The difference between you and most everyone else is that you have no patience. You expect a bunch of high potential kids to be stars day one. None of the players picked ahead of our group have become stars either. Wemby is only a “star”, because the media has created that narrative. He has star potential as do Amen, Jalen and Sengun. Jabari and Cam could also be included in that group, but their roles on this team will not get the media’s attention until we are contenders. None of the other draft picks since Stone began have been saddled with Silas, which is the only real bad mark on Stone’s resume. He has done a masterful job of this re-build which has us as playoff contenders in the 4th year and with loads of trade and draft capital.

 

And yet nearly half the GMs passed on him to draft worse players.

Those are not one for one. Most picks in the 20s fail. Most picks in the teens are not close to as good as Sengun and Tari. Stone and every other GM do not possess omniscience for the future.

Stone became GM with 2 guaranteed FRPs in the cupboard for the next 3 years if memory serves. He has a little luck, but he comes away with what's looking like 5 or 6 good players from the drafts those years. However, he still has a rap for being bad at draft management and his drafting skills are suspect.

 

I think the difference is that I don't have infinite patience. After 3 years of a highly hyped player being terrible at basketball despite having everything tailored for them since day one.... after that, yeah, I run out of patience.

It's fine if you want to give every player a decade to figure things out... but that's not how it works.

You have typically 2 or 3 years to at a minimum be a starting caliber player before people should stop looking at a player as a future star in most cases.

Right now the closest to a star the Rockets have is Sengun with Tari and Jabari looking like decent role players and it's too early to tell on Cam and Amen but neither of them appear to be foundational stars either... so unless something changes, the rebuild has done the easy part, finding solid role players, but has made no progress on finding foundational stars.

San Antonio on the other hand has their foundational superstar... they've got the hard part done. IMO that puts them ahead of the Rockets.

 

You didn’t address that no other stars have emerged from those drafts. GM’s can’t magically control the lottery. SA has their “star” because of blind luck or a corrupt league. You have let your hate for one player cloud your judgement to the extent that you cannot take any context into account. You also forget that we will probably have 3 more shots at a superstar thanks to the Harden trade. We may even have a shot at one of the established superstars in a year or two due to the flexibility and draft assets this GM has compiled.

 

I think the issue for me is that we had a top 2 pick in 2021 and we drafted a guy that arguably isn't top 10 in that class.

Some of the rest is just bad luck, we didn't get a chance to take Chet or Banchero or Wemby but when you blow a #2 pick it makes years where you miss out on guys that much more frustrating.

Also, I'm not trying to suggest it's easy.... the opposite in fact. It's so difficult that you can't waste opportunities like they did in 2021 and I feel like they might be about to do so again.

 

This is a more reasonable take, although no stars have emerged from the 21 draft. You can make the argument that other players are better, but if your criteria is you have to get a star with #2, who would be the pick, Scottie Barnes or Evan Mobley? Neither look like stars and out of the three, Jalen still has the greatest potential. I do think that the potential is fading fast and the early part of this upcoming season will determine his future with the Rockets. This conversation is about Stone and picking at #2 and not getting a star in a starless draft (unless its Sengun) is a pretty disingenuous argument on why Stone is a bad GM.

 

CHI - HOU - MEM - MIA

CHI: Brooks (HOU) + Tate (HOU) + Jovic (MIA) + Londale (HOU) + #15 (via MIA) + 2025 HOU FRP (top 10 protected) + #44 (via HOU)
Bulls begin to retool & move off of Levine's contract by moving down 4 spots. The HOU FRP & SRP is for Caruso.

MEM: #3 (via HOU)
Grizz give up #9 & future FRP to move up (Cingan?)

MIA: Levine (CHI) + Adams (HOU) + #11 (via CHI) + 2026 MEM FRP (top 10 protected)
Heat move off of unhappy Himmie. Levine is a scorer, but not the defender like Himmie. Adams shores up C position. Move up 4 spots for taking on Levine's contract. The MEM pick is re-routed to MIA for Himmie.

HOU: Butler (MIA) + Caruso (CHI) + #9 (via MEM) + #39 (via MEM)
Himmie comes to home to Tomball / Houston. Caruso leads the 2nd unit and makes Ime very happy. #9 for Kel'el Ware. #39 for AJ Johnson.

Use NT-MLE on Buddy Hield.(2 years, $20M, PO on Yr 2)
Use Bi-Annual on Mo Bomba (2 years, $9M, PO on Yr 2)

FVV - Caruso - AJJ
Thrilla - Amen - Hinton
Himmie - Cam - Hield
Bari - Tari - Uncle Jeff
Sengawd - Ware - Bomba

Ship

 

We ended up drafting the best player from that draft, so who cares?

 

We already have a roster crunch... we are at the point where quality matters more than quantity.

 

Sure, we got a top 3 player... but we still wasted the #2 pick.

Would we be better right now if we had Barnes and Sengun or Mobley and Sengun?

Hard to say because that makes the team better and they miss out on Smith and Amen.

 

We don't have enough playing time to develop all the players we do have properly.

DD

 

The difference is that in some sports fans have more rights like with some soccer clubs where fans sit within the Front Office, yes, the fans representative is conversing with Front Office members on a weekly or monthly basis, heard it right.

Now they can surely voice their 'Impatience'. Here fans are treated like paying customers but not really like you belong with the team.

 

While I agree that this is true, we are still in search of a superstar player to build around. Sengun is looking like the most probable, and maybe Amen. But both of them still lack at least one thing, i.e. outside shooting, to get to their ceiling. And there is no guarantee.

Until then, we can't really build with good veteran role players or secondary star player. All you can do now is to keep a bunch of promising young players and wait and see which of them are going to stick. The more young guys you have, the more chances that a few of them will pan out. This is basically what OKC, Orlando, and Detroit have been doing. Obviously some are more successful than others. It's a combination of luck and talent evaluation.