is ping pong boy sam hinkie? If so, both hinkie and stone went chalk with every draft pick so they drafted exactly the same
Jeremy Lamb was a key part of the James Harden trade after he had a great summer league. He didn't even suit up in the regular season for houston. Edit: Royce White was insanely talented but couldn't get over the mental health issues, which was on Morey to vett Jones was an anomaly. Tall, athletic, winner in college. A player like him could dupe me again.
this is hard to argue against. morey orchestrated one of the biggest facades and heists in history. Must have had a good PR team
Stone got 6 great prospects in 3 yrs anybody who says he isnt a good drafter is honestly just wrong and dumb af. I dont even know what you mean by "chalk" but Sengun, Tari and Cam arent lotto picks and quickly outperformed their draft spot. If they were so obvious why they there outside the lottery? Anybody who says those were easy picks just using 20/20 hindsight glasses. Hinkie and Stone are not on the same level at all. Hinkie kept getting players at the same position. Embiid, Noels, Saric, Okafor the only non big man lotto he got was Michael Carter Williams who got ROY then became a bust. Hinkie's the Process lasted 4 yrs and his team was still trash when he got fired, Stone in contrast tore down the team and already got 2nd seed in Y4.
Drafting Christopher, Garuba, and TyTy are such non issues when we had like over 10 draft picks in 3 years.
Stone drafted the consensus with his high lotto picks though. Other than Mobley. Most had Mobley rated higher than Green and so far Evan Mobley has been a better NBA player
Wait ping pong boy is Morey? The only GM AFAIK who publicly talked about the draft being a crapshoot is Sam Hinkie. Not to mention that Morey has never had a draft pick above #12 during his Rockets tenure, and he's had zero lottery picks as the Sixers GM. He is as far from someone who's associated with ping pong balls as any GM.
Oh lol I forgot about that. But what's even the comparison? Morey has never sniffed a top-10 pick much less 4 straight top-4 picks. If you're going to compare Stone's draft history with previous Rockets GMs, the only GM that has similar picks would be Ray Patterson, with Lucas, Sampson, Hakeem, McCray among his high picks.
When you are picking in the top 3 your picks would most likely be consensus if you are a good drafter. OKC drafted consensus with KD, Harden, Chet.
Morey has missed on his latter picks though. Chose Baby Melo over Kawhi, famously picked role player Shane Battier over Rudy Gay and Donte Alexander over Nicolas Batum. Jeremy Lamb although traded for Harden was also a bust. Joe Chee, Royce White, Terrence Jones, Sam Dekker.
yeah - those were all reach for the stars types of picks much later in the draft. For instance in the Green/Sengun/Garuba/Christopher draft, Green was considered best player available at the 2nd pick and Sengun and Garuba were rated as top 3 offensive and defensive players for that draft so Stone grabbed them with the opportunities he had. Stone has really just showed a measured way of handling risks with his picks relative to the team's position at the time - in that draft with holes all over the roster he grabbed the best player he thought at #2 and grabbed a player each for their offensive and defensive upside - Sengun worked out....Garuba obviously didn't...and Christopher had all the talent to be an NBA player but obviously his aversion to passing the ball doomed him in a league where the defenders are better. He was just a high upside flyer we hoped could play a little PG at the time. In 2021, we were looking to rebuild value the GM has access to via the draft after the Harden era - that means especially in 21, we valued high upside swings. The goal wasn't necessarily to get useable players - it was to hopefully get a guy who drastically outperformed average draft value that you either retain or use in a trade to get players of your choosing. Stone went 1 for 3 with his 2021 later in the draft but really the plan was to draft 3 different types of upswing players and hope at least one of them hit...and considering Sengun is a future all star, I would say it worked out. As the team composition has changed, Stone's bets have become more conservative - for instance, I think Castle was the higher upside pick, but Reed was the one most "ready" and useful to this team now...which has proved to be wrong, but I think this was the first time in recent draft memory where we opted for fit over 'best player available' or taking a flyer on upside.
