It's not about the seeding, but how close we'll be to contending for real. With FVV, I feel we'll be the underdogs in Vegas against literally any team we match up against. With Harden, are we still underdogs? It's not just his impact on the record overall, but the on court production of all these players would go up with a true PG at the helm. Freddy is honestly pretty solid, but James is just an offensive savant.
Harden doesn’t make this team a contender, he would make it better but at the cost of not retaining younger talent. The same is true of FVV this off-season, give him a thank you and a gold watch and move on. DD
Just letting him walk is not a good use of cap space. They will either pick up his option as an expiring contract or re-structure hopefully with a lesser salary and team options after this upcoming year. If Imanimal is correct (I doubt it), Stone should be fired.
The Rockets never imagined they were going to be "contenders" in the 24-25 season. So faulting the Rockets in 2025 for not acquiring Harden in 2023 is revisionist history. How the Rockets got to this point actually happened and it couldn't have gone any better. They over performed. No need to second guess decisions they made 2 years ago. Now they need to figure out what to do this summer to make roster adjustments and keep the momentum. Folks need to stop bashing FVV. He did his job. Any post season success this year is icing on the cake.
I didn't fault them for it, I simply said I wish it was James and not FVV. When we're deciding how to move forward, I'd rather not pay Freddy 40+ mil a year as he continues to age. I think Freddy has been solid and I could see why they wanted him in 2023 to get out of the tank job.
I'm not sure this 1st sentence is true. The Rockets wanted Brook Lopez as well. The Rockets wanted to acquire a star and put the ball in their hands with FVV being more off ball. If Green had developed as the hoped, the starting lineup would have been something like FVV-Green-Brooks-Giannis-Lopez. The Rockets weren't interested in having the ball in Harden's hands.
IIRC, they wanted Lopez because they were far from certain that Sengun would be someone they could build around. We missed out on the Wemby sweepstake. Amen was seen as even more raw than Jalen Green. In other words, the young core wasn't as promising as what we see now. They were trying to compete with veterans. That's why Stone was interested in Harden. If it wasn't vetoed by Udoka, we might have signed Harden instead of FVV.
I am not wrong. The goal was just to get back to relevancy (phase 2). THEN get into contention (phase 3). They never imagined they were going to be contenders just two seasons after clocking a 20-win season. Here is the direct quote from Tilman. "We're just excited. It's phase two. Phase two was getting ourselves back into the playoffs, learning how to win again. Hopefully soon I won't be up here for anything except to tell you how great it was to win a championship. That's in phase three. So, let's have phase two right now. You had to crawl and now we're going to walk and then we're going to run. But we're all expecting a lot." -Fertitta (April 26, 2023) Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta at ease with Ime Udoka being coach - ABC13 Houston
Respectfully, you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. On one hand, you speak in past tense "I wish it was James"? On the other hand, you speak in future tense "how to move forward"? So which is it? Because in 2023, Harden would have killed cap flexibility with a 4-year Max contract. Plus he was damaged goods and wasn't looking like a long-term solution to anything. Now in 2025, he resurrected his career, so in hindsight, it makes that decision questionable. It could have easily gone the other way. Going forward, Harden isn't available today unless the clippers want to trade him. He has another year left on his contract. They'd want young talent in return. Who'd you give up to get Harden? Also, don't ding FVV for his contract. That was a very unique situation. The Rockets were below salary cap so they had to spend that money somewhere or they would have donated it Adam Silver. FVV's contract enabled the Rockets to get a stop gap solution with a flexible contract to let Stone do some cooking. The plan seems to be working.
Both are true. In 2023, I understand why it was Freddy. Culturally, we probably didn't want James to be so heliocentric on offense to continue developing our young players as playmakers and not just spot up shooters. We had plenty to spend on Harden that summer, as evidenced by what we spent on Freddy. All in all though, I'm just saying I'm a fan of James Harden, I wish he was on this team in Freddy's place because he's a better player. I'm also agreeing with you that Fred made sense because of many of the reasons and then some, and that it worked out. I don't think it's as deep as my first post sounded I guess, because I understand logically it's wishful thinking. It's like "Imagine if it was James bringing the ball up the court with all this athleticism around him." Plus a mix of what could have been if not for that hamstring of CP3s.
Uggg, don't remind me of CP3's hamstring. I loved the JH years. It was fun to watch him blossom from an OKC role player into an MVP. JH literally broke the game. But the James "I am the system" Harden is probably not a good match on a defense 1st team full of rookies. If I could wave my magic wand to change Rocket history: #1: The 94-95 Bulls beat the Magic in the ECF and we got to watch Dream wipe the floor with Luc Longley for the win. #2: CP3's hamstring thing never happened cause the Rockets win that year. ... #50: In 1983, the Rockets drafted Clyde Drexler at #3 rather than Rodney McCray. ... #94: The Rockets traded down to pick up Zach Edey at #9 plus another unprotected 1st (and passed on Reed Shepherd). #95: The Rockets traded for Kevin Durrant at the trade deadline and we only gave up on Cam Whittemore, Tate, and Landale, plus whatever picks. Honestly, I would have thrown in Green to give them some value back. #96: Rockets signed JH over FVV. Picking up Harden to be on this team would be like: Your super nerdy naive friend that went with you to a strip club last night and that super hot stripper was all over him and they exchanged numbers and now she is asking if she can crash at his place for a few weeks. He asks you, and you tell him "what could go wrong?" It would be damn fun and maybe it works out ...but you know you are playing the devil's game. If this goes bad, it'll be scorched earth.
kind of reminds me of Kenny Smith. Really important to winning but frustrating games where he would only score 8 points or 2 pts. The problem is we don't have Sam Cassell to alleviate minutes. I like Amen at PtForward.
I don't think this conversation comes down to FVV Vs James - hell, that conversation aint close in itself. What it comes down to is if this team can win with Fred. To a certain degree, sure they can but .... that degree falls short of the ultimate objective. To me, the question is, how do we make the team better - able to get closer to that ultimate goal? I think there's an obvious position to upgrade .... and that's the point guard spot. That's not saying it would be easy to do .... Not saying that James Harden is the solution either. But if you give this team a ~38% shooter who can also attack the rim - it opens up much of the offense for everyone else. As it stands now, you run three guys out there in your starting five who shoot below league average in FVV, Amen & Sengun. The team needs a point guard with some gravity.
Yeahhhh man it seems like we agree on so much, but I think I've got a few that you might have somewhere on that list of yours. -Yao never gets forced to play year round by China and plays 5 more years for us. -Rudy T never gets sucker punched (before my time, but I've read his book like 5 times) -Dwight decides he wants to be a supercharged DeAndre Jordan instead of a back to basket star. The only one I'm not with you on is #95. I can't let go of Jalen Green. Maybe it's homerism, but I just love his tenacity, work ethic, iron man status (like James, for all his faults), and feel like he is not a complainer. I think he's going to mature into something special still. I'd love to get KD with these kids though. For James and his put-the-girls-through-college self, there are a few things I would like him to mentor the young kids in, but especially Amen/Cam/Jalen in my dream scenario, but mostly... change of speed. James is ELITE, like GOAT of slowing down and having a quick first step. Can you imagine that skill set with a player like Jalen/Cam/Amen? They're 5x more athletic than James ever was, but he is a maestro at using positioning, timing, rhythm. Man these kids could flourish if they could reproduce half his bag on offense with the ball in their hands.
I love your additions to the list. I'm gonna start a thread on alternate Rockets history. Should be fun. I don't blame you on not wanting to give up on Jalen. Cause if that scenario had happened as I described, 15 years from now that could easily be another regrettable outcome that we wish we could have rewritten. But I also wonder what THIS team would be like this THIS season if we simply swapped KD for Jalen Green. I think this team would legit contend OKC in the WCF with KD. ...and next season too. If I told you I had a time machine and the Rockets won two championships with KD but Jalen turned into a HOF candidate 5 years later but the Rockets never won a championship with him, you'd do that trade every time. But we don't have a time machine so... Simply having JH on the team doesn't mean that players pick up his abilities. If they thought his game was so good to emulate, they can simply watch tape and practice it. JH sucks up oxygen so, IMO, the more likely outcome is their growth is stunted, not helped. But we'll never know. I loved the conversation. Thank you!
Agreed! I'll look out for your thread. I try to stay away from the toxic **** around here, so that doesn't give me a lot of things to post about, but I enjoyed it as well!
I mean many people here are basically trying to explain something along the lines of of Kenny Smith was better than Kevin Johnson because hey, the Rockets had scoreboard over the Suns back in those days and won championships.
