KD? Giannis? Book? Beard? Role Players[Youth Movement]?

Obviously for an MVP contender still in his prime they're going to demand at least one of Sengun or Amen. I agree that the fit is awkward though. Maybe if we add a guy like Vucevic to play next to Giannis in the frontcourt, and a bought-out Brad Beal as a sixth man, something like that

 

Harden is playing where he grew up. It's a hard pitch of why he'd ever come back to Houston.

 

I don't think he's in his prime at all. I think it's nothing but decline from this point onward. He's the exact prototype of a player who would decline poorly. Lateral and vertical quickness are the first things to go and he's not skilled enough to be a player who ages well.

So after half a decade of rebuilding we end up with 2 non-shooters on the floor in the modern NBA? I would be very nervous about it. Ime and 2 non-shooters feels like a dead end to me. When was the last time a team won a title that way like 25 years ago maybe?

Has Giannis ever been successful with another non-shooter on the floor?

Giannis is one of my favorites and I would love to get him but it feels like we're going to try to re-tool for 1-2 years while he declines very fast. I'll support it if it happens, but again makes me very very nervous. I agree with you it's an awkward fit even if we trade 1 non-shooter. Which says a lot about the way our team is currently constructed.

 

Can't add Giannis to this brick fest - he needs to be surrounded by shooters. We already have Amen, the poor man's Giannis - no way they fit with each other.

 

Giannis is fools gold. He plays bully ball and can't shoot. None of his talent is skill, its ALL athleticism. Great player on the decline. Once he gets injured its going to be bad. The assets required to get him close any future window. 4+4 in a trade. I wouldn't give that up for Luka. This is why I pressed discounted stars. The prices between someone considered a star and a superstar are so astronomical and hilarious. Trades like Rudy Gobert that reset the market ruined the market. I am not basing any trade off of that BS parameter. We are not like other win now teams with crappy draft picks. We are literally the most well stocked team in the NBA. After 2027 OKCs assets are mostly gone and they are nothing of the quality of ours. We have literally 5 lottery picks and 2 more firsts between now and 2030. Should have been 6 with PHI 2027. I'm not giving that up for anything. I am also not packaging up our young talent like thrown ins in a trade.

 

Yeah I mean I'm not in love with the idea, for all the reasons you mentioned. I do think he's still at prime levels of performance right now but it's possible you're right that it's all downhill in terms of his performance moving forward. For me Giannis is more of a "think about, see what the price is, see what other moves could possibly be made, and see if anything makes sense" kind of thing for the Rockets, and I hope that's how the front office sees it too. It's not like if, say, Tatum become available, where I'd try extremely hard to get a trade done.

 

If I'm trading for a vet i want Beard back straight up tbh. Ime has no offensive chops to speak of, James IS an offensive system by himself. Trade Green and Fred for Beard and a shooting 2 guard and let our prime defenders cover his biggest weakness. James doesn't need Ime to understand how an offense works, just give him the ball and he'll make offense work, and this team sorely, sorely needs a way to actually play on that end of the court.

 

I'm starting to wonder though if we're nitpicky about Giannis > then who's really an option? We keep saying such and such won't push us over the top. Doncic, SGA, Jokic are in that higher tier but it's a fantasy to get one of those guys, would involve so much luck. We can't strategize around that. We'll most likely end up being able to acquire them on the decline. Like we did with Howard, Westbrook and Paul - which didn't work because they were all declining fast. So maybe what we're REALLY is saying is we need more than 1 realistically acquirable player to push us over the top.

I don't know that we're lacking anything but shooting and experience. Sengun with a 3PT shot is a mandatory double team for the rest of his career and opens up the paint for penetration from the wing. Amen is improving all the time at his shooting, what will he be in 2 years? I think this duo can be every bit as good as Tatum and Brown in 2-way impact and in late game situations.

 

When people kept talking about consolidation trade and all of these players popped up in Booker and Fox it just never made sense. Sure I would be tempted by the names you mention but when you think about the cost it never made sense. The only trades I would make are this summer DEPENDING on the cost. Durant and Harden. After that I would just rely on our players and moves around the edges.

You can go team by team, LaMelo, Tray Young, Booker, Ja, JJJ, Zion, Giannis,...none of those guys make any sense. The only player I could see working if we swing and miss on Durant and Harden is perhaps Giddey,

I think we make the mistake with Amen that we drafted him as a PG and that we just stick him there but because of his abilities it is very clear he is essentially Kawhi waiting on a 3pt shot. It may sound counterintuitive but to me sticking Amen at PG would box him in when he is very much more a force of nature.

 

Man, I hope you're right. I would personally phrase it more as "there is a real chance" they can be as good as Tatum and Brown, but I guess that is implied.

I do really want to see what this team looks like with 3+ shooters on the floor at all times. We haven't even really been able to manage even that much. I really wouldn't mind at all if we had an offseason where we just add some reinforcements for our spacing and run it back, see what one more offseason of development does for us. When our trajectory of improvement stalls, if we think we're not good enough at that point... that's when I'd start to think about these "declining star on a big contract" kind of trades.

 

I know that I have given him a lot of hate in the past but if you could convince Harden and CP3 to come off the bench with Jeff Green and Adams then you got a championship ready team. Plus if you could get it done without gutting the team too much then we could still get Durantula with picks+. Raphael has the Stones to get this kind of deal done.

 

Somewhere in another timeline we have harden, booker, mobley, jarett allen and jvg

 

Tilman jr and Stone needs to have an honest conversation. If we build around Sengun, are we really going to be a championship team?

 

yes, maybe not next year or the year after but I can see the progression with alpi as the cornerstone. Don’t get me wrong, alpi frustrating the **** out of me, but if he puts up the work in every offseason, then he’ll definitely be a 20-10 player for a long time.

 

Giannis or Booker should be top targets. Green is the easiest to let go of, but I would imagine any trade for either of those two would probably have someone asking about Amen.

No one on this team (that we've seen get significant playing time) can consistently score at a high level. Sengun is the closest at that, and if we can hold on to him he's a great second star, but the amount of shots clanking off the front of the rim in this series is a testament to the fact that he can't do it alone.

When Green is hot, you get a glimpse of just how outstanding this team can be. But scoring single digits in three of four playoff games is just untenable. I had hoped the inconsistency would fade over time - and maybe it still will - but I think we're far enough in that it's completely fair to wonder if this is just the type of player he is. Which is a great addition - provided you have a #1 piece already on the roster.


Barring a miracle turnaround, this series shows that the Rockets aren't there yet, and they likely don't have all the right pieces in their current construction to get there (unless Whitmore or Sheppard are stars in waiting who haven't had the time to show it yet).

 

I would sign Beard only to 1 Year, doubt he does it.

 

Alpe is only 22 or 23, all they needed to do is convince his agent to take a lesser deal of more years and fewer millions.

This build around someone tactic is corny, why not say build with somebody + somebody.