To me Giannis is fools gold. Gutting the team for duplicative production we already have provides us with very little advantage. At this point, I think it drags out into the season. Would rather him stay in Milwaukee. The bigger question is what other stars do with think shake loose? I see Ant and Luka frozen solid where they are. The other trade improvement I see is for a top tier PG. Which of those shake loose? FVV's contract is flexible for that reason. Does Cleveland F with a conference champion to dump a returning Garland from injury? No. Giddy will get signed and they turn around and trade him? No. Ja? Don't want, no. I don't see any other possibilities. Rockets have had multiple opportunities at Harden and that ship has sailed. I think the Rockets keep their powder dry until 2027 draft and see what shakes loose.
I agree with you but I we already have KD and grooming Amen and Sengun. I think we only need to look for a new star post KD era, this would also be the best time cuz Sengun and Amen would be prime age and can attract others.
People won't agree with this but I see KD like LBJ. His skill is such that I see him playing until 42. After watching him all the way from UT I think he is very concerned about his legacy. I believe he is home and would give the Rockets Tim Duncan like deals to stay here IF we are successful after this extension. It appears on this extension through 39 that he is going to take a small cut. At 40 and beyond I believe things would change drastically. I don't think the star aspect is linked to a timetable other than I don't believe we are absorbing 4 lotto picks onto this team. Still pissed Stone didn't wrestle the PHI 2027 pick out of Brooklyn.
I think we already got so much value from those 2025 pick and swap basically doubled those for nothing.
I agree totally. I expect Amen Thompson to provide equal basketball value (judged by total VORP) over the next 3 years. Giannis is redundant - and I think this will be the last year he is better than Amen. The star 4u3kers who keep trying to trade our young talent on value contracts for super max players past their prime should enjoy the current young core. I would rather see the young core (down to five now) grow and fail and then grow some more before finally maybe succeeding instead of buying one title with mercenaries.
Like I have said multiple times adding KD gives us a 12+ year window with Alpi and Amen reaching their prime in a few years. If we spend what it will take to get Giannis, our windows shortens to 3-4 years given Giannis relies completely on athleticism for what he does. It would go down as one of the stupidest trades in NBA history. Thankfully most fans see that and so does Stone.
Defensive rating is points per 100 possessions while the player is on the court. You see the problem, right? It's a context-dependent stat. Those stats tell you what is happening, not why it's happening. We know that whenever Sengun is on the court, Ime makes sure to have great defenders around him. On the other hand, you know how Ime sometimes used Amen or Tari to keep the defense intact when Houston's lesser defenders were on the court. I'm pretty skeptical about most on/off stats isolating defense. That's why I like the specific stuff, like, when player X was within three feet of the rim, how did the opposing team do on shots at the rim? I'm cool with tabling the athleticism debate, but I am curious, what traditional metrics are you talking about?
I would not be surprised if Giannis returns less than what Brooklyn got for Bridges or Utah got for Gobert. For a few years the league was over paying for stars, (and by league I mean a few poorly managed teams), then they watch an Indiana vs. OKC finals and realized that gutting a team or sending an absurd number of draft picks for a star has never worked out when the key player is 30+. The Celtics pulled off one ring, but there are not many examples over 80 years, the blueprint has been laid out, and it is what OKC has done. The Rockets essentially have failed building the way OKC did, they are beginning to pivot. They tanked for years, got 4 high draft picks, threw away a ton of late firsts, and have not gotten a single player that is being extended on a Rookie max even though they were lucky enough to get a top 4 draft pick 4 years in a row. At this point I think Giannis will cost one young up and coming guy and 2-3 firsts. I dont think they will get 5-6 firsts. He has some leverage, his age, type of play etc. My guess is that they are throwing Luka for AD type trade offers at them.
I disagree with this. Sengun is a 21 yr old all star he is easily worth a max just that Stone worked his magic. Amen is projected to be a max contract in 2 yrs. Using rookie max to judge whether a rookie panned out or not is just wrong, Ayton got that rookie max now he is making 9M for the Lakers.
All of them? You can’t find a defensive metric that says he was below average. Most were very good. Including on/off. Your point loses validity when the players that are supposed to “mask” Senguns deficiencies have a worse rating than Alp.
Man I would love to see Jabari step up in a big way this next year and makes us believe we already have a Big 3 from the draftees.
This is kind of ridiculous. You say the Rox failed building like OKC because they haven’t given a max extension to any of our 4 high draft picks when only the first 2 of those 4 picks have been eligible to be extended so far. (And you completely omit the near-max extension we gave to our Allstar center who we drafted 16th overall in 2021.) Why frame your argument in such a deliberately disingenuous way? Amen is obviously on track for a rookie max extension; and it’s like you’re punishing our FO for being shrewd enough to extend Sengun for less than the rookie max even if he is equally as deserving as someone like Banchero. Very odd. Further, the Rox have “failed” so much in their rebuild that they have the 3rd highest projected win total next year according to Vegas. Quite the failure indeed.
I wouldn't expect too much at this point--usually if a guy is going to be a star-level player he'll have shown more flashes of it during his first three years. That said, if Jabari can take one decent step forward in his play on both ends, he will at least be a championship-caliber 3nD starter, and that's a fine value for us over the next 6 years. The key piece we're really missing to have a decade-long window open, IMO, is for Amen to continue on his rise to superstardom and get all the way there. I personally think he'll get there.
For a player like Jabari I dont think he needs to step up in a big way I mean just look at Al Horford the dude is known as a vital piece for all contenders even if nobody considered him a superstar. Even Brook Lopez got a decent deal at 37 yrs old. The defensive stretch big archetype is one of the most valuable positions in the NBA and I think getting one in Jabari is worth the top 3 pick we spent on him even if he doesnt turn into a superstar.
