[Stone] Houston has the Smallest Front Office in Sports

He has had one bad signing from what I can see, he signed Daniel Theis to a multi year deal and that dude sucked ass.

Mobley is horrible, yeah he is a good player def one of the best in the 2021 class but also making as much as Jokic and SGA. It's like getting a Prius that costs as much as a Lambo. In the new cap environment paying Mobley the super super max with dpoy escalator just destroys Cleveland capspace. With hindsight considering we ended up with Amen and Jabari and traded Green for KD only a moron would still choose Mobley over Green knowing how things would end up.

 

He is 53 and only 5 yrs into the job lol. About time? Morey had over a decade just got a couple of WCF appearances.

 

It’s working for now. Stone’s small office is producing positive results

 

It’s just the cost of living and cheaper housing. I live in DC, one of worst HCOL inthe country. A tonif people have moved from here to Houston inthe last couple of years because of the housing market .


Go on Zillow and look at what 300k gets you in Houston compared to dc

 

Interesting. He also talks about the media making up stories, which I discussed couple weeks ago.

 

Makes sense that cheapo Fertita would skimp out on staff while investing well in new practice facilities or the Toyota center video scoreboard.

Its all about perception. This is like driving a nice BMW but living in a studio apt. Fertita is like that dallas 30k millionaire meme from a few years ago.

 

I could understand this criticism if the Rockets weren't one of the most amazing and rapid rebuilds I have ever witnessed, but they are. And not only are they positioned to compete for a championship for the next few years with Durant, but in 2027, as Durant's career likely winds down, they are positioned to likely have two lottery picks from the Suns and Nets. They'll either be able to use those picks to bring in new blood, or they can package them to bring in a new star.

Stone has transformed the Rockets into one of the best positioned teams in the league, and that's without lucking into a #1 pick like Wenbanyama or Paolo etc. And he did it when he inherited a team that had been gutted of assets in the Westbrook deal. Go back and look at the rosters that Harden carried deep into the playoffs. Our 6th and 7th men are as good as the second best players on the team from that era (except in the Chris Paul years). Hell, one of the guys at the end of our bench literally is the guy who was the second best player on some of those teams.

My take on it is that Stone and the Fertittas have found ways to eliminate redundancies and maximize efficiency. Because they wouldn't have the results they currently have if they were short staffed or under funded. What they are doing is working. And if this is how Stone wants to run the team, I'm all for it. He's already proven to be one of the best general managers in the league. I was incredibly skeptical of how the Fertittas would run this team when they purchased it - but they've proven to be excellent owners. I really don't think I have ever seen this team so well managed. No, they're not batting 1.000, but nobody is. We can cry all we want about not drafting Evan Mobley over Jalen Green, but they turned Jalen Green into Kevin Durant, so...

 

I mean, this just means you've never witnessed another rebuild. The post-Yao/T-Mac era had the Rockets with Yao's max salary on the books even after his retirement, with no player of any trade value like Harden, nor any lottery luck to move into the top-3, made it back to the playoffs after 3 years, and WCFs after 5. The current Rockets rebuild made the playoffs after 4 years, and has not shown whether they can even make it further. If they don't at least make the WCFs this year, then they can't even keep pace with the maligned Morey rebuild just a decade ago in terms of rebuild success. They need to make the finals next year to be considered even the best rebuild among the last 2 Rockets rebuild.

 

Translation we stay lean so former Thunder stars can ruin / run everything!

Shots fired.

Harden run / ruin / ran. No, I don’t h8 JH

Durant runs it. Whatever Durant wants Durant gets. No, I don’t h8 Durant. lfg

 

Yeah a lot of it is how materialistic Americans tend to be too. It's always about the bigger house, the bigger yard, the bigger car, more and fancier stuff. People in this country don't think as much as I'd argue they should about things like: Actually being able to walk to things and have it be a pleasant experience, having beautiful public spaces that make you feel pride in your neighborhood and city, wasting less time commuting in car traffic (maybe even being able to walk or bike to work safely and pleasantly), and so on.

A lot of the growth in the Sun Belt is because of a combination of that mindset with other, more-expensive cities not building enough housing to keep up with demand, which has caused cost of living to skyrocket in those places.

 

I don't have an issue with the decisions that front office has made (most have worked out). I don't expect the front office to suck tomorrow. Being lean has its advantages in the short term, but can have its risks. You lose a key person, or something changes that takes away someone's time to solve, and problems can arise quickly. Also, burnout can occur. Being the smallest likely means they are more susceptible to these risks than most.

 

The Rockets have consistently gotten better - but they haven't even won a playoff series. This is going to be the 6th season since the Rockets decided to rebuild. I certainly would not call it a failure, but I don't know that I would call it a rapid or amazing rebuild yet.

The Rockets have had the #2 pick, the #3 pick, another #3 pick, the #4 pick, the #10 pick (traded), #12 pick, #17 pick, #20 pick, #23 pick and #24 pick all in the last 5 years. The Rockets have had an amazing number of high lottery picks and out of those - Jalen Green did not pan out, Jabari Smith looks like a role player, Reed Sheppard had a disapointing first season..... and Amen looks like he will be special if he improves offensively. They also have Sengun who looks like he will be pretty good, but limited defensively. That really isn't hitting all that well on top lottery picks. It isn't terrible, but it isn't special either.

Eliminate redundancies? Maybe, we will have to wait and see what happens long term I guess. I will just say that I personally am concerned when the Rockets do not invest as much in player talent evaluation and player development compared to other teams in the league. I also am concerned that those making the decisions have no real basketball experience, outside of the head coach. It was a criticism I had of Morey as well. The Rockets would do well to have someone like Jeff Van Gundy overlooking the organization.

 

I was here for that. I've been an obsessed Rockets fan for 40 years. This is more impressive than that in my opinion.

 

Actually this is the first true rebuild we had since I follow the Rockets, so about 22 years. We could've done the same thing that we did all those years, get quality vets and treadmill around the play in and be first round practice for the #1 seed. Stone almost did that, remeber the WOW era...

As a teardown rebuild, this was fast, painful but obviously effective.

 

"This is going to be the 6th season since the Rockets decided to rebuild." This can also be worded as, "It has been 4 years, 7 months, and 25 days since Harden requested a trade." or "It was 2.5 seasons from maybe, possibly thinking about rebuilding to rebuilding to a 0.500 team."

For complete teardown rebuilds that did not involve trading for an established or trading for a soon to be star (at least early on in rebuild), the Rockets has been a rapid, or amazing rebuild. OKC is the trendsetter for being fast. Other than that, the Rockets rebuild has been rapid in comparison to their peers. I expected the first two seasons after Harden to be a little better, but 2 seasons of 10+ win improvement is about as rapid as it can get from rock bottom after that.

Granted, I really like this team, and the draft capital the team has. The Rockets haven't won anything in the playoffs, yet, but I love the position the Rockets are in right now.

 

How so? From a results standpoint this team is behind the timelime of the Morey rebuild. Morey made it back to the playoffs in 3 years. This team made it back in 4. Morey made the WCFs in 5 years. This team is entering year 5 and has yet to win a playoff series, so simply to match Morey's timeline they need to at minimum make the WCFs this year. And this rebuild started off with trading Harden for lots of assets as opposed to that one where they started from zero. How is it right now more impressive besides you simply believing it so?

 

I mean, if you want to argue that Morey's rebuild was not a true rebuild, then the actual last true rebuild of the Rockets was when they tanked for Sampson and Olajuwon b2b years. That rebuild netted NBA finals appearance in 4 years. So even if you want to restrict things to true rebuilds, this is also not the best in Rockets history.