We have maybe 7 NBA level players on our roster currently healthy which is kind of an indictment of Stone’s failure to provide depth this season. Love or hate Cam (and I know Cam is out this season anyways) but it shows trading him was foolish knowing now how shallow our bench talent was. But regardless saying Reed has the green light is just kind of an objective truth. Regardless of whether Ime feels forced to give it to him because of Stone’s failures or not. I guess Reed only fans can thank Stone.
That is a ridiculously high bar you are setting for Stone. The only miss he had on providing depth was Reed insurance. He signed Okogie, DFS, and Capella (someone virtually everybody was screaming as unnecessary.) No GM can prepare for injuries to both your backup forwards, your starting pg, your center and backup center. Before FVV’s injury we were 10 deep if you don’t include DFS. Depth chart before FVV injury: Amen, FVV, Reed, Okogie Durant, Jabari, Tari Sengun, Adams, Capella A lot of us wanted Reed insurance. We have 11 rotation worthy players when all healthy. Hindsight is 20/20.
You also as a GM have to be judged for signing clearly unhealthy players. DFS obviously was injured when they signed him and the Rockets didn’t do their homework. Capela, while healthy, was clearly out of shape. And Tate, Uncle Jeff, Crawford, and Newton clearly don’t belong on an NBA roster. Holiday and Davidson are questionable at this point given that nether play almost ever. That’s still a lot of roster spots that could be used for nba players or at least some higher upside talent. Stone is far from being a bad GM I’ll give him that much. However it’s just objectively true that he did field a very shallow bench this season and should have had his staff do more homework on the health and playability of who they did bring in.
DFS was probably a calculated gamble that Tari would stay healthy, plus they had Okogie that could take some SF minutes. Capella ended up being a great signing. Without him we would be completely screwed. 10-11 deep and staying under the apron is a doing a fine job. If you want to criticize Stone, it should be for the Ime and FVV extensions which were unnecessary, not for depth which he has provided in spades. We are only 2 games out of the second seed and DFS and Tari are back and Capella is playing very well. Hopefully we will sign Alvarado (who is a better backup than FVV) to make up for FVV being injured. Our issue is Sengun not playing up to snuff, Jabari and Reed’s inconsistency and Ime’s lousy bench coaching. You can blame Stone for extending Ime, but not for the rest.
It wasn’t 22 shots. Reed attempted 15 shots. He was 1-7 from 3 and 6-15 overall FG… so he made 5-2 pointers and 1-3 pointer.
See the post after where I say “seriously though”…. Probably should have said like a million shots so people got it. Either way he took more shots than any player on Detroit. If he had the minutes he’d probably have James Harden 2018 usage levels. And maybe he should…. It’s just his defense at this point…. Or Senguns defense. They scheme a lot on defense to put Sengun on the other teams weakest offense player or play zone way too much. That’s another part of the problem there. If we had a Mutumbo back there in the paint you could play Reed 40 minutes a night. Sengun would need to get over his fear of shooting the damn basketball on the other end though and realize he’s not a 5. And if you are not a 5 you need to shoot the damn ball in the nba.
From what Ime said in some interviews, he apparently does want Reed to shoot a lot. It's on Reed for not shooting when he's open. There is no leash there. The leash is on defense. That said, if getting Reed to shoot was a priority, then coaching should be drilling this priority to his players to execute plays that will get Reed shots.
And also about taking those shots... The team doesn't want Reed hesitating on offense if we are going to have to play differently on defense with him in.
The Rockets knew DFS would require surgery and may miss training camp. They couldn't know he would have a setback and miss a half a season but I'm sure they knew it was a possibility. I think the FO balanced seeing what they had in their very young core while having veteran talent (FVV, Durant, DFS, Uncle Jeff, Adams).
I would love Alvarado on this team. A perfect Ime player, and he would also bring that DB type energy thah we're missing. I don't know what the trade would look like, but it could be a sneaky good pickup for the playoff push.
With super max and other sizable contracts on the boxes that is really good because most that have them don’t even have 7.
Agreed, going into the year it felt like depth is one of our strengths. Fully healthy this is a deep team.
I was questioning Capella signing first few months when he was clearly out of shape. But now that he’s slowly rounding into game shape and especially with Adams going down, he’s an impact player for us. And as seen lately there will be some nights where Sengun is either struggling against certain teams or not fully healthy when Capella has been good enough that fans are asking to keep him in the game and don’t sub him out … that’s a solid pickup after all.
I agree that when he is in there we need to start treating him more like Curry and run a bunch of screens for him and get him shots. Most of the time I’d prefer him shooting over just about anyone else outside of KD of course
I forgot the last person in the lineup but it was capela, Reed, amen, KD and other person…offense looked as fluid as it has all year Clint does need to chill out on the churros and work on the hands though, still drops too many passes
@Furious Jam I agree and understand your analysis and perspective. However, Ime is the HC, the Leader of the team and his job is to optimize the talent he has to win games. Jerking one player around is not consistent with how he handles the other players and its a detriment to the team and his mission. If he yanked Amen or even one day HoFer KD after a series of turnovers then he's telling the team I have a standard that everyone needs to meet. He doesn't. As for royalty, I think you could replace Amen's name with Reed in your analogy above. Amen's closer to royalty and has been blessed by the Gods compared to Reed. I'd contend Reed has had to work harder then most everyone on that team because of his limitations. The Philly OT was a clear coaching mistake by Ime. Ime is still a relatively young HC in terms of experience, maybe he'll learn from his mistakes, maybe he won't. I'm just tired of losing games when we don't have to,
Clint has much better hands than Adams, but that’s not saying much. He just has to hold the fort down while Sengun is hurt. We should sign another minimum level defensive center to spell Capella while Sengun sits out for a couple of weeks.
That's just it. Ime is Mike Dan Tony's opposite. Ime's blind spot is offense. Shoot the ball! That'll take care of itself. Oh, Jabari is 2-for-15? But he looks like he's playing defense (*cough* maybe because he's tall and black? *cough*). Leave him in. When Reed Shep is in the game we outscore opponents, but Reed's man just turnstiled him once?
Different than total volume. He has the green light to shoot when he's playing but it's not enough minutes especially overlapping with the starters.
