Its not a wise move. But looking at the direction we ate going, I can see it happening. Unless we somehow trade kd and go back into tanking seasons for a star, but stone gonna fk that up also. Should have just ran it back with jg and package him eventually for a young star. Always panicking and taking the short cut of building a team instead of just growing home grown talent.
As soon as Stone refused to bring in a vet PG when Fred got hurt I knew the deal. They don’t care about this year’s team. They are thinking about next year’s team and didn’t want to lose “flexibility” and pay more in assets when next season they will have more options. Like Stone said, “maybe not our year”. He said the quiet part out loud and we are paying the price. I don’t think He deserves the chance to see if his plan will work. Fire him and give Eli Witis a shot
I don’t understand why Tillman’s patience isn’t at an end with Stone. The guy just cost him $50 mil with the premature and unnecessary Ime extension. We have no franchise player. And we have no chance at one because we traded out of this generational draft. The product on the court is straight up terrible. The core isn’t developing well. And we are getting embarrassed by a Lakers team missing their two best players. where is the freaking accountability?
This past offseason should be cause for getting fired for certain. Not just the Udoka extension but also re-signing FVV (promptly got hurt, predictable after playing massive minutes two straight seasons) Steven Adams (promptly got hurt, predictable given his injury history) and signing Dorian Finney-Smith (already hurt at the time of being signed). Clint Capela and Josh Okogie kinda-sorta worked out, but both are basically replacement-level players getting paid replacement-level money, so they hardly move the needle. We relied on three guys we should have known had significant injury risks attached to them, and didn't do anything to hedge that risk. All three were also players with no real upside for us, just aging veteran roleplayers on the downswing of their respective careers. We should have been taking swings on signing or trading for young, healthy players with the potential to break out and take this team to the next level that could actually compete with the top teams in the West. The KD trade probably did make this a playoff team instead of a .500 team in hindsight, but that doesn't appear to actually have any significant organizational benefit to us since we're on track to get bounced embarrassingly in the first round anyway. Other than maybe getting off Jalen's contract, but I doubt we contend before that would have ended anyway at this point. And at least there was still a (slim, fading) chance of Jalen having a major breakout season.
Doing absolutely nothing at the deadline or in the buyout market, then telling everyone that it wasn't our year, was all the proof I needed that the organization wasn't serious about winning. They traded for an old superstar who promptly destroyed all team chemistry and then punted on the season. That's shitty at every level. There has to be accountability somewhere for that type of failure.
I think for a guy like Stone who has limited basketball background, he needs a strong coach to take care of things. He got a weak one with Silas and he even tried to make coaching decisions for Silas and it was a mess. Udoka comes in and set everything in order, so it seems. He induces discipline to the young guys. And all of a sudden he seems to be the perfect coach to boost Stone's career. Bam, lock him up for a long time. I doubt that Stone ever really evaluate Udoka's job performance other than the superficial floor raising with a bunch of kids. Now that the bunch of kids are growing up. You can't treat them as kids anymore. They don't need the "play harder" speech anymore. And Udoka has no other gear to shift.
Made a win now moved then did nothing to help our aging star lol Sad part is he thought he had leverage on kd or booker so he gave the nets pick back. And it didn't do anything. We didn't need to make that move to get kd after all. Now we are missing out on one of the best draft this year.
To be fair, the team has been on an upward trend until this season. Last season was a massive success, despite what anyone says, we went from being a lottery team to the #2 seed in a tough conference. Stone hit on most of his draft picks, this is just a fact, people can look at the draft without hindsight glasses, Stone made good solid picks. Not his fault we didn't get Cade or Wemby, just bad luck, if we had gotten Wemby Stone looks like a genius right now. So to be fair, we'll see what happens this season. Tilman moved on pretty quickly from failure last time, the Rockets will have or should have a very interesting offseason.
Yep, I feel like Stone's biggest mistake is and has been Ime. It's impossible to know how much Ime has shifted roster moves in his favor but a good GM does give players that their coach prefers or is banging on the table for. A good GM also knows when a coach is probably not the best at talent evaluations and letting his own bias get in the way of getting solid players because the coach has a fetish for defensive wings. A good GM has to know how unbalanced the roster is, offload some wings for some guards, and let the coach figure it out. I think what happened is exactly that. Ime is a good floor raising coach, he gets young players to take the games seriously, and so if you sent him to a bad team like Washington he'd raise their floor but then eventually lower their ceiling because he has no idea what to do when it comes to scoring the ball or rather, doesn't care enough to make needed adjustments. Overvalues defense. If the Rockets want to save Ime they force a better coaching staff on him and just like Morey would do, take away his comfort food players. That's Okogie and Tate and Tari should go just because at this point. Force Ime to play Amen more at wing, make the team guard heavy because it will probably help out the rest of the team, force Ime out of HIS comfort zone and force him to adjust to the team. I don't think Ime is dumb, I think he's just stubborn and wants to win with his style of play. I still hope they just replace him but I can understand from the owners POV of wanting to get the most out of what you spent for him and not moving on so fast. It also hurts your team in the coach carousel if an owner is willy nilly firing coaches, good coaches would be hesitant to come here.
even if one thinks the Jalen, Bari and Reed picks were good, one has to acknowledge that the player development hasn’t been good. One has to acknowledge that being tethered to Ime on a premature long-term extension is not good. One has to acknowledge that having no pick in this generational draft class is not good. And the product on the court is not good. So sure last year was a success, no doubt about it. But we definitely backslid this year. With poor coaching, poor player development, and no draft picks it’s hard to see how this team is still trending upwards. How high can you go without a franchise player?
Oh definitely, I'm just saying that going into this year, things were on the up. Most had us as a legit contender going into this year, all these moves Stone made were seen as good moves when they were made. Outside of things like yeah some people were calling out the Clint signing and lack of guards, but everyone felt good going into this season. I agree the premature extension was dumb, Owners do it because they don't want lame duck coach situation where the bottom falls out because players know the coach isn't going to be around next season so they don't listen or just openly rebel. Kind of hard to do that when the coach is signed on for years. Even still too...it didn't have to be so long. I guess my point is and its not to defend Tilman just to say...this is the first season in Stone's tenure where we have taken a clear step backwards, so it should be fair to see how much patience Tilman has for it. Tilman blew up those Harden-Silas team ASAP. I don't think Tilman has the patience people thinks he has, I know Stephen A Smith (I hate the guy) knows Tilman and always says he's not very patient, so I guess we'll see. If the Rockets flame out and lose this series I'm expecting some kind of major change. Whether that be in the FO/Coaching or trading Sengun like we did with Jalen Green (another move that shows a lack of patience IMHO), I can't see this team running it back next season outside of them suddenly turning things around to win this series AND have a good showing against OKC.
“Brad Stevens, Sam Presti, Andy Elisburg/Pat Riley, Danny Ainge, Tim Connelly, Masai Ujiri, do you want to co-GM/tutor my son?” Spoiler Patrick Fertitta serves as an Alternate Governor for the Houston Rockets, playing an active role in both the business and basketball operations of the organization. He works closely with President of Business Operations Gretchen Sheirr on strategic initiatives including marketing, branding, and fan engagement, while also collaborating with General Manager Rafael Stone on roster construction and team development. Rafael Stone was named General Manager of the Houston Rockets on Oct. 15, 2020. He originally joined the organization in 2005 as General Counsel and was promoted to Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations & General Counsel on April 19, 2019. In the summer of 2025, Houston acquired 15-time All-Star Kevin Durant from Phoenix as part of the first seven-team trade in NBA history. Entering 2025-26, ESPN.com had Houston ranked second in its “Future Power Rankings,” evaluating three-year outlooks for teams across the league. In 2024-25, Stone finished fourth in voting for NBA Executive of the Year after the Rockets posted the second-best record in the Western Conference to earn their first playoff appearance since 2019-20. Alperen Sengun, the 16th pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, made his All-Star debut at 22 years old. Amen Thompson, the fourth overall pick in 2023, was named All-Defensive First Team, becoming just the ninth player in league history to have achieved that honor within the first two seasons of a career. From 2021 through 2024, Houston acquired nine players from the first round of the draft, including a top-four pick each year. The foundation for this rebuild was a four-team trade Stone orchestrated in January of 2021, which sent James Harden to Brooklyn in exchange for multiple unprotected first round picks and swap rights. Stone later leveraged the remaining assets from that deal into future draft capital tied to Phoenix. A Seattle native, Stone earned degrees in history and political science from Williams College in Massachusetts, where he played four seasons of Division III basketball. He went on to graduate from Stanford Law School before beginning his legal career specializing in Mergers and Acquisitions. Basketball Operations General Manager............................................................................................................................................................Rafael Stone Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations & Assistant General Manager….............................................Eli Witus Head Coach....................................................................................................................................................................... Ime Udoka Assistant Coaches…............Ben Sullivan, Royal Ivey, Garrett Jackson, Cam Hodges, Will Dunn, Josh Bostic, Robbie Lemons Basketball Operations Staff. .................. Francis Adu, D.J. Augustin, Sam Berenberg, Jason Biles, Joseph Blair, Aaron Blackshear, Harley Borish, Daniel Bratulić, Aaron Bright, Matt Bullard, Ricky Canales, Willie Cruz, Jake Flancer, Motoki Fujii, Kevin Gamble, Jeremy Garcia, Orhun Güngören, David Harvey, Adil Hassan, Jeremy Hassler, Elijah Hazekamp, Dion Herrington, Ross Homan, Neil Johnson, Keith Jones, Robbie Keck, Rodrick Kelly, Nicholas Kiriazis, Scott Kneller, Ed Kupfer, Matt McQuaid, Riley Miller, Walker Miller, Paul Newman, Anthony Nila, Djordje Obradovic, Tim Owens, Jim Paulis, Javier Pesquera, Ed Pinckney, Dexter Pittman, Marko Radovanovic, Jason Roman, Ben Rubin, Quinton Sawyer, Joseph Square, Travis Stockbridge, Eddie Reed, Isaiah Torres, Christian Vasquez, Chris Wallace, Kristin Williams, Cole Zwicker
i think that’s all fair. But I’d argue Tillman had a lot of patience before Stone’s recent reset. The WOW years were terrible. I get that tanking was part of the strategy, but a lot of bad decisions were made that had nothing to do with tanking. Building around bad character guys, trying to build around an injured Oladipo, bad coaching, mismanaging Jalen…Ime reset the culture and raised the floor defensively. And bringing in vets was a major part of that. It’s how we got to 500 and then #2 last season. But those tanking yrs were supposed to be in service of finding a franchise player. That didn’t happen. One could say Stone got unlucky. I would say 6 seasons with all those picks and $ should be enough time to find a franchise player and build a strong player development system. And obviously backsliding when your young core is supposed to be improving every season is a bad sign. im sure Tilman will give both Ime and Stone another season, but I get nervous that they will be desperate for short term improvement at the expense of what’s best for the team long-term. It’s why I get scared when I hear Giannis trade talk; old star chasing isn’t gonna get us where we need to go. But it’s definitely a way to mortgage our future and make things worse. I just don’t think you can mask the lack of a franchise player. I don’t think there’s anyway around that. We aren’t going to take the next successful step without one.
I do think it is bad luck, they were in a position to get the #1 pick and didn't get one but they did pick the player that everyone thought should be picked. I keep saying this because...are we in this situation if we had gotten Wemby? Suddenly, Stone is a genius! But that is the downside of tanking, it's why I've always been against it, it's luck dependent, all based on hoping you tank and get the right pick in the right year. Some teams have been tanking for a star since forever. The Rockets didn't build their last contending team tanking, they did it by accumulating assets then trading them for the right player. I do think we are in the position to do that at least...I don't think Giannis is that player though...but 6 years of tanking or 10 or 15 years of it doesn't guarantee you anything at all, so for all the people that want to go back to doing that better be prepared. I don't think the Rockets are in a bad position roster wise, we don't have any terrible contracts, we can still be flexible... If Stone is around this next offseason, it will be the biggest one of his career either way.
I've been critical of Stone for years because I see him as just an average GM and above average at best. Successfully rebuilding through tanking in this league you either need to be lucky (Spurs lottery luck) or have an exceptional GM (Sam Presti). We have neither so we were never going anywhere. Good thing they just gave Ime a 6 year extension so we're at least sure Cheapman isn't going to fire him.
