Our once proud franchise is being run into the ground

Severo y Grupo Fuego will save us.

But agreed. Stone has led us into a dead end and Tillman deserves a lot of criticism for putting a lawyer and his son at the head of the decision-making of this franchise.

 

Nah, it's not THAT bad.

It ain't good, but it's not THAT bad. They have no chance of winning a championship, they don't give us any reason at all to be excited about the roster or the diection of the team, but to say they've been run into the ground is probably a little over the top.

And halftime is the best part of every game...

 

hired a yes man lawyer with no basketball background to run our team. hired a drill sargeant as a coach and wonder why our players dont develop.

 

Time to bring back Les! @tinman

 

It's not that bad. Will they win a championship with the current roster? No shot. It will be difficult for them to even get out of the 1st round but at least they are making - have made the playoffs. It could be worse. They could be like the Wizards or Bulls.

They do need to do a small blow up though if they actually want to try and make it out of round 1

 

Dear diary….Mood…. Apathetic…..

But seriously… whiney rocket fans having to suffer the indignity of being like any other franchise that has to figure out their next franchise player. A lot of you clearly don’t follow the greater NBA.

Even the Spurs had their seasons in the wilderness between the Kawhi trade and Wemby draft.

 

I saw the Peoples Champ at halftime! The biggest problem with our team is the refusal to say something is not working. Ime was great to change the culture but he will not think he can win with offensive. The opposite of Mike D’Antoni with only caring about 3 point shots. The front office is scared too. With that being said…Rockets win it all this year!

 

Weird post. Not a single example given.

I don't know that I agree. Do I agree the Rockets are basically screwed and left with no way to compete with the Spurs and Thunder? Sure. Do I think it's the fault of the organization? Not really. We built through the draft, and unfortunately the ping pong balls didn't bounce our way to get that franchise guy. Go back and look. There were zero players available at the positions we drafted that would put us in a place to compete with either of those teams,

I think we could have had a better success rate with our late first round picks for sure, but that wouldn't solve this situation.

Meanwhile, they've won more than they've lost with free agent signings. Fred and Dillon out performed expectations as did Okogie last season, but DFS and Capella appear to be a fail. They've done better than most teams with extensions. The Sengun, Green, Jabari and Durant extensions were all more favorable to the Rockets than anyone expected. The revised Fred deal was also a pretty big win.

To me, the biggest mistake they made was trading for Kevin "the Culture Killer" Durant. But most people don't even view that trade as a mistake.

Meanwhile, I'm becoming more and more optimistic that Ant Edwards is going to get sick of the cold weather and cost cutting measures and will eventually demand a trade. That's the guy who could get us where we can compete. Hope it happens.

 

Agree totally with this assessment.

Its also both a good and bad thing. Stone and Patrick are so in over their heads that they do everything by the book. Seemingly draft BPA, only make moves when the entire NBA world knows it needs to be made such as moving Jalen Green. It allows then to escape criticism and has helped us after 3 terrible seasons, have 3 non losing years and 2 50+ win years. Thats not nothing as far as NBA rebuilds go.

But also they dont take chances, they miss out on better players, players that maybe they truly didn't think would be better than our guys, but that itself is poor talent evaluation. And now we are "stuck" with a mid plus level team that absent of a true star. And the only way we'll make a big move such as trading Sengun will be once its obvious to everyone that he's not it and therefor is value will have dropped.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Stone, and think Tillman is a clown narcissist corrupt billionaire.

However I don't think the organization is being "run into the ground." What happened last night, or didn't happen, is a reflection of the worst owner/gm decision of past 20 years with the Rockets with the Westbrick trade. The good news about last night is we are FINALLY done with our obligations from that cluster fck of a mess created by Tillman, and Morey (who I really like, but he should have resigned in principle before okaying that garbage deal).

Many mistakes have been made along the way since then, but they are mistakes that aren't going to crater the franchise for decades (IE taking Reed over Castle, wasted picks/talent, etc.) but it's death by a thousand cuts. Alot of kind of bad decisions snowballing into not a whole lot of anything to really build on, and not a very fun product to watch on top of that with a coach who doesn't know how to coach actual NBA offense.

These next few years I would just say to set your expectations low. This team is built to be competitive but not really anything to be excited about. Making a big trade for Giannis wouldn't solve anything, and would probably compound all of these issues as well as further expose Stone, and the development staff for being really bad at developing young value bench depth.

For this team, and Stone, doing nothing is probably better than whatever the hell they would do if they felt desperate. Tillman, and Stone aren't very good at this, but they also could be a hell of alot worse, or could get a hell of alot worse in the coming years with desperation & more destructive big decisions.

 

Tilman doesn’t give 2 sh*ts about the Rockets, so this is what you get

the city also never really cares, so there’s no pressure on the organization

Remember when Stone traded Harden to the Nets in January of 2021 and said to not judge him until 2030? I can’t judge you for 9 years?!? Let him have said that in Boston, NY, Philly, or LA…

we tanked for years, and all we have to show for it is a mediocre young core and 2 1st round exits including an embarrassing loss to AARP Lebron about to collect Social Security and a bunch of bums and castaways

Stone would have been booted and in the unemployment line by now in many organizations…Philly just told Morey to gtfo

they’re about to sell us on this same roster plus the addition of 32 y/o Mid VanVleet off an ACL for next year…you couldn’t get away with this in many other places

over 30 years since our last championship or even just making the Finals, and at this rate, I could die, reincarnate, and then die again before I see another

 

Does anyone actually think Stone has a relationship with other GMs?

I'm not fully convinced they even know he exists. Notice the only trades he does are by teams that are desperate to get their assets back or teams with players who force their hand. Harden wanted to go to BK. No choice. Brooklyn wanted their picks back. Phoenix was forced by KD. There's no proactive moves. His relationship are with GMs that are already hamstrung by him.

 

For me if I had one request of Stone... a reasonable request... is that going forward unless we finally have true young superstars to build on, and a deep bench, you MUST always have at least 1 decent first round pick in every draft to keep that talent tap flowing. Keep pressure on the current guys with that talent to produce or get out of the way for young players continuing to come up.

That and making a point to pursue top talent scouts, and development personnel. Whatever happened in the past decade has been a disaster for the Rockets from a developmental standpoint. Which is weird since we were a team trying to build through the draft seemingly having a non-existent scouting infrastructure and a player development staff who cannot teach basic basketball skills to prospects who were projected to be skilled players.

 

Him trying to use Woj, and Shams to manipulate other GM's into calling him is a pretty good sign that he actually does not have those relationships. And if he did, I think every GM in the league would see his tactics coming a mile away, and have very little trust if they do engage.

Just go back and watch how he handled the Eric Gordon situation where he needed to move him. It was a pretty pathetic display of someone who has no relationships, and got his education on sales & negotiations from watching the show Entourage.

 

Exactly. Not to mention he buys good PR from the big rocket accounts on twitter. He sends them merch and invites them to his office for photo ops which is why they keep defending him. I'll take a Pelinka over a Stone any day of the week. Tillman loves Stone because he doesn't bother him or force him to build a contender. We all know TIllman doesnt care about the team so having a yes man who stays out of his way is his ideal GM.

 

That zone working for 16 regular season games in 24/25’ ruined them.

They went all in on the size to counter the speed and skill of other teams last summer and that idea was a big set back that we couldn’t afford.

 

Solid take on the situation I think. The best way out of this mess would be for Tilman to sell the team to somebody who isn't an incompetent bootlicker (I have no illusions that the next billionaire would be a decent human being, but they might at least be smarter). But who knows when or if that will happen.

The only thing that gives me any hope is that James f***king Dolan's team just won a chip. Maybe we'll luck into finding a real ""franchise player"" who fixes everything, the way they did when they acquired Brunson, who I'm sure has exceeded even the Knicks' loftiest expectations. That may be the only way out of being stuck on the mediocrity treadmill right now short of a change of ownership, front office.