It also doesn't take into account roster fitment. Smart, Amen & Sengun on the same court together is a nauseating thought.
I'm really shocked more people don't see the tea leaves around the Marcus Smart signing. Everyone's biggest complaint over the last year was KD was not the leader our young guys needed. Many people also called out the edge this team played with when Dillon Brooks was here has vanished. To me Marcus Smart is the answer to that - its not necessarily about what he does on the court. You aren't going to see it on his individual stat line just like Dillon Brook's stat line didn't translate cleanly into the team improving with 19 and then 11 more wins....but he is a no nonsense vocal locker room leader in the same mold as Dillon Brooks. He's going to hold teammates accountable when they aren't bringing their full effort and he is going to get messy in ways that KD is just going to be passive aggressive and talk **** on burner accounts. We need that guy even if his on court contributions at this stage in his career are less useful. Smart helped LA wins some playoffs games against us...he also completely bombed in performances that got us playoff wins(turning the ball over 10 times and shooting poorly in losses). If you want to focus on what he does on the court at this stage of his career you are missing the biggest reason for why he is here.
Why do people keep bringing this up? it's a big nothing burger. The Rockets issue was they couldn't put the ball in the hoop and they had zero spacing in 2025 and 2026. Lost to a play in team in 25 with the mighty Dillion Brooks and his fierce attitude and lost to a Lakers team missing Luka for the entire series and Reaves for the majority of it. Same result bounced in round 1 to an inferior team. Offense is this teams problem. They have a mess of players that don't fit and work together and doubled down on the same type of player with Smart who is going to play big minutes on this team.
That does not take opportunity cost into consideration. If we didn’t sign Smart. The DfS trade exception may have allowed us to get something actually useful.
Signing hasn’t even been announced yet. He’ll get a summer league court side interview. Then won’t hear again until media day.
It's not a nothing burger - I think you called out the reason why this people keep bringing this up - we need a balanced roster. We have a roster of guys who mostly earn playing time for their defensive effort, you have a defense first coach, and 7 of the top 10 guys in our rotation are more known for defense more so than offense. That's all fine and good but we finished with the 7th best defense last year and the 8th best offense and our point differential suggest we are not a serious contender - more like first/2nd round playoff team. Last year we finished 4th in defense and 20th in offense. Just like you said - we have a mess of players who mostly are only impactful defensively, a lack of offensive talent and yet we don't have an elite defense to make it worth the tradeoff. I agree our offense is trash but the point that is very much relevant is that the defenders on this roster are not elite enough defensively(outside of Amen) to make up for the lack of offensive skill with this roster construction. We are saying the same things in different ways - I'm saying we aren't elite enough defensively to justify such an imbalanced roster of poor offensive players and you are saying we need offensive help. Its two sides of the same coin - that defense needs to be TOP 3 to make it work - otherwise there isn't much of a point of saddling yourself with that roster.
Stone doesn’t care. We’ll just grab more rebounds. That’s our GM’s strategy. Get as many bricklayers and rebounders as you can.
I was aware of that - but point differential still matters. Don't believe me - look at the top team in point differential in the playoffs - the New York Knicks who absolutely peaked at the right time...behind them the Spurs and Thunder. Look at the top point differential teams in the regular season - Thunder, Spurs, Pistons, Celtics, Knicks, Rockets, and Nuggets. The best teams in terms of point differential in the playoffs also happened to be the best teams overall in the playoffs and the best teams in the regular season in point differential tended to correlate strongly to conference ranking. And its worth noting the Knicks were 1.1 points better than Houston which statistically is a fairly wide gap and is wider than the gap between Houston and Denver, Charlotte, or Cleveland. All I'm trying to say is when we play this roster game of getting defensive players vs offensive players this offseason, we need to consider the net effect of how good the team could be in the aggregate.
Point differential matters. That said, the Rockets' point differential was 1.2 better before it got tanked when Sengun got toggled to suck mode, and Adams got hurt. Sengun played a bit better at the end of the year. The West has a lot of good teams and it will be hard to beat OKC and SA even if they get past the other West teams in the playoffs. That said, I'm expecting the Rockets to have a pretty good regular season point differential.
Yeah - fair point. The point differential was likely greatly impacted by the lack of key rotation players ultimately culminating in the epic failure of us losing KD just in time for a playoff series we were widely anticipated to win. I agree we would probably have a better point diff this year than what we finished at last year.....BUT we did somehow manage to get a full season of KD last year and I worry we won't be as lucky this year....and 100% agree that even a better team next year is still going to be hard to catch OKC/SA.
Who cares about the point differential in the regular season. The Knicks were an NBA record +283 for for the playoffs and were +14.9 per game. The Rockets were -15. There is literally no comparison. Once the real game started and actual game planning became a thing the Rockets offense did what they do best and chocked and stumbled their way to an average of 98 PPG and finished 13th out of 16 teams. This team and their "stars" are regular season champs and turn to chumps once the real **** starts. You need actual offensive ability and coaching in the playoffs, something we don't have.
I think the Rockets lose Durant for a good chunk of the season. That said, I expect the Rockets to get more minutes out of FVV, Smart, and Adams this coming season. Also. I don't know what was wrong with Sengun last year. I'm expecting a huge bounce-back year from him. If he doesn't bounce back, I think Stone shocks the Stone haters by trading him at the deadline. To me, the playoffs look like a crapshoot except for OKC and SA, who I expect to win most of the time when not playing each other. In the regular season, I expect the Rockets to do very well.
One can only hope. KD getting season ending injury and us getting an exception. Then we can throw out: Reed, Smart, Tari, Jabari & Sengun
