Bizarro Rockets, led by international superstar General Manager Daryl Morey is widely known as a team that believed in it's system so much that it would not make trades or sign free agents outside the culture. They preferred to produce the talent through scouting and the G-League. They preferred to keep their own free agents rather than overspending on free agents from other teams. In this way, players never felt like assets and tended to agree to more team friendly terms since they wanted to "stay home". Of course, being on such a well respected club has other benefits. ESPN interviews, sponsorship opportunities at C&D scrap metal, the works. Patrick Beverley, Ish Smith, Chris Clemons James Harden, Garrett Temple, Troy Daniels Robert Covington, Trevor Ariza, Danuel House James Johnson, Marcus Morris, Bruno Caboclo Clint Capela, Montrezl Harrell, Isaiah Hartenstein Basically I got bored and tried to assemble a roster using as much RGV help as possible with minimal trade/FA help. This nixes a lot of current players like PJ Tucker, who signed because he was tight with CP3. Allowing the FA signing of Ariza because he was signed here before and let go, only to return (so he's had a similar experience to Covington in a sense, who counts without trading Capela because duh, he never left Bizarro Rockets in the first place) Dwight, CP and his boys, RW don't count. Pretty much just tried to use Harden (no scenario involves not making that trade btw, so it stands) and current players with RGVV or HR ties. The phrase "mortgaging the future" comes up a lot around trade talks. I think this is what we mortgaged for CP, almost beating the Warriors, Gordon/Anderson/Tucker and of course Melo. I mean uh, Westbrook. Doesn't even include the potential players we traded as 1st round picks either, so bear that in mind. That team is a contender. A bit reliant on James Harden to be great but the depth and strength of skill is pretty crazy.
I personally don't see enough firepower here to be a contender. Very active defense, yes. Theres a flaw with your experiment though. If we were actually dedicated to the draft and homegrown players we would have a much deeper pool of draft picks and RGV players to draw from. This is like who our homegrown talent was after we constantly traded away picks like they burn a hole in our pocket.
I think I mentioned something like that...honestly I thought people were going to be on about the salary cap even though it's not otherwordly. They aren't winning without Harden being a superstar, I'll give you that. He's a top 10 offense by himself though, and I don't mind throwing the term top 10 defense around for that lineup. That's easily a contender. Lakers wouldn't have pushed their way through this team.
The Leslie Alexander years have also left a bad imprint. Favoring 1st round exits over high draft picks.
In general, yes. We had a fantastically awful roster in 07 or 08 (can't remember exactly which). However by 09 we had a GREAT one, they just all broke down at the same time. I think Rockets fans are used to going from an awful 03 team to a good 05 team; an awful 07 team to a great 09 team; an awful 2012 team to a good 2014 team; a mediocre 2015 team to a championship 2018 team. Morey really turned over the roster and kept things interesting. With the current situation, I think too many people are casually expecting that to happen again. The Westbrook trade was like maxing out our credit cards on an impulse buy that we can't return. Related to the OP, it would be interesting (and very sad) to see a list of players taken (and available after) the picks we've traded away under Morey's tenure.
I mean apart from the sports aspect picking Yao wasn't a simple idea. Others would have done just that. That's winning on a global level, trailblazing the way to new riches in Asia. It also happened that Grady was almost as popular in China as Kobe at that time. I was more talking about post Yao, the years were agonizing.
