I.D.I.O.T I got about 5 min through stone giving off “ I’m just here so I don’t get fined” vibes “um , uh , you know” like Morey , stone should find a gymnast to date because he looooves flexibility tough situation . You can’t say with a straight face we traded James and like our current position better . Obviously about the future “We like victor” ... reporter ,”victor is in the last year of his contract” doh . like I said got 5 min in , then started focusing on the Landry’s logo in the background and stopped watching . May listen to the rest when I’m taking a ****
What's the point of having someone speak at an empty podium in a mask? Is the first row less than 6 feet away? Anyways, as always, Clutch does the best job of parsing what matters on his Twitter, the top one being the most interesting..
Stone isn’t a good liar. No one believes the Harden trade just happened to occur 18 hours after Harden finally went to the podium and said he wanted out. No one is going to buy that the Rockets are better after trading Harden. However I know he works for someone that expects his staff to give BS responses so I don’t really hold it against Stone. What he said about Oladipo is consistent with what @treyk3 said right after the deal about the Rockets actually liking Oladipo. The trade exception and the salary space created is interesting because IF the Rockets take the long term view they could turn that into multiple #1 picks. I also wouldn’t be shocked if some of these draft picks in 2021 and 2022 are not traded to either move up in the lottery or traded to teams desperate to pick someone for more future picks. Stone sort of alluded to it, but the whole idea is to use these assets to get in a position for high lottery picks and to trade for really good players. Stone knows what he is doing. The question is how good will the Rockets be and identifying draft prospects. It is painful to see someone as special as James Harden go @Deuce , and most fans have no idea how special he is. However the Rockets have to move on and that is something Stone also addressed. I have serious concerns about ownership and the lack of assets and money spent within the organization on player talent evaluation and development.
No....He sounded very intelligent, know what his goals are and the type of players he's looking for (two way players), unlike the last GM
He mentioned they would be looking aggressively to use the $15 million TPE they generated in the recent trades, thought that was interesting.
Did he mention $15M specifically (I haven't watched yet)? I thought it was only $10M after reworked trade.
The Rockets are better after trading THAT HARDEN. Yeah the one who was throwing games yes we are better without him.
He said it didn’t change the Rockets approach. That’s hard to believe — keeping Harden away from the team is probably not ideal for him or his trade value — but still consistent with all the known facts. It is possible that the Rockets knew they needed to trade Harden “sooner rather than later” (as was reported weeks before) and Harden’s statement pushed the Nets to make a proposal that was acceptable to them. I never believed it was all that realistic that Harden could be convinced to stay, and I’m glad the trade was made fairly early in the season. One kind of interesting thing is that Stone said believed Harden wanted to go elsewhere while in the Bubble, which is different from how many on here have been trying to portray what happened. This further leads me to think that Morey left knowing Harden was not happy about the direction of the team. The good thing is both the Rockets and Harden seem to want to move on from this and not pick fights with one another through the media. That’s the best thing for both parties.
I don’t think Harden was throwing games, but he clearly didn’t have his heart in it and it’s hard to build chemistry under those circumstances. I agree we are better off without that version of Harden.
