Stone is as unorthodox as Morey when it comes to verbiage with Draft picks it seems. I hope Tillman has the patience (he clearly doesn't) to let his advisors pick the best routes for drafting. I hope we get luck with a player with a good motor in the next few drafts. Honestly it's going to be interesting to see how the next few years plays out, currently our roster is a mess. No real depth off the bench and clearly a disgruntled, short term SG with Victor. Our roster isn't good enough to be contenders, Cousins is still coming back from his injury and so is Wall. They've shown they can clearly both play but we don't know how consistent they'll be with staying on the court. Then mix in a not too happy PJ Tucker and streaky Eric Gordon and boy. We're going no where fast. I tried to read our future draft picks, can someone break them down between our picks going to the Thunder, coming from the Nets and ability to switch picks ? Plus there are a few going to Portland and the Pistons but are also protected.. oh man
I’m still not in favor of tanking right now but your comments at least got me to look up and realize that if they keep their top 4 pick this year then their obligation to OKC is over. I assume fit just rolled to next year. that’s strange... but cool. while I shouldn’t care what OKC does a ton, finishing say 5th worse and hanging that pick to OKC would SUCK. so my position remains. You play the games, see where are 2/3 into the season or so and make decisions from there. but if you ended up via luck or strategic tanking the last 1/3 of the year with a top 4 pick and the swap doesn’t matter that’d be amazing. sadly I think ultimately it’s more likely OKC has at he better pick but the Rockets one is still in the lotto and OKCs plan is working.
Nothing wrong with having a opinion but to bash Rockets for NOT rushing decisions. You have to see where you are before you can decide where to go.
This is a year to go all in. West is wide open, Lebron is old and AD is fragile and cannot carry his team...one unlucky injury and its on for everybody. Harden is coming from the east and we know he is prone to weird disappearance acts on the biggest stages and concussion games... We have a nice chemistry going on, good coach, good home crowd, hungry rookies, great vets, defense minded payers and a few allstars with chips on their shoulders... I say we have a chance as good as anyones!
It’s a no brainer. More people will come around to it once they realize that this team does not have any hope this year
I get that it's not gonna be easy to get a top 4 pick, and i get that giving a lotto pick to OKC is painful. But that's the bed we made. How on earth is it better to be "competitive" and give OKC say the 14th pick vs. playing our young guys and developing them while hoping to slip into a top 4 pick? We screwed ourselves with the Russ trade. It's gonna take a little luck to dig out from that and escape the worst of that. Can we give ourselves a chance to get lucky, and perhaps net a franchise changing player that we badly need? I think we can all agree we aren't contending this year, so why not try to focus on rebuilding?
Imagine finishing with the worst record in the league and still ending up with OKC’s or (more likely) Miami’s pick. There’s a 48% chance of that happening even if we do somehow end up with the worst record. Tanking isn’t as straightforward as it once was. The benefits aren’t the same as they were 5 years ago. I think we should instead proceed as if we are going to end up with Miami’s pick this year and just try to out out the best product we can while making future-oriented trades where they make sense. Trying to trade away Wall’s contract, along with the extra future draft picks it would probably take to entice another team to accept it, makes very little sense to me.
Yeah... though I’m curious if reality matches the odds. obviously we only have one year of data so far but if I remember correct the hornets and bulls jumped up last year in a way to be meaningful like that to one of the worst teams. obviously the odds are worse but I’d feel relatively comfortable as a top1/2 worse team. As 3/4 teams would have to jump up. again I think the ideal play is wait and see what happens while trying to win games and then at some point make a decision wrt holding players out of games (Wall, Eg), limiting minutes (Wood) and trading guys for future assets... partly in attempt to get worse and have better odds. even then I think the best we’d do would be like finish 3-8 and likely get bumped back and not up. It would certainly be nice to get that draft lottery “luck” that every other teams that loses a star player via trade/fa seems to get (see Pelicans, Cavs). I suspect when the draft lottery happens Rockets will Be in it and we’ll be hoping for a miracle instead of hoping not to get screwed. but also... maybe they make the playoffs. They have one more loss than the 6th team, 2 more than the 5th team and only 3 more than the second team. And this year there’s the play in so even with the slow start if they finish 9th or 10th they can still play their way in. Conversely 7th/8th seed can play their way out... mad for competition, the warriors and spurs are currently in the playoffs. The blazers are without Nurkic and McCollum. Conversely Memphis, Denver and NOP are not currently in playoffs and ahead of the Rockets. but it’s so early.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2021/1/18/22236679/nba-power-rankings-james-harden-trade So according to Stone PJ = 3 second rounder Could double or triple PJs.
I realize now that I’ve been assuming we would need to land in the bottom 4 record wise to stand a chance of having s top 4 pick, which is wrong. We have a chance as long as we don’t make the playoffs. For example, about a 20% chance if we end up with the 8 worst record. That shifts my thinking on this somewhat. There’s a stronger argument for prioritizing development of young players over a playoffs pursuit than I had thought yesterday.
No doubt....I would imagine Stone being in the vicinity that he knows what he is doing. Stone has been here the whole time too. He's not some new hire they got to replace Morey. It was a natural transition. Next man up.
