Left? More like better than any team in these playoffs, period the 17-18 Rockets are 1 of the greatest non-title teams in NBA history
Just unfortunate that CP3's hammy didn't hold up. CP3 / Harden / Capela would still be ruling, to this day.
Crazy that core had a legit 4 to 5 year window. At least. They damn near won the title in the first year. Pushed the GSW to the brink again in the second year. They would’ve probably gone b2b this year and last.
Cp def came back stronger after his last season with us but the problem in 19 was that harden played the hero for too long that his ego was supreme god level. When cp came back that season he never worked on integrating him back in
Damn sucks we peaked at the worst time. Happy for the Suns, Hawks, and Bucks who are doing it the right way with stars who put the team first.
Sure, I just meant in conference finals and advancing. I do think we were far better than any of these teams this year for sure. As ridiculous as Brooklyn would've been healthy, our defense was much better and they weren't ready. Geez.
Yep, we took that elite 2018 team, one game from the finals. We spent the next offseason burning our bridge with our Associate head coach Jeff Bzdelik who ran our successful switch defense on golden state. -we ignored all of our bird rights, ariza, mbah...next season shumpert. Its fine if you want to move on from players, but literlaly ignoring bird rights not to replace them while we're in a contention window. -We ignore our MLE and TPE of over 10 million to add assets. -We replaced Ariza with James Ennis, later on Daniel house. Both were in MDA's small rotation in 2019, House was cut in January for tax reasons for 2 months mid season, no replacement, empty locker. James Ennis, also in the rotation, traded for top 55 protecte 2nd rounder, no player in return. -Then the owner takes the mike after 2019, a depleted team, and says they need to learn a fighter culture from him. " Former Houston Rockets guard Chris Paul was on the Knuckleheads podcast with Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson and explained the impact of the Rockets losing Ariza. “People don’t realize, that’s the biggest thing that we missed. That was tough when we lost [Ariza] because he sorta was like the glue. He was that glue for our team.” " - Ayton just said Chris paul is the best thing to happen to him in his career because he pushes him. We can't quantify the impacts of veterans that have respect and locker room leadership, so Ariza's value as harden and pauls friend, glue for them, was hard to gage and beyond the court.
