Jamaal Murray, Nikola Jokic is literally Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun the Two Man Game, should be the Top Play for the Rockets. The Nuggets are literally teaching the Rockets How to play in the Playoffs, Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun should learn from this, along with the Coaches and Front Office. Rafael Stone literally is trying to create a Nuggets like Roster, Sengun, Jalen Green, KJ Martin.
Jamaal Murray, Nikola Jokic is literally Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun the Two Man Game, should be the Top Play for the Rockets.
This is pivot year. Stone has to flex his GM muscles to earn his keep. As Clutch and others bought up (numerous times), this summer is critical for Stone. p.s. Stone's first hand picked head coach was a bust. Swapping out assistant coaches last season didn't change much. Ime looks good (for now), could be what saves him. It's probably Stone's last life line. There's only so many HC's a GM can hide behind. If you ask pro Ime supporters to list top 5 things why they like him. One of them is likely because he carries weight, and perhaps willing to push back to the GM, and give an outside perspective. Why?, because so far it hasn't worked. When you need an outside voice to 'proof-read' you, it's nice that current FO is willing to ask for help, but it also means, they haven't done the best job up to that point.
I absolutely do not believe they expected to be as pathetic as they are. Why would anyone believe that? Pretending like there was a master plan to be the worst team in the NBA for 3 years then flip the switch now - despite having drafted badly and obtained zero switch flippers- is so gullible man. I know what the Rockets would have liked to have happened - but bc of bad luck, poor drafting etc ot didn't happen, and here we are.
I absolutely believe they tanked on purpose for a chance at Wemby and planned to be one of the three or four worst teams in the league. You can debate whether that was a good decision but it couldn't be more obvious that was their plan. They systematically removed every single veteran player from the team, does that not send a message to you?
I mean...I guess? They gave KPJ and Jalen Green a chance to be the lead guards. Hasn't worked out but that was the plan in place. I agree they need that aspect on the team, but that's aside the point. The point is people already blaming the Rockets for not making a trade that is incredibly unlikely in the first place.
lmfao If we "positioned ourselves" to have "pieces that other teams want", then we would be a solid team & we wouldn't be drafting 3rd to begin with, therefore would still be impossible to trade up. Again...silly criticism.
Your original reply was about difficulty of trading up being easy, which you incorrectly projected as my opinion. Sounds like we settled on that. By positioning and winning deals on the margin, be it having actual assets: unlike the Oladipo or Theis of the world (better vets), or getting more out of Gordon and Wood (better draft assets / trade chips), team could still be in rebuild, but have more things to offer; as folks wouldn't want to do things like considering the young core: (Green/Bari/Sengun). I think you'd know this, or maybe just willfully choose to ignore. I don't really care tbh.
Just remember where you were 3wks before the draft last year, in terms of how you evaluated the players and how likely you thought we were gonna draft a different guy (Banchero). Remember the unabashed selling out the franchise did for that guy in public, and just remember that whether it's posturing or not, whatever you hear coming out of the franchises at this point in the draft cycle is completely meaningless.
Would have been annual conference finals bound for good stretch no doubt with chance to break through each time, but they had best record(or top 2) during his MVP season and he had great chance to break thru then and came up short But I feel same way about prime Grant Hill and others who got struck by injury bug and took away their best yrs Rose healthy was a serious problem
I'm not saying the Rockets have not made mistakes along the way. But I can assure you that whatever marginal difference in what we did get for Wood or Gordon or whatever over the hill veteran we had and what their "maximum" value would be in no way is the difference between us being able to trade up for a generational point guard prospect like Scoot Henderson.
Not entirely true though. The pieces that other teams want, the fanbase declared untouchable or nearly untouchable. Green, Bari, Sengün, Tari............so there is that. I bet you that other teams want them. Do not think they would give up the farm for them though. Fans want to get rid of Kenyon Martin, KPJ, Tate, Nix, etc. Other fanbases know that you are just selling them 2nd rate parts, borderline passable but not great.
We should absolutely be willing to trade Tari to move up if it gets the deal done. Harder call with Green or Bari (who were top 3 picks themselves) or Sengun (who has played himself into that conversation)
Here's a hypothetical. Imagine if Stone got Jarrett Allen out of the original Harden deal. His current contract is $20 mil across the board (2023, 2024, 2025). Nurk makes near the same money: ($16m, $18m, $19m). Same length: (2023, 2024, 2025). Rockets gives Allen + 4th pick Blazers gives Nurk + (small salary filler) + 3rd pick. Blazers who wants to be a win-now team, gets a really good upgrade in Center position. All they had to do was move one spot down. If POR wants to further trade their "4th" pick for another win-now piece, they can... and they might even be able to keep Sharpe/Simmons. Can't tell me that wouldn't at least entice Blazer's GM. Rockets up their position to get Henderson. In this scenario, Rockets is at the table for discussion; not some 3rd team (which is even more tough to pull off), and they don't give up any of their prospects (Green/Jabari...etc). Before people say with Allen, it would have ruin the tank. The covid year 2020-21 (72 games), where Cavs won 22 game and got Evan with a 3rd pick, Allen played 70% of the games (51 out of 72). There are levers a team can pull to not fully 'activate' a good asset. Thunder did the same for Chet by shutting down SGA (24 wins in 2021-22). Also before the what-ifs, where if Allen was here, we wouldn't draft Sengun. I'd challenge that notion where a rebuild team is all about talent accumulation. Rockets having an Allen, they could have still went after Sengun. ...The Cavs did, they had Allen and still went after a big (Mobley). BPA. Missed opportunities are exactly that.
That is interesting. I do not think they willl keep both Shaedon and Anfernee Simons, they are different players but both play at similar positions. Simons is like Gary Trent on roids when they traded him away. In the end they traded Gary Trent. And Norman Powell. Players that could go for 20-25 on any given night. Portland is not like Houston, other than Lillard, they have parted ways with McCollum a beloved player. They are willing to give up almost anyone.
To add to that, I think Portland is better with developing guards than bigs at this point. They need wings but I can see them trading for one later in the season.
What are we talking about here? We have enough assets to overpay to move up. We can trade #4 and all our future picks, of course the Blazers would accept that. We also have $60m in cap space which means there were trade-offs to be made between dumping salary and stockpiling picks. We have some of the best talent between the ages of 18 and 22 in the NBA - and we have like 7 of them. Fertitta believes there's 3-4 All Stars in that group. We hired an excellent head coach. There's no way Stone is in the hot seat. They got a little unlucky with ping pong balls, but based on what we can control this tank job could not have gone better. We're in an amazing position. Can just be patient. No one else in the entire NBA can afford to be more patient than us. No matter who you sign this summer, these kids need 30-40 games to learn what Ime wants. Even the Celtics started off slow when he came in (I believe they were .500 halfway into the season). @TimDuncanDonaut marginal trades are very important for contenders like Denver but not so much in the context of gigantic moves we've made over the past 3 years. If we played better, we'd have fewer ping pong balls so anything you're suggesting about improving the roster or production was never in consideration. These players absorbed more forced losing than almost anyone in NBA history, I'm NOT surprised it screwed the culture up. That's the cost of what we have - the future picks, the cap space, the young players all of which attracted Ime Udoka. I think you are technically right about what you're saying, but it's so small in the grand scheme of things. Marginal trades will be more important moving forward.
Yeah idk why many on here view tari as untouchable. I love tari, but he has a role player ceiling and is already 22 years old. Can’t be getting attached to players
