Where Rockets’ roster stands after wild start to 2023 free agency

You forgot the most esteemed Alpha Kaba.

 

Does this guy actually exist or do we actually have the rights to a bunch of frat boys?

 

Still the worst shooting team in the league - maybe even worse than last year and I never thought that was humanly possible. At least we’ll be tough, smart, play good defense and have a good “culture”that should do the trick.

 

We need a Beta as his assistant. Hoped for Durant.

 

You son of a b****, I’m out!

 

Great summary be Ben for anyone who missed yesterday’s mayhem. I am curious if we will make another “splash” or not. I assume whatever is planned will happen in the next coming days. Any reason why the big trade or signing could be delayed?

 

Green,Sengun,Smith,Whitmore,Thompson,Eason.

The Rockets future will be determined by how these guys develop. That was the case heading into FA, and that's the case today.

All the moves so far did was foster an environment to help these guys reach their potential. Its weird how many people thought we were getting our franchise players with cap space, that never happens.

That's not to say I'm thrilled with all of these moves today, I'm certainly not, but the big picture hasn't changed.

 

We traded most of our non-core assets for salary cap room, when all we had to do is not sign KPJ to a premature extension. I’m not gonna lose sleep over TyTy, Garuba, Christopher, and KJ, but a savvy GM would have recouped at least some value. Factoring the two 2nds we had to attach to move TyTy and a Garuba, as well as the 2nds we got for KJ, we ended up trading all those guys for cap space to sign Dillon Brooks. Sorry, I’m just not okay with that horrible asset management, which has become an all to familiar trend under Stone.

 

I suspect that the rest of the NBA did value the Rockets lightly used assets from their very bad team.

 

you mean our 22 yr old starting SF, or the guy we drafted in the first round just last year? I take your point that they didn’t have much value, but we should have done better.

 

Stone is consistent - he drafts pretty well but is dogsh** in trades and a terrible asset manager

 

We can’t have a team where 11 of our 15 players are Rookies - 3rd year vets. We HAD to move off some of the young guys that did not pop for us while they were here. Late 1st round picks or not, we had to consolidate the roster and bring in some vets. It’s not gonna be perfect value for value when the whole league knows we HAVE to move some of them. Some of you guys have ALL the answers, You guys should go put your resume in at a NBA front office and get hired and work your magic.

This is the new start we had to make. They chose our core of young talent to keep and build around for the future. New coach and new system for them to grow up in. We got vets on good deals so it doesn’t hamstring us two years from now. I hope we can add another vet like Grant Williams to the mix. Yeah yeah Dillon got 4 years, so what. Let’s see what he brings under Ime before you pass judgement.

 

That's my biggest issue with the flurry of moves.

3 very recent first round picks and another player who played himself into a piece of some value....and you get absolutely nothing for them aside from a dump. There's still some time to recoup value with the exception we generated, but at this level that is absurdly careless.

 

Where they stand after FA is not much different than where they stood before FA ..... aside from the fact that they raised the floor of this team - the ceiling is still going to be determined by the development (or not) of Green, Sengun, Jabari, Tari, Amen & Whitmore.

They spent a pile of money and didn't come away with a lead dog .... they have to hope one develops out of those early draft picks the last 3 seasons.

Floor raised, ceiling yet to be determined.

 

Stone is betting that Udoka can develop our young players better than Silas did (noting that Stone handcuffed Silas with PT demands).

If the young players do not develop in two years or so, Udoka and Stone both should be fired.

 

The players that would have benefited the most under some actual coaching were all basically given away yesterday. I understand the need for changes and adding some veterans, but those guys would likely have all improved if given some real coaching. We'll never know.

 

I'm disappointed the Rockets didn't get something for Garuba or that he didn't at least cancel out TyTy in the dump. That said, I think Rockets fans put way too much expected value in TyTy, KMJ, and Christopher. They were sunk costs.

 

Hopefully we aren't $20M short of the money we need to actually raise our ceiling 3 years from now because of what we did yesterday.

In fact, because of that, we know for sure our ceiling is lower than it was, unless brooks does better than literally anyone expects.