Ausar and Amen on the same team is not ideal and that dream should go away. They will have more success away from each other unfortunately.
Agreed except there is nothing unfortunate about it. I love Ausar and sort of keep up with him, but I don't want him on the Rockets.
Yea sorry to say I agree. It’s already annoying. Like it makes zero sense for Detroit to trade him to us. Why don’t we just trade Amen to Detroit to link up the twins? …no? Right? lol. Exactly. Let’s please stop this nonsense fellas.
Here we as fans were expecting a pick in the low 20’s - and bam, the Rockets are likely getting the 9th pick in this draft…. Sweet!!
I may be wrong. But our own pick in 2026 is top 4 protected. So technically we still own it IF we end up out of the playoffs and get a top 4 pick that year.
Well hopefully the Rockets have 60+ wins next season and any lottery aspirations are null and void… lol
Pulling for a Top 4 pick but VERY happy if we end up with #9. That would be a huge win. This is a good draft.
This is a common theme with Stone's moves. They get panned initially and later down the line people realize how smart of a move it was. oh no! We're not getting a young star for Harden! We're gonna regret not picking up Ben Simmons. Oh no! We're getting Dillon Brooks! He sucks. He's not an nba player, he should go play in China. Oh no! We're drafting this guy that can't shoot! We should be trading up for Scoot Henderson so we can have our PG of the next decade. Sure, it can seem like he got "lucky" but at some point people have to realize that taking low downside risk with the chance of getting "lucky" is a skill, like stock picking.
I am still a little pissed at Stone because I wanted him to drag PHI 2027 out of the Nets. They were making that Bridges trade no matter what.
Correct. It will be the end of the Westbrook debacle but you have to argue if that didn't happen, the Harden trade would never have happened. It took us a long time but we effectively sabotaged all the bad from that trade. 2022 and 2025 pick swaps were wiped out. 2026 pick is negated by the pick we got back for trading Westbrook for Wall. Effectively all we gave up is Nikola Topic but we also swindled OKC in the Sengun trade so effectively we traded Topic for Sengun. One of the great examples in NBA history of recovering from a monumentally stupid decision. The lesson being don't ever f**king do something like that again. Our entire team is built off the stupidity of the Nets and Suns with some help from Dallas and should have been Philly. I just think if Stone didn't botch the player portion of the Harden trade and how we handled our own players what could have been in more assets. Dumping PJ, EGo, Wood earlier. Bypassing Oladipo for Levert and Allen and getting assets back. It's good now but that 6 game winning streak after the trade threw Stone off his game and delayed the rebuild into a reload that thankfully didn't last.
Hence the saying, “when life gives you lemons, make Lemonade” Harden in 2021 had put the Rockets in a perilous scenario, by requesting to be traded. After using his GM’ing skills for years, the Rockets had little assets and a dooming team future - Harden knew the goose was cooked. Stone obliged and traded him to a team with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, to form a formidable big 3 of hall of famers. None of us thought the Nets would implode after a season + …. Yet 5 years after the fact all three are still all-star, but none remain with the Nets. The Rockets had sour lemons after that trade, and somehow made them lemonade - with still some very nice draft picks coming in the future.
Underlooked part of all of this--Harden only made the all-star team the season we traded him away under that contract (35 games with Brooklyn that year). He squeaked in this year, but he would not have been under contract with us anyway. EDIT: Forgot he did get in this year So basically we got 5 FRPs and a swap, at least two of those top 10 lottery picks (and probably more to come), for two years of a very good starter + those 35 games of all-star level play the year we traded him.
Speaking of engineering your own luck … h/t to Morey for protecting our picks in the Paul/WB trade, that landed #2 in 2021 in a Top 4 protected pick swap.
Partially Cam Whitmore as well, with Eric Gordon being the other part. I’m pretty confident in thinking that Cam will help the down the road or value in a trade. He is a good palyer that I know some teams would definitely take a chance on. The dude is 20 years old.
