What are you even talking about? I never said I don’t believe in trades. The exchange was about the difference between trading for a star versus trading for potential as a long-term strategy. You’re out here arguing like I questioned the existence of trades altogether. Come on, man—at least stick to the topic.
The real trick is finding guys who are undervalued by their current team, like we did with Harden. Unfortunately, the Rockets are more likely to fall prey to such a tactic. Bari, Cam, and Reed are getting the short-end of the stick - I bet there are numerous teams that would like to pick them off.
If you think about this for longer than about 30 seconds you'll find that the exact opposite of what the OP is saying is true. All of these teams are being carried by guys that were given up on by their teams, instead of resigning them and allowing them to develop. The kings gave up on Haliburton, he's now the star of Indiana. The clippers gave up on Shai to chase Paul George, he's now the MVP and likely carrying OKC to a championship. And finally Dallas gave up on Brunson and let him go, now he's carrying the knicks. All of these teams are highlighting the missteps of franchises giving up on their young players. None of them were "trading for a star."
All I know is that the Rockets should still be playing because they are better than the Wolves. They should have beaten Golden State if just one other person could have put the ball in the basket, and not just Jalen but any other person like Dillon who was absolutely horrid the entire series. The Rockets played the Thunder well in their last game because they are just as physical as they are and they had no answer for our big man lineup. It’s sucks watching knowing your team should still be playing.
Actually, that's why I used reb% rather than rebounds, so it is adjusted for teams that miss more shots. Think about this for a moment and you'll understand how bad a strategy this was. Out of all the box stats that are ALL important - and just to reiterate I understand that rebounding is IMPORTANT - however rebounding has less impact on winning than offensive rating, defensive rating, points, assists, blocks, 2PT%, 3PM, 3PT%, FTA and turnovers. It's about as important as steals and many would argue with you that steals are more impactful. So we essentially based our whole team around the thing that's least correlated to winning. Of all the important such stats, there are none less correlated to winning than rebounds. We deprioritized everything else in order to grab rebounds. What's exceptionally crazy about it is that Jabari and Sengun already are an excellent rebounding duo, but we decided to downgrade our shooting, pace and passing by treating Adams as though he's going to win us a series. And it's important to note Adams killed it, he did amazing. The team rebounded better than Udoka could have ever dreamed of. And it got us nowhere. You can see the impact of this because the Warriors were one of the better rebounding teams in the NBA and we absolutely CRUSHED them on the boards. It didn't matter. I called it right after the ASB when the double big lineup started emerging. Udoka used the double bigs vs an easy schedule and it succeeded so he let his 90's nostalgia get the best of him and he hijacked our whole team to install a hobby as a feature of our team. There was NOTHING wrong with the starting lineup from the beginning of the season (Sengun and 4 shooters) and that lineup had learned how to play together. It was so disingenuous for Udoka to use a paltry sample of evidence to hijack the team. This was epic mismanagement. He forced something onto our team and it was executed beyond expectations. This was on Udoka.
Great post. I got no problems with Udoka experimenting with a number of different lineups and strategies because I think those are useful for the big picture when you need lineups in specific situations within a game so your guys need to know how to execute full court and various zones but as a coach you also need to know where your rebounding lineups are, shooting lineups, defense lineups and you also need to know what comes off the table when those lineups play to make sure they are sustainable in spurts. I also agree with your point about the correlation of rebounding to winning but I think there are two important things to note here. - sometimes you play those strategies to force other teams to decide if they want to counter and that can disrupt another team's rotation. In the moment, watching Adams gobble up rebounds, if Kerr plays Draymond and Looney - then you probably did yourself a favor overall. I'm not saying that's what Udoka did/didn't do here, but I think you should give him a little more credit than he's trying to relive 90s nostalgia. The man did take a young Boston team to the Finals not too long ago so he deserves a little more credit when Houston lost a series that virtually everyone outside of Houston thought we would lose. - at one point in the series - that lineup was super effective in Houston clawing back into games when Adams went in. Houston would normally be down by 10+, Curry goes to the bench, Udoka brings in Adams and they went on runs. Now I'm sure a large part of that was Curry going out but it's not crazy to think that when Houston needed to change games, the Adams thing had actually been + minutes earlier in the series....but agree with you that GS figured it out(not necessarily rebounding, but really facing the zone we played when Adams was out there) and it failed us when we needed our A+ lineup against the Warriors the most....I just don't think Houston was very consistent this series - Fred was terrible half the series, Jalen had one good game - Houston's best lineup depended on the night and the quarter so again, I'm giving Udoka the benefit of the doubt with a young team in their first playoff series against a veteran all time team. ....now if this happens year after year - I'm going to turn on Udoka quick but I'm not there yet with him even though I agree with a lot of what you are saying.
Yeah this is actually very fair. It would absolutely suck if we traded away Alpi or even Jalen and then they went and did a Brunson.
Brunson is a Star and borderline Superstar....not sure what you are talking about. OKC - Shai was traded for along with others like Hartenstein. Minny - Gobert and Randle among others trades NYK - Brunson, Towns traded for Indiana - Halliburton and siakam - acquired in trade If you are building your roster, you have to flip assets to get the chemistry right....it is time for the Rox to flip, or we will never win. DD
Golden State traded for Jimmy Butler and got Buddy Hield (could have made it to the conference finals, but Steph got injured...) Suns traded for Durant and Beal (hasn't really paid dividends and they ended up among the worst teams in the league this year) Philadelphia has been shuffling stars and players right and left over the past few years with abysmal results thanks in part to injuries. Pelicans traded for Dejounte Murray but injuries killed their season while trading away Dyson Daniels in the process... and then they also traded away Ingram. The Clippers have been trading and signing people for years and really have nothing to show for it. Every year there are teams making trades for stars that don't really do much for the team in terms of going deep in the playoffs. Golden State's acquisitions actually could've put them in the final 4, but the rest of the teams I could think of either got worse, they traded away better players, or really didn't change much in terms of their season the past couple of years. The teams that are still in the playoffs have relatively young studs at their core or are young players with vets around them. Whether they were acquired through trade or via draft, they've shown they're great. And just because you flip assets doesn't mean you will or won't win, but I think most GM's know this. All teams make trades for stars or near-star players and don't necessarily make any noise in the playoffs. I think the Rockets know they need to consolidate if a good deal presents itself, but just because they make some trades doesn't mean they'll improve.
There’s nothing wrong with having specialist lineups. However, we were often in a hole because he changed the starting lineup. The Sengun/Brooks/Amen/Green/FVV lineup struggled all season. It had a bad net rating. Why did he stick with it? To then give the double big lineup credit for clawing us out of a hole we didn’t need to be in is something I strongly disagree with. I get where you’re coming from. Teams take risks and sometimes they don’t pan out. It’s good to take risks. Udoka tried this strategy 13 consecutive playoff games against Kerr and Kerr didn’t flinch even when we crushed them on the boards. Kerr didn’t flinch because it’s not actually a difficult choice. He’s going to keep his spaced lineup in the game and swap 3’s for offensive rebounds. Instead of realizing it’s not working and changing course, the guy doubled down on it and kept playing 2 non-shooters more and more. By the time game 7 arrived, he played non-shooters so many minutes that we didn’t even take enough 3’s to have a mathematical chance of winning. When someone takes a risk this big and doubles down more and more and it fails, it’s important to take accountability. In Boston he lost the Finals to a less talented team with fewer superstars while his team out-shot them from 3PT range. Then, too, he simply lost because he didn’t attempt more 3’s. I don’t give him any credit for beating this dead horse. He honestly just did it emotionally. There was no reason to do it. It was flat out a bad idea to have 2 non-shooters on the floor for 48 minutes. There was a tried and tested lineup he should have gone with. We didn’t need rebounds more than 3’s and spacing. It was a car crash you can see happening from a distance. He’s two years in and with more grown young players and $80m+ per season spent on new FA’s. That he’s not been able to eclipse Silas’s TS% is very alarming. We are a team that needs to squeeze out every ounce of offense possible and he’s kind of the exact opposite.
There is no guarantee for anything but standing pat is a guarantee about never winning... You still have to stand in the batters box and take your swings. When was the last time a team had an all drafted group win anything? DD
I mean Boston drafted their main guys and they won last year. They made some trades too but without the draft they are nothing. I think we are not winning the championship soon if we trade the whole team or stay pat. Team building takes time and our whole team is still approaching their prime. Superstars are expensive and young players usually develop into better players. I don’t think we need a panic trade but if there is something good available we should explore it. I see it as just as likely for one of our underutilized players to become HIM as any underutilized player from another team. Like say se trade tari and cam for Ty Jerome are we better? Who’s the guy? We need a shooter who plays good defense can handle the ball and create offense but also on the trading block. I think a trade like okc did last season would be good but who is our giddy? Who are you ready to give up on? Green? What would we get? Who would take over his minutes and shots?
Cam certainly can help on offense. However, 3pt shooting is not really his strength. He is slightly below league average in his two NBA seasons. His college shooting wasn't particularly impressive either. His strength is explosiveness going to the hoop.
