[Stone] Houston has the Smallest Front Office in Sports

If there's a classic Rockets team for Harden in his prime then it would be doable I think. I've not seen which teams are on the latest version. I actually think him being "the system" makes him perfect for Ime "my idea of offense is more defense" Udoka. Ime would run the defense and prime Beard IS the offense - no system needed, he'd have infinitely better targets then he ever had with us in his prime. Imagine lobs to Amen? WIDE open kickouts to KD, Bari. 2 Man game with Alpi would be literally unstoppable.

 

Honestly, this could be a throwback concept that helps basketball be just that BASKETBALL. All of the analytics and scouting can be overwhelming if it doesn't lead to winning. We witnessed this during the McHale era in Houston. My call would be to ask Ime what is necessary and ignore the rest. I imagine the players get exhausted by stat heads taking the purity out of the game and would be attracted to a blue collar concept that brings results.

 

Let's be honest, we're "the" team to judge the analytics approach on, we're the OG guinea pig. If Stone wins a chip with this method, can we truly say the "Morey approach" of niche-skill moneyball and a team that was mostly one player deep (never forget how rigid we were at the end with we had Morey, Beard and D'Antoni in complete unison - and zero flexibility or adjustments beyond "this is supposed to be the most efficient by the metrics so do this" leading to how many missed 3's again?) is better than the Ime "best offense is more defense" kick ass, hustle hard then hustle harder, and if you need an adjustment it's more hustle approach?

 

Good point. A defensive minded head coach would like a "system" like prime Harden. All you need to do is give him the ball and let him do his things and surround him with a bunch of 3&D players. But that kind of one-man system seldom win championships because in the playoffs, teams can focus on stopping that one guy and the whole system comes crumbling down. We've seen how teams started double team Harden right after he crossed the half court and forced him to pass. The other guys had no clue what to do without Harden creating.

 

Yeah but on this squad he's got over-the-hill KD, Sengun and Amen instead of Ariza, Capela and Eric Gordon. There's a difference lol. I kinda wanna try a season on 2k with prime Beard on the squad now just to see how ridiculously OP it'd be.

 

Stone didn’t say anything about scouting, data and analytics staff as a whole. He said front office. Likely this means the directors and their assistants in basketball operations side of the house.

The reporting doesn’t suggest Houston have a small or obsolete analytics department. Instead Fertita said he likes analytics. Jason Roman, a renowned stats/software industry guy is director of analytics.

Here’s a comparison of Rockets basketball operations team vs the Dallas Mavericks.

Mavs:

GM
2x assistant GM’s
Dir scouting
Dir analytics
VP basketball communications
Dir basketball development
3x Dir of personnel
Dir player development
2x exec assistants
Dir of scouting
Dir player relations
Dir team operations

Rockets:

GM
Asst gm
Sen VP ops
Dir scouting
Dir int scouting
Vp int scouting
Dir analytics
2x bas operations
Dir player personnel
Player development

 

This makes great sense to me. Love this. Would never happen, and I'm glad we get to see what the KD experience is like for ourselves, but the picture you've painted is a compelling one. It would be so exciting to see. Skinny Harden though. Not sloth Harden. Maybe it wouldn't even matter too much.

 

Correct, a lot of this discussion is being overblown due to semantics and lacking context. Here's a continuation of what Stone said following that quote about being the smallest FO in sports:

Spoiler alert, there are way more than four people in the front office. From the team, these people are basketball operations staff: Francis Adu, Sam Berenberg, Jason Biles, Joseph Blair, Aaron Blackshear, Harley Borish, Josh Bostic, Daniel Bratulić, Aaron Bright, Matt Bullard, Ricky Canales, Willie Cruz, Jake Flancer, Motoki Fujii, Jeremy Garcia, Orhun Güngören, David Harvey, Adil Hassan, Jeremy Hassler,.Elijah Hazekamp, Ross Homan, Neil Johnson, Keith Jones, Robbie Keck, Rodrick Kelly, Nicholas Kiriazis, Scott Kneller, Ed Kupfer, John Lucas, Matt McQuaid, Walker Miller, Jay Modi, Anthony Nila, Jim Paulis, Javier Pesquera, Ed Pinckney, Marko Radovanovic, Eddie Reed, Jason Roman, LJ Rose, Ben Rubin, Alex Santos, Joseph Square, Travis Stockbridge, Christian Vasquez, Chris Wallace, Kristin Williams, and Cole Zwicker.

Around 2021, there were all these jokes about the Rockets basically hiring all of Draft Twitter, i.e. Zwicker, Rubin, etc. Earlier this offseason, DJ Augustin was added in a similar capacity to guys like Bullard and Lucas. Wallace is a former GM and VP of basketball ops.

They've invested plenty, the context of the quote was about people who are physically in the room when negotiations and hard decisions actually take place. Which, to be fair, you can definitely argue that maybe more than four people should be there. I'm not saying they're clearly right, but that's what the quote is in reference to.

 

Two is better than one. We almost had two when we had CP3.

 

Fair point. Maybe they've got some nepo hires in there or maybe they just don't care enough to realize they could attract better design talent.

Given how Cracker Barrel paid a truckload of money to a "leading branding agency" to sterilize their stores, maybe the Rockets prefer to keep the people they have because they can rely on them to not do the worst job possible, even if they're not capable of doing the best job possible.

 

The Rockets need to keep doing what they're doing because the team has been highly successful under Stone. I hope nothing changes as you should

 

cool..

Larsa Pippen has the biggest front office in sports

 

You want a small office and a small desk, so that when you put your balls on it they look enormous.