Uh, good? Just changing for the purpose of change would not be a great plan. Inconsistent shooting is one of our weaknesses and we are looking to add historically inconsistent shooters?
We have another day of false hope, everyone. I am ready for the, "We were working the phones, we thought we were close a couple of times but the reward didn't match the risk, ultimately we love our team, we know we can make a deep playoff run, Fred is working hard to return" (*cough!* in 2026-27 *cough!*) and so on and so forth.
Stone took over the team when every pick except one was owed to OKC over the next five seasons, either directly or via swaps. No cap space, no coach, and stars who were demanding trades out. Now we have the 5th best record in the league and both a top 5 offense and defense despite the injuries. We have all of our picks except for 2026, plus picks or swaps from three other teams, two of which look to be rebuilding. A bunch of our players are 24 years old or younger, four of them are still on their rookie contracts. "Stone just got lucky. Stone just played it safe. Stone has no idea on how to build a team. We have no future." I get that it's frustrating not to be the clear favorite title contenders, but people have completely lost perspective.
Has be built a contender? I don't see one. This team has assets they need to cash in if they desire to win a ring. If the goal is to make money and simply just make the playoffs I guess he has won.
Once he pushed the button for Durant, the re-build was over. I don’t want him to trade just to trade, but he still needs to be aggressive. We have plenty of tradeable assets outside of our young guys to bring in a SG that can shoot. He should be attacking that. It might be that when he signed that extension with Ime, he also handed over his roster building responsibilities, which I think is probably the case. I can’t for the life of me figure out why he gave FVV 25m when the market was 12m max.
FVV's salary being $25M instead of $12M makes very little difference. It makes Fertita pay a higher luxury tax and gets us closer to the 1st apron hard cap this season, but did not affect our ability to use exceptions to add players except for the disabled player exception due to his season ending injury unfortunately. His salary expires next season and at $25M could actually help us match salary in trades. Forget FVV as a player, a $25M expiring contract is more useful than a $12M expiring contract. Let's say FVV was re-signed for $12M per year instead. How would we use that savings to sign someone else? What would have changed? When he tore his ACL and we would have gotten a DPE of $6M (half of his salary). That's it.
What move would you make to make us a contender? I don’t see that move being out there. Even getting Giannis doesn’t solve our biggest issue. Is there a star guard on the market that fills our need?
Giannis (if healthy)/KD/Amen absolutely makes the Rockets a contender right now. Its the only move that realistically could. I think we are underestimating how good Giannis is even with his flaws. He'd instantly be the best player on this team without question. He's never played with anyone as good as a 37 year old KD. There are so many risks with trading Sengun for Giannis and there's the whole PG to LAC trade to tell us why it may make sense to not trade a young star. I'm not sure what Sengun's upside is, I really don't know, but there is risk there. If Sengun reaches a high of where Giannis is today, it would sting very much, but the Rockets decided to trade for an all time great in his twilight. Was it really just to teach the youth how to play or do they want to compete immediately? I don't know. I think the best Giannis trade would be waiting for the summer personally but I do think (if he's healthy) he changes this teams outlook immediately. Does the shot at a title this year (not even close to favorites) make the long term gamble worth it? I don't know.
We would have been 14m under the 1st Apron instead of 1.1M, giving us more wiggle room to make a trade this deadline or better yet don’t sign him at all and use the the 14m for a better backup guard. Maybe you’re right and they use the 25m as trading capital next year, but I doubt it. He’ll be the starting PG in 2027 and we will waste another year of Durant on an early playoff exit.
Is he playing like a 37 year old? Amen Thompson playing point is the netter than any point guard we can get.
“…it's not like we expect to do a whole lot if anything and so for us it's not a big deal.” “…people are definitely calling about our guys. Let ‘em know we’re not trying to do much and it’ll all be better tomorrow for a lot of guys.” - Udoka Spoiler
We also had a smart offensive HC and a Defensive assistant that knew how to game plan and adjust in game/in season.
It was actually Moreyball, they played. D'Antoni gets credit, but he simply ran the offence that Morey wanted.
Don't sign FVV at all and use the $14M for a better backup guard? Who would that have been? I'm not someone who thinks FVV is top tier talent or anything, just curious who you think is better and was available at that price level.
Famous last words. Who cares what some sports guy says. When will you people stop believing the media knucklehead. They get paid to say anything!
This is actually innacurate. Moreyball is the philosophy, D'Antoni made it plausible and Harden made it lethal. The problem actually is by the end we were so min/maxed that we forgot the rest of the team entirely and made it all James, and that could never work in a team sport. Cp3 did so much simply because he was an injection of fundamental basketball which gave us a contrast to the concerted trinity of Moreyball Innovators.
