I dont think you can hang on to KD in any capacity if you want to win moving forward. I think the order of dead weight on this team is: 1) Durant -big gap- 2) Sengun 3) Fred / DFS 4) Adams Stone has managed himself into a corner with these "look how smart I am" veteran moves that have all more or less blown up in his face. He hit a home run with Dillon/FVV and then thought he could do it again with Durant and DFS. As long as Durant is here the chemistry wont be and the young guys won't grow. The pressure to "get him the ball' is too great from everyone (Durant included because hes a petulant sociopathic narcissist) so the young guys will second guess themselves the whole time and we're just going to be spinning our wheels.
I’m concerned Stone doesn’t get the chemistry stuff or the build around good guys stuff. He wanted to build around KPJ. I’m worried he doesn’t get it. I completely agree with u. KD is not good for our young guys. That’s a huge factor in the trade KD debate.
If we're not trading for another star, then our off-season goals should be to get younger at the point guard position and athletic/dynamic (FVV has to go), we need to get more athletic in the Center position (Steven Adams and Capela are old), and fill thd bench with 3-D shooters. I think we keep DFS and he'll have a full off-season to get back to his basketball rhythm. Tate, Jeff Green, and Aaron Holiday can walk...I think we'll bring back Okogie
I agree but don’t think the guard we need and getting rid of Fred are mutually exclusive. I think we need to switch to an alignment with 2 quality point guards in the starting lineup at PG/SG. A full health FVV is already 1 that is capable of bringing 3&D value even when playing off ball. We can’t be stranded again if 1 guy goes down.
Sometimes my brain blocks out the fact that KPj was on this team. Christian Wood as well. Stone thought he was cooking lol.
Enjoy Game Theory podcast, generally. Not big on the proposed trades Sam suggests involving the Rockets, though, as much as he loves the Rockets (not just this episode). The Giannis trade suggested does not leave Rockets enough to build roster around Giannis quickly. I'm not ideologically opposed to trading for Giannis. I get the NBA is a star driven league, but you still need guys around the star. If that is the price for Giannis, I think he's a free agent next season.
I haven’t seen much evidence that KD is hurting the young guys’ development. He’s not taking away a ton of developmental minutes, and he’s certainly not preventing Amen, Reed, or Sengun from getting meaningful on-ball reps. Even with KD taking a lot of ISOs, those guys have still had plenty of chances to create, make decisions, and play in competitive possessions. What KD has clearly provided is elite spacing on a team that badly needs it. That matters for development too. It gives Amen, Reed, and Sengun more room to operate instead of constantly trying to create against a packed paint. Granted, the paint is clogged a lot, but that is not on KD. The main on-court negative I see is defensively. KD is not an especially active help defender at this stage, and that can make it harder for the younger players to learn rotations in a clean structure. Sengun, in particular, has not been covered up the way Brooks and Jabari did so well two seasons ago. But there’s also a developmental upside there. KD’s presence has forced Tari and Jabari to guard down the lineup and take tougher matchups. That may not make their defense look as good in the short term, but it can help them grow long term. To me, the bigger issue is that the Rockets need to find a way to get a fourth shooter on the floor, not move away from their best spacer. Personally, I think young players benefit more from playing meaningful, competitive minutes than from piling up touches in non-competitive situations.
Get the PG position covered for 48 and things improve for most of our guys, who can then play a role they are better suited for. That includes KD's minutes being in the mid 20s at most and putting Amen in better position to use all his skills while logging a few less minutes. The way the team was constructed last year was criminal. There should have been a PG pickup, trade, or signing to relieve the pressure on players who are very much not PGs. You can get away with position-less basketball if you have a Jordan/Harper or a Doncic/James, but we don't have that and it should have been clear to the front office even before Fred's injury. It was clear to a lot of us and we're just a bunch of idiots typing stupid stuff.
90% of KD iso’s involve everyone else standing around. Once or twice a quarter Amen can’t get KD the ball early in the clock and he gets ruffled, goes away from the look to another play, leaving KD pouting and observably frustrated. That **** is cancerous. And it’s KD’s default. He’s not even wrong - strategically - to be upset w/ Amen on many of those it’s just everything else about it. Cancerous.
100% this. The problem is - while KD is pouting, the rest of the team is playing 4 on 5 because KD doesn't try to make himself useful off ball. The only way this team can be successful offensively is every player is a potential a threat at every moment - that means everyone needs to be sliding away from help defenses, everyone needs to be either finding an open space or setting a screen for someone who is and the second any player relieves that pressure on the defense for any reason(if it's KD pouting or no one taking Tate seriously on the wing), it makes it too easy on defenses to defend us....and that's before the known "two non shooters sharing the court" roster construction problem(Amen/Sengun) that already gives defenses shortcuts to defending us. We don't have good enough offensive players outside of KD to afford to make it easier on NBA defenses. Harden did this too but the difference is Harden is an elite playmaker and KD is not a playmaker at all but rather a play finisher.
I wasn’t talking just talking about on-the court. The chemistry was off this season. It was clear our young guys were intimidated by him and didn’t adjust well. People want to sweep burnergate under the rug but I think trust was clearly broken. Sengun clearly doesn’t like him; intentionally left him out of his end of the year feel good vid. I would say KD’s on-court demeanor was good the first half of the season and pretty bad the 2nd half. I think one has to acknowledge that KD had a negative impact on team chemistry. And as I keep pointing out: what the hell is he doing on this roster if we aren’t contending? Trying to save Ime and Stone’s jobs is what. We aren’t going anywhere with KD, I just don’t get it. I agree that his spacing helps our team, including the young guys, but he’s not the only floor spacer in the nba. A more age-appropriate shooter would be great.
I think you’re assuming a lot about what was in multiple players’ heads. Maybe the chemistry was off, but saying the young guys were intimidated by KD, that trust was broken because of burnergate, or that Sengun clearly doesn’t like him because of an end-of-year video is a lot of narrative-building from limited evidence. Sengun not playing well for three-quarters of the season is primarily on Sengun. Same with the other young guys. KD may not be blameless, but it feels like you’re starting with the conclusion that KD hurt the team, then fitting every bad development into that explanation. The roster has problems with or without KD. If the standard is “are we contending” then trading KD and keeping KD probably lead to the same answer: no, not unless other things change too. So I don’t really get treating KD as the central problem, or acting like removing him fixes the Rockets. And if the argument is that KD should only be here if we’re contenders, then what exactly is the trade-Durant plan that makes us contenders sooner? Because “get a more age-appropriate shooter” sounds nice, but that player has to actually be available, affordable, and good enough to replace what KD provides. Also, the Rockets would still need another shooter, as they are still playing a shooter down in most lineups. Personally, I think having KD allows the Rockets to develop players and actually make decisions on the young players. The pro-Silas way gives developmental minutes to all the young guys, but ti is hard to assess who is actually doing good or not.
I think veteran leadership is important, but I don’t think KD is a leader despite being a veteran. There are other guys that can play that role. Definitely would never go back to the Silas “organic growth” approach, or whatever him and Stone called it. Also not saying KD is the big problem on this team. I agree with you that roster construction overall is the biggest problem. But I do think KD hurt chemistry and I do think that things like burnergate matter. To ur point abiut there being no difference in our contending outlook if we trade or don’t trade KD, I would say that talent and assets matter when trying to build a future contender. If KD can net us a draft pick or good young player who can contribute or would have real value in a future trade, I think that gets us a step closer to our goal of rebuilding this team into contender. We are going nowhere with KD, so why not get some assets that could be really helpful in the future? we need spacing, so I’m not proposing that we trade KD, and ignore our obvious spacing issues. I just think that if we can turn KD into one of these great draft guard prospects or into a good young prospect, the team is probably better served by that.
If the goal is a rebuild, propose other steps. Trading for a floor general this season is like 5 steps back as it will take many more assets that could help the future than trading KD would acquire. Holding onto Amen and Sengun only makes sense if one thinks there is a chance to win with one or both of those. Saying "we are going nowehere with KD" is the same as saying "We are going nowhere with Amen". I just don't buy the Amen will not be good enough in his 4th and 5th years, but has a huge leap in ability in year 6 or later that more than makes up for his salary jumping 400%. Maybe it happens, but that is just not something to bank on. I'm not ready to give up on Amen. Granted, I don't believe in him enough to go all in either.
Yeah, this is content over true analysis - they just did 60 hours of recordings for every team and it's clear they knocked out 4-6hrs of content at a time. Giannis does move the needle in a meaningful way but generally you don't do the Giannis move because of the "okay what now" part of that conversation - so you get Giannis and how do you build a team around him at that point becaue we don't have elite shooting....and it appears and Sam and Bryce aren't even thinking about that here - hence "content over true anlaysis".
Sam is way, way too high on Giannis and Paolo in my opinion. I don't think this is a hurried analysis. This is just a really big difference of opinion on Giannis and Sengun. I don't have much of an issue with what Sam said about Rocket's players. I just don't agree with how the Rockets should proceed. Granted, I think I'm in the small minority that wants to see how team does with a PG before making drastic moves unless a good deal for a star happens. Last year he proposed the Rockets sending out Amen, Sengun, 25 Pho FRP, 27 Pho FRP, Green, Whitmore, and Landale for Giannis and Jerami Grant. In that trade, he had Sengun going out to Portland and sending Clingan, a great 29 FRP, to Milwaukee, and 28 and 30 swap rights were sent to Milwaukee.I would have done the Sengun to Portland part, but would have kept Clingan, 29 FRP, and ability to swap the Rockets 28 and 30 picks for the Mil-Portland swaps.
It’s not at all the same thing, KD is 38 and has maybe 2 years left and injury free for two years is also a dubious prediction. It is 2 years in which we have very little chance at competing. If we can get a decent pick for Durant you do it, whether you believe in Amen or not. Amen is 23 Jabari is 22, Reed is 21, Sengun is 23. I believe Amen is the so called “floor general” of the future. I think he would have been a year closer, if Ime hadn’t given up on it after 10 games. If he’s not, he’s still a huge piece to the puzzle. I can’t for the life of me understand why we would want to waste another year of starting 33 year old PG coming off a major injury and a 38 year old ball hog that was injured in the playoffs. We are going to have to re-structure this roster. Why wait 2 years to do it? Trade KD and shop Sengun is about the only reasonable way forward to maybe compete in 28 after adding some young players and giving the stew some time to cook. I’m not giving up assets to move FVV, but if you can move him for 2nd round picks and expirings, I would do it. Otherwise, we will just plug away and get a 4 or 5 seed and get punked in the playoffs and not get a 10-15 pick in a really good draft and spam a couple of guys that won’t be part of the team in 2 years.
At this point, since we are stuck with Ime and Stone for next year, I'm probably hoping they don't do any major trades. Just run it back with FVV and Adams coming back, and don't let Ime/Stone trade away our future. Then when we flame out against in the first round next year, hopefully Tilman cleans house. New management next summer can make the Brooklyn / Phoenix picks, and stand a better chance of getting them right than Stone. The only exception would be if Stone could trade Sengun in a lateral move that brings back talent that fits our roster better. As long as it is young talent, and no picks are sent out.
