In all honesty... with our track record at the draft, just cash em in already. It"s like we're just collecting Rocks instead of diamonds at this point. Even with the first pick somehow I think we'd mess it up and get a future janitor at the Toyota Center.
Are you serious? Oh yeah Stone really messed up Alpi, Jabari, Tari, Amen, Cam drafts. Future janitors all of em amirite? What a joke
Jabari is a good player to get at the 3 spot, at worst he is the 4rth best player in the draft. Who has looked better than Jabari other Banchero, Chet and JDub? Jalen at 2 may be a miss, but Sengun at 16 more than made up for it "in a quality draft". Jabari broke the record for youngest player with pts and rebs and you think his ceiling is an elite role player? Lmao. Even OKc don't draft perfectly you know Pokusevski? Ousmane Dieng? The only significant miss if you can call it that is Jalen Green so far in the Stone regime. If you think Stone has done a poor job drafting in just 3 yrs you are clueless.
Memphis and Atlanta tanking hard. Brooklyn doing some actual winning. Bracing myself for the Brooklyn pick to be like #10-12.
You don't understand, all the the good picks were made by Eli Witus and all the bad picks were made by Stone!
Stone gets an incomplete as a draft evaluator. Most of the top picks were no-brainer or the selection was the most likely player to be picked. Green went #2 and that is a bad pick, Barnes and Wagner and Mobley are clearly better picks. Barnes is particular is starting to shine. However- probably half the GM’s would have taken Green at #2. So while it’s a bad pick, it wasn’t a surprise. Also it is true that Eli Witus lobbied hard for Sengun, but Stone could have said no - so Stone, as the GM deserves some credit for that pick. Jabari Smith was a no brainer at #3, and I actually think had been what reasonable expectation would be at 21 years old. Tari Eason has been solid as well, but there is a real injury issue now. Amen looks like a good pick at #4, but he was the general consensus in the league as the 4th best prospect. I think it is too early to tell if Stone is really good or just average in the draft. I don’t think he is terrible though. His weaknesses are in other areas. Stone does deserve credit for Cam Whitmore if he pans out. Still so many question marks with this team and its young players… really hoping Amen and/or Cam make a major jump.
The only obvious pick in the Stone era is Jabari because he was the consensus best player available in the draft at 3. Amen had his doubters because he played in OTE and couldn't shoot, Stone still deserves credit for taking a shot at him. Tari despite being injured still be taken earlier than 18 and Cam Whitmore Def would be taken earlier than 20 in a redraft. Why is Stone incomplete? He drafted Sengun who turned out to be an all star talent as well as Amen, Cam and Tari. If you compare his record to Daryl Morey in the Rox who did Morey draft you will see Stone has such a great record and in just 3 yrs. In contrast Morey gave us such luminaries like Baby Melo Morris, Chase Budinger, Jeremy Lamb, Royce White, Terrence Jones, Sam Dekker, Chinana Onuaku and Joe Chee. Morey even passed on Nicolas Batum for Donte Green and Joey Dorsey and passed on Kawhi for Morris. Sure there were some gems like Brooks, Landry and Capela, but those were few and far between.
No - the majority of evaluators had Green and Mobley as the best bet at #2. Those were the players that the majority of teams would have taken at the #2 spot. Barnes was also getting attention, but that was mostly as a top 5 pick. Once Holmgren and Banchero were off the board, the overwhelming consensus was that Jabari was the best player left - and the Rockets took him. In the 2023 draft, the view was that there was a drop off after the top 3 picks, but Amen Thompson was at the top of the next group. The majority of the league had him as the 4th best prospect, it was no surprise when he went 4th. Tari Eason, Sengun and Whitmore are players that Stone deserves credit for. In the case of Eason and Whitmore, Stone personally wanted those players. Eason can clearly play in the NBA, and the concerns about him playing in a defensive scheme have shown to be over blown. Still, he will have missed 60 games this season, and the type of injury he has is a concern, so there is question about him going forward. Cam Whitmore has flashed elite physical skills as a scorer and shooter, he will likely be very good, but he still has warts. Sengun was the darling of Eli Witus, but Stone let Eli get a deal to take the OKC pick and make it happen. As for comparing Stone to Morey - it isn't a fair comparison, Morey never was allowed to rebuild or have the #2, #3, #4 picks in drafts and when he did draft players, he needed them to contribute right away. I honestly cannot tell you how good an evaluator of top level draft prospects Morey is, because he has never had to do it. If you are comfortable saying that Stone is a great drafter, then go ahead - personally I think most of the top picks he has made have been no brainers. He has had some success drafting guys in the teens for sure, but he has also struck out on picks as well. Most of my concerns with Stone are not talent evaluation but rather roster construction, attention to detail and organizational culture. His handling of the KPJ situation and the influences around the younger players was terrible.
Largely agree--hard to evaluate Stone based on the top picks we've made as they were all fairly obvious choices. At least you can say he didn't play cowboy and draft some bust who was a huge reach. But the middle of the first round is where good drafting front offices separate themselves from the bad ones, and we've done well there. Though granted, with Cam it was baffling he ever fell that far in the first place, and plenty of fans were howling for their teams to pick him ahead of us, so I guess you could argue that was an obvious choice as well. But then--14 other players were taken over him before we got to pick again, so... As far as Morey goes, for what it's worth, I don't think he did a great job drafting in the middle of the first round--okay at best. I also think he seemed philosophically aligned with the "no tanking" philosophy based on his statements over the years, so he might have still played things about the same even with free reign.
2006 - drafted Rudy Gay 8th and traded him for Shane Battier (bad) 2007 - drafted Aaron Jones 26th (good) 2008 - drafted Batum 25th and traded to Portland for Joey Dorsey and Donte’ Greene (bad), but moving Greene for Artest was good. 2010 - drafted Patrick Patterson 14 ahead of Kwahi (bad) 2011 - drafted Marcus Morris 14 (meh), drafted Mirotic 23 (bad), drafted Parsons 38 (excellent). Also acquired draft rights to DMo (good). 2012 - drafted Lamb, Royce White and Terrance Jones, Lamb was moved as part of Harden deal. All good prospects, but none panned out (bad) 2013 - drafted Cannan 34 (bad), but signed Covington (excellent) 2014 - drafted Capela 24 (excellent) 2015 - drafted Dekker 18 (bad), Harrell 32 (good). We did move Dekker and Harrell as part of the Chris Paul trade. 2016 - late 2nds not worth mentioning 2017 - drafted Hartenstein 43 (good) and Dillon Brooks 45, but traded to Memphis for a 2nd rounder (bad) 2018 - drafted Melton 46 (good) you can see that Morey actually had a good eye for late round talent, but not so much mid-round talent. His track record trading draft picks was also mixed. As other have said, Morey never drafted in the early lotto. I did hear that he was aggressively trying to trade for Booker the year he came out.
Are you serious? I count 6 guys 21 or younger on our team with All-Star potential. I don't think they'll all reach it, but they still have it. And here is the thing. Every single one of them is an NBA player. Do you know how hard that is? Especially considering Sengun was the 16th pick, Tari was the 17th and Cam was the 20th. Stone is absolutely crushing the draft. You guys have some wacky expectations.
I agree with this, but it is also worth noting that we had 3-4 years in a row at one point where we took someone right at the tail end of the lotto. And none of those guys ended up being as good as Sengun at 16, Tari at 17 or Cam at 20.
I don’t view it as we have all these extra picks piling up and we need to do something with them. We traded away a lot of picks to OKC, so we don’t have a bunch of extra picks. The Brooklyn picks are now our picks, we are just picking from their draft slot. OKC does have a ton of extra picks, so they have decisions to make about all those extra picks. The Rockets should be careful about trading away their future picks unless they have a way of getting a lot of picks back in a trade. The point is, we don’t have a lot of extra picks.
I wish we had punted the 3 late 1st round picks we wasted the last 3 yrs to future 1sts. I also wish we still had all those 2nds we traded for nothing to move those 3 late 1st round picks…that we got nothing for.
He was also trying hard to trade for a pick in the teens of the draft that would get us Giannis, but hindsight being 20/20, maybe he should have added more firsts to the offer. As in, another future 1st rounder and his first-born child. Someone mentioned to me on this forum that Morey wanted to trade up and draft Lillard.
