This is where it gets tricky. The question of tanking is not asked when you have a significant part of the season left like when that tanking thread was started, most would not agree that is good for the culture at all. The issue now is you've got no playoff chance, yet young guys and vets that want to win, Wood seems excited to come back, but he absolutely would destroy our chances at a top 4 pick.
This is true... plus the NBA isn’t baseball. Teams do not announce they are tanking. The Sixers former GM received a lot of heat from the NBA front office for “the process” and played a part in Colangelo joining the Sixers. The Rockets gain nothing and lose a lot advertising a rebuild.
Once the trade deadline starts looming and all contending teams see others making moves they will get desperate.
Let's put things in perspective shall we. In the timeline more or less: 1) Westbrook and Harden wanted John Lucas after D"Antoni said no the probably was a low ball offer to stay. 2) John Lucas probably responded.......no thank you. SNAFU. "Situation Normal, All F' d Up* 3) Silas hired. Management tried to make the best of both worlds. Please Westbrook-Harden with team ability to play 5-man out "Small-Ball" while transitioning to conventional PnR with back door cuts and slashing to the rim ball movement as well. Harden scored like 98 in NBA percentile as Ball handler in PnR during his few games with Houston this season. Wood, Cousins, Spalding, now Patton all are meant to set screens and shoot 3's. Which means work n the 5-men out scheme and in the Silas scheme. Best of both worlds as Patrick moved from like 7 players 6'3" last season to replacing Clemons-A Rivers-Westbrook by adding 6'5" Sterling Brown to go along with Morey hire 6'5" Nwaba. Not my version of small ball, played with predominantly 6'7" to 6'9" players, but better than mostly 6'3" players. 4) Harden said Bye-Bye. And now this team is in mid stream between a rock and a hard place. I had the Rockets trading Harden before the draft and free agency and resulting in a much better situation than trying to trade a $40M contract as other teams have their rosters set. You keep Harden if your owner is 100 percent committed to making Harden sit out the season if he doesn't want to play for your team. Tilman was only 10 percent committed. Once Harden defensive stats were obvious he was playing defense......Tilman didn't want to pay him his $40M. So in summary that brings us to where we are today. Injuries to Wood, Oladipo, Wall, Spalding, Cousins (not 100% healthy) making it difficult to do the PnR exchange. It's not easy for us point guards to deliver the pass to guys cutting to the rim who are mostly 6'5" and under.. Those who set the screens need to push off a little in order to give us point guards a little window of separation to make a bounce pass. Otherwise that opposing point guard is riding that screeners hip ready to intercept the bounce pass or deflect it. In the PnR exchange it's much like the NFL quarterback - receiver exchange.......it take two to tango. I told everyone in my circle of friends that Josh Allen would be a decent quarterback after his rookie season. Most experts were laughing at him and saying he was a bust. I said to them he had no receivers. That off-season the Bills went out and got some receivers. Now Josh Allen is up there and no longer a bust. Amazing how that works. Well I'm here to tell you that Wall is a little more conservative than Harden and takes less chances with the lob pass. Just when I said Wall to Wood was going to start happening (around game 18) Wood went out and hasn't been back since. Now, teams recognize that Wall passing at a clip of 33% (ast%) is lower because he doesn't really have the proven receivers. Screen setters that push off just enough to get separation for John Wall to get his bounce passes off clean. Those teams are weighing the salary aspect of it though. *Side Note: I recommend going after Charles Bassey in the draft. Will end up being perfect in the Silas screen setting scheme or rolling to the basket or popping out. Runs the court well and has an endless motor. But I digress. So this begs the question moving forward........are we going to go full invested in the Silas system next season? As Bill Parcels once said, "if you are going to let me cook the meal, at least let me shop for the ingredients." No point in having Silas if we are going to stick with 5-men out leaning towards the smaller players around 6'4". Patrick Fertitta fondness for recreational league size teams with one tall lanky C Wood mixed in. Getting a Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Evan Mobley, Charles Bassey, Kuminga says a lot......getting a Jalen Suggs to go with Kevin Porter also says a lot. Who's vision for this team beyond this season are we going with.....Silas or Patrick Fertitta?
Dallas and Miami have to be imo. Heat even said they will trade for John Wall if the rockets make him open for trade discussion, the problem is like I said John Wall is no scrub, and rockets are lucky to have him. He may be perfect leader for what ever 3-4 young rookies come up in Houston Org, One is Wood.
I sure hope so. TF is a nutcase, but I hope even he will realize the need to have another young star who won't cost much. I hope Stone will be thinking about this too.
No, we need to dump Wall to Miami if we can. This is why everyone needs to drop all of these hypothetical trades of Dipo to Miami. F*ck em and only trade with them when they are desperate. They always get lucky. If we send Dipo to Knicks, Wizards are not letting Beal go to Heat because they want real assets. Make Miami desperate for Wall and we hit the jackpot. Otherwise we are holding onto Wall until next year or the chance to repackage to Knicks in offseason.
Just look at Philly. It’s Hinkie’s team, and I would argue he had some bad luck and made some big mistake; but look where they are. Trust the process; it works. Patience! It’s gonna take a few years....and that’s okay!
It’s a win/win for me. Keep the same guys and the results stay the same - why would they play any better? If they really wanted to win they would be trying something different. So I’m not buying it.
Hey my friend. We spoke of Jalen Green the other day. I compared him to possibly MJ if he works on his body. Here is MJ in the college championship game vs Georgetown when MJ was 18/19 years of age as a freshman in college. MJ played 3 seasons in college. Jalen Greenn is 19 y/o i believe, so we are talking in this time frame. MJ averaged 16% from 3 in his first 4 seasons in the NBA. I believe Jalen Green is further along than MJ at the same age.
I like your football analogies there. You're apparently a football savant.. i hope your analysis translates to the hardwood. You're not really saying anything that we haven't seen though. The only difference between Silas and our previous playbook is defense. Silas is here to push on the defensive end... everything else seems to be the same... with less skilled players at the moment. Thoughts coach?
So, what, "we're not tanking....we're just this bad!" Bad lies are worse than lies. Enough posturing already. How about, we are trading our vets and we expect certain things in return? Posture that. It's the truth AND it's not taking .80 cents on the dollar. Now deal.
