I won't put a number on games won. However, waiting until the Deadline and a good number of games have been played to begin to seriously evaluate this draft makes more sense to me. We'll have a chance to see how Amen and Cam are playing. The free agent signings that can begin on June 30th, and whoever we end up trading for (and unloading), will have a chance to show us what they can do. The young players still with us from last season and the season before, those who are still around, will have given us a good clue on how they have continued to develop. We'll have an idea about how much we like Coach Udoka and his staff. That would be a far better time to either pat Stone on the back, or tell each other our GM has a stone for a brain. Everything is a guess right now, regardless of how certain some of us may feel about things. In my opinion.
Comments like these are disingenuous because you KNOW the Rockets were tanking all 3 years. Our record was supposed to lose, for draft positioning. Why did you leave this out?
Comments like these are disingenuous because you KNOW the Rockets were tanking all 3 years. Our record was supposed to be bad, for draft positioning. Why did you leave this out?
sorry. I guess I also left out: hired the worst coach in the league and stuck with him for 3 yrs. Presided over poor culture, poor player development, and destroyed the reputation of the org. Started the rebuild with Wood, Wall, Porter Jr and Oledipo. Traded Jarrett Allen, Eric Gordon and PJ Tucker for pick #20….shall I go on? I’m willing to give him credit when credit is due; not prematurely.
Destroyed the reputation of the organization? Lol. The James Harden stinch, GM openly referring to his current roster as "assets" upsetting his players, star player running his teammates out of houston, coaches being fired unprofessionally, agents telling their players not to come here etc..What reputation did Stone destroy? All this was under Daryl Morey
Again, how can you mention 3yrs of losing without mentioning us rebuilding/tanking? How is San Antonio's "culture", since they had a worse record than we did?
San Antonio has a better culture because they got Wemby after one year of tanking and we don't have an obvious superstar after 3.
We were tanking when Silas got blamed.....Stone is not impervious of blame. Same guy that axed Silas needs to be seen under that same microscope. Tilman made a comment at Udoka's introduction....saying he wants to see results. Many saw that as a shot at Stone as well as Udoka. Which is why I say, Stone better make some waves this season. Enough of the neverending player development of 5-years down the road. The next GM will say thanks for the young kids. They should develop just in time to make me (new GM) look good.
Jesus, the bar is low. Drafting well. We've had 2 top 3 picks within the last 2 years and had 0 improvement. Do you know how nearly impossible that is? 60 mill in cap space, who cares about how much cap space you have, it's what you do with it. We'll see in a week if he does something positive, then he gets credit. Hiring Udoka was a good get but even then there was a bit of luck involved, considering the circumstances and lack of job opportunities there was at the time. But sure, I'll give him credit for that. I mean we can all agree(I hope) that Stone deserves plenty of blame for the lack of development from our young players by letting Silas continue to coach and also not at least having vets on the team. Eric Gordon who is a mute and hated being a Rocket the last 2 years was a veteran. The least he could have done was have DJ Augustin for the entire year.
I don’t think he’s done a bad job at all. We just finished Phase 1! yes we were the worst team in the league for 3 years, but isn’t that how tanking works? Through that tanking in Phase 1 we’ve acquired Green, Smith, Eason, KPJ, Sengun, and now Thompson and Whitmore. However you may feel about those players whether they stay here or are trade pieces, we have those assets! Also we went from Silas to Udoka. And we have BKN picks/swaps and 60 million in cap space. Like damn all that In just 3 years of purposely sucking. He’s made great moves such as the Eric Gordon trade to give us the clippers swap to land us Whitmore, don’t know too much about him but clutchfans was pretty excited as well as the front office. Pretty sure Stone deserves credits for pulling that off. The future looks pretty exciting, sure we have some holes we need to fix. But I don’t know why clutchfans is always calling for heads for every single thing. Oh well!
The harsh reality is that one of Green, Sengun, Bari, or Amen have to turn into a bona-fide super star in order for the team to avoid being 1st round fodder, or maybe achieve the upside of the 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks if we're being generous. I don't see a future top 5 player on this roster, and it's really not Stone's fault imo.
Evidently you do not know what a rebuild is. A rebuild doesn't mean completely tank the entire culture and have 0 improvement. It's the exact opposite of a rebuild. A rebuild is allowing the young guys to play(which was done) while also giving them the tools to succeed, grow, learn and improve while living with the results. Judging by the complaints of how Silas treated Sengun and how Jalen has played these past couple of years while Jabari had a disappointing season for a 3rd pick, the rebuild was great in your eyes? We have young players openly complaining about the lack of structure and coaching yet the rebuild has been succesful. hilarious But some of you guys think losing at all costs = successful rebuild. There's a reason why we're the butt of every joke and #1 prospects openly cheer when they get to avoid playing for us. Hint: It's not because the rebuild is successful. Literally the easiest thing to do in a rebuild is to overpay veterans on a 1 year deal who are content with mentoring young players. Yet Stone couldn't do that.
It really depends on free agency. I'm on team overpay Brook and Fred. i know a lot of people want to punt cap space for next year but I believe next year a lot of teams have money. We're in prime position to sign talent even if we have to overpay because next year we're just another team with cap space. If we keep the youth movement, don't add any impactful free agents then I can see us winning 30 games. Ime alone is going to improve the team and I believe the talent we added at the draft is going to help us a lot. But unless you have a superstar talent like Shai, young teams generally do not win games without veteran presence on the team. Right now, we're the worst shooting team in the league and we just added the worst shooter in the draft(and i think Amen is a positive contributor).
The real argument you’re making, which is a fair one to make, is that you don’t agree with the Rockets’ front office on “what a rebuild is”. They believe that any potentially positive things you listed (veterans, culture stuff, coaching quality) were an impediment to the only important thing: maximizing ping pong balls in the draft lottery. Everything they’ve done the last 2.5 seasons was to draft the best rookie talent, have them play big minutes, and simultaneously guarantee we have a bottom 3 record. To do that, they purposefully kept a bad coach, made sure we had no competent point guard or rim protection on the roster, and rolled out entire 8 man rotations younger than most NCAA teams. They even commanded we stop taking threes (check the stats, we very obviously plummeted to last in the league in 3PA rate around December last year). They’ve done a good job accomplishing what they saw as their primary objective. You just think they should have had more / different primary objectives.
I think the Spurs have sucked for about 4 seasons now. I don't know - maybe their culture was spectacular during that time, but they've been a bad-to-mediocre team for a few years. Then the NBA... I mean, they lucked into Victor after tanking. Wemby could be that superstar for them, but let's at least wait until a season is over and see, but at the same time admit, they were a sorry team for about 4 or so years.
