Yes, esp. Garuba. PJ Tucker is a starter isn't he? Ever heard of No stats glue guys like Battier? But you rather have 5 scorers starting .... noted.
Why is that interesting, CAA is one of the biggest agencies in the world, 10 percent of all athletes are probably signed with them at one point or another
I see so we have 4-5 guys who’ll be under consideration for max extensions, our 8th and 9th guys would be deserving starters on other teams… what a squad we’ve put together. Our problem is we have too much talent!
I swear If they get rid of Garuba I’ll be bummed. I’m thinking this guy will be extremely valuable for a winning team down the road. At this point I am betting they have kept his minutes low on purpose. To be clear do not trade Mr. Garuba!
Meh. I've said over and over, a culture change is cheap and easy. It's dramatized in the media for entertainment and to belabor a point about an inexplicable disdain for tanking. Don't let them stress you out for money. If all we need is a culture change, we are 100% not in the worst spot. If we are at a severe talent deficit, then we have a problem that can take years to fix. Alpe is a baller. Green is a scoring dynamo. Jabari has shown flashes of the two way beast he can become. We have a top 5 pick coming our way and several other promising young players on the roster. Two max cap slots. We are SO good. All we need is patient, wise decisions moving forward to slowly upgrade all components of the front office and team to a championship level. Don't piss away the cap space and the picks, that's our only task. Even without a ton of luck, with good decisions we'll get great returns. You fire the staff and acquire 3 high character veterans, then all you need is a a dozen or two games of basketball to shake the rust. You bench the guys who give least effort. That's happened so many times. Happening right now with the Hawks for example. They know what's going on. Stone's at every practice. He's seen a championship contender in his career. Worst case scenario you have to take it a step higher and replace the GM. Big whoop. I'll take that for the pool of talent we've collected, and I can totally envision how these same players will look in a functional team next season. He's right about a lot of things. Tanking makes a lot of things ugly and honestly maybe someone can point to it, but no one has tanked more brutally than us. Maybe Hinkie, but I genuinely think they just lost more than us, their team was not less equipped to win. We had no chance, the suckiest thing about this season is we forget the players KNOW the org doesn't mind losing at all right now and that's not an atmosphere you wanna be in. It will demotivate most humans, we're not going to see anyone's best, the human mind is not made to accept losing. They've messed up a lot along the way but it's over now. The whole point of everything they've done was always going to come on display in 2023-2024 once we don't own our own pick. The way I'm looking at things is we have a final exam coming up. I'm going to be conclusively grading (in my head of course lol) everyone from GM down to G League. It will be based on: - Summer Individual Development - Training Camp - Preseason - 25 Regular Season Games - I'll consider any major end of (this) season milestones reached. I really like this crop of players other than 1 or 2 of them and I've come to their defense too much. No more shoulda woulda couldas. The age factor is going to be severely diminished because we won't have such a huge portion of our rotation under 22 and a lot of rookies. That assessment is going to be huge for us in determining our next steps and ensuring we know what we're doing with our cap space. On the brighter side of things, the team is playing with more passion recently. We're seeing flashes of late development out of several players and it's exciting to think what's possible next season with some high character veterans at PG and C on the roster.
Talent isn't the problem, I have seen little development and growth from the general managers, from the coach.
Hardly qualifies as a hot take - it’s pretty much a given that the org is easy to criticize - they will likely finish 3rd year in a row as a dead last team but that was also the goal because the mission once Harden left was a ground up rebuild led by a rookie coach, a rookie GM, and a less experienced owner. There have certainly been mistakes, but I also think they have mostly done what they had to around rebuilding value while collecting as many future assets and preserving cap space as possible. I would have liked them bringing a more serious player development coach in by this time but it felt like maybe they are trying to be bad enough for Victor. I don’t believe this front office is clueless enough to not see what everyone else sees - I think this is cold blooded intentional to get one more crack at a game changing talent and if I’m being honest, it’s probably the quickest way out of a rebuild. I’m not saying they should do it, but this team could roll out a Harden or a Myles Turner next year surrounded by Green, Jabari, Sengun, Eason, and a top 5 guy from this draft AND another pick in the 20s, a new more experience coach and all of a sudden would probably be a playoff team and would be getting Brooklyn lotto picks for the next several years from the Harden trade. I’m not saying I would do that - but I mean this is a team that has a lot of flexibility right now and even if you don’t love the ceilings of Green, Jabari, or Sengun - you gotta admit all of them are likely high level role players at very worst and all have considerable trade value if you needed to move pieces around.
Yeah so I guess JJ Reddick is a hater too, he has an agenda against Stone and Silas and Tilman. We can add him to the list of all the other players, former players, former coaches, people that cover the league and all the crap I have heard too. Everyone is just out to get Porter and Silas and Stone and Tilman. The complete lack of accountability is a figment of the imagination. If people still think that the Rockets leadership and culture is strong and good, then they will believe anything. The organization may get lucky and get Wemby or Henderson or Miller - but it doesn’t change the fact the leadership is TERRIBLE at this point…. But KPJ is happy and Silas has stopped putting his head down during press conferences… and Stone the groundhog saw his shadow so at least we know he is alive.
Jabari and KPJ had issues with each other during practice earlier in the season. KPJ is used to being disruptive and doing whatever he feels like during practice and Jabari called him out on it. That was early this season and don’t know how they get along now.
Off court culture (I.e, locker room) and on court culture (I.e, actually playing basketball ) culture are two different things. Off court culture can be fixed easily if the will is there, you’re right. The right hirings and firings, some discipline and accountability, acquire some vets, move on from from a couple guys… all can be good pretty quickly. The bigger problem for us IMO is on court culture, basketball culture. That’s a lot of what JJ is talking about. Learning how to play the right way, playing as as a collective rather than 5 guys playing 1 on 1, eliminating bad habits, playing for each other, intuitively understanding NBA tactics at a high level. Our guys are way behind at this. This is less of a quick fix. All our brightest moments this year are either from brief glimpses of solo brilliance (Jalen / Sengun), or outhustling / out-athleteing (Tari / KJ). To go from that roll the ball out and freelance style to actual organized NBA basketball is a biiig jump. It doesn’t just spontaneously happen at a certain number of career minutes. Until we get there national media types will say Rockets style basketball is ugly and dysfunctional and hard to watch and bad for development, because I’m sorry, it’s true. Not because of talent or age, but because of *how* we play. Hopefully the right coach and new staff can get us there with enough time.
Just another pointless comment by JJ Reddick to stay relevant, stir controversy and earn a living. Steve Smith, Perkins, etc are all in the same boat. End of the day only the fan's opinion counts and not analysts that get paid to say things. So ignore!
Kpj was happy Af to see Jabari smith hit the game winner ! Don’t let these outside people fool you . Just go watch the replay of him hitting the game winner and then inside the locker room when they were all going so crazy
Everyone knows the elephant in the room and Draymond the donkey is praising that elephant. The coach can't coach a young team. Mark Jackson actually coached the young Warriors if I remember it correctly. Fans said it nonstop, there has to be a coaching change to really see what we have with this group and plug in vets, enforcers, shooters, blue collar guys. Keep on keeping on sacrificing real coaching for a high pick.
Oh I don't agree with that at all. On court culture is 100% rooted in off court culture. You fix the locker room, practice habits, attitude with coaches and everything changes. There is no way it will sustain and let's say it takes a month or two of basketball (like it did the Magic, Thunder, countless rebuild teams) to get those habits off the court. Most of the bad habits will be extinguished by not bringing back or giving minutes to those practicing them. We don't have a culture problem with: Jabari Tari Tate Garuba Sengun Green (though he has had his moments this season) Plus you add 3 veterans to that group and you're on your way. It's really mostly KPJ and definitely at some points in the season Green. If they can't get over it after 20-40 games of a good culture in practice and off court, then they're not part of the future. It's not a disaster, not all picks are going to pan out. The ones that you don't want to carry forward are the ones who can't function in that environment anytime soon. Sorry but this is so overdramatized. There's hardly a difference between us and the Magic or Spurs, the fact that they do 3 or 4 things right out of hundreds of things is being blown way out of proportion. The total result of all those teams playing "the right way" is no difference in potential, no difference in record and only that the old minded people in the media prefer it so they tag those teams as more promising. They're never more than 50-50 on their guesses who cares. We're fine. Just bring in a PG and C who demand respect in their roles and a coach if Silas can't do it. Stop stressing yourselves, I promise the media is just generating fears to get more clicks. A culture change is a months-long problem. Every other rebuilding problem is years-long. This is not a major issue until we actually try to make the playoffs and end up with 20 wins. Then it means the GM has to go. We'll have delayed our rebuild by a year, which is ahead of schedule for most rebuilds. We have too much flexibility for this to go wrong. That one part they've done well. We don't have to worry about this once the season is over.
Now I understand Porter's in game attitude towards Bari when he did the hands on his hips. I guess they figured out how to tolerate or ignore each other.
Do I care that multiple people who have no reason to sugar coat things - paint a disastrous picture of the organisation? I absolutely do, because they're telling the truth. You can continue with your head in the sand though and believe those close to the organisation who blatantly lie and have to put a positive spin on everything.
