It is really early to evaluate Stone.... because a lot of his moves are too soon to evaluate. The Westbrook for Wall trade was a bad one by Stone and it is widely viewed that way around the league. Stone felt he had to move Westbrook because he didn't want to be on the Rockets.... but the move was just bad, and the return was too little. Stone lost on this deal. The Oladipo trade was mediocre to bad as well. He was offered an extension and luckily declined it or it would have been a really bad move. The overall impact was that the Rockets likely lost a late #1 pick that they could have had if they hadn't taken on Oladipo. It isn't a big loss, but a loss all the same. The Wood sign and trade was a win for Stone. Now, he is someone that the Rockets intended to pursue before Morey left (same for Tate), but Stone gets credit for going through with it. The Kevin Porter trade remains uncertain as far whether it is win. I am not optimistic about Porter and he isn't exactly a positive off the court or on it at this point. I understand the reason the Rockets tried though. I think the Harden trade overall was fine. The Rockets had to move him and the Nets paid close to everything they could. I don't think the Allen trade part was good, and had the Rockets held onto Prince they would have even more assets. So there were lost opportunities. The biggest unknown for the Rockets is the 2021 NBA draft class. Green has been underwhelming and now is hurt. He doesn't have a well rounded game and he really struggles doing anything positive if his shot isn't falling. It's too early to call him a bust but the Rockets analytics group wanted Mobley, who looks like a long term winner. Lets wait a few seasons though and we will see. Sengun and Christopher both have looked promising but are not established at this point. Overall I think Stone has had some good luck (keeping the #2 pick and Oladipo turning down an extension) and he has done fairly well in the draft outside of the #2 pick. He deserves more time to see how this all plays out. I think anyone claiming he has been a great GM or a terrible GM is not being objective. Lets see how the Rockets look in 12 months.
Disagree, he is already pretty good at driving and drawing fouls - his stats on the dribble handoff are rather good - 88.7 percentile. More of that, less isos are needed.
“One of your colleagues texted me the day after the trade and they said they would evaluate me in 2027. And I told them that that was too early; they should do it in 2030.”
I am in TBD mode for the entire team and its coaches until 2023 or so. Too much of whats happened and will happen in the short term wont show there true value for years to come. That said, we need to move Wood and Gordon ASAP. We need a top pick this year and these guys are both playing well enough to earn back something useful (selling high).
I think the trade he did well on was Harden. Seeing how stingy teams are with picks, getting firsts and the swaps was a big deal. My feeling was he was hasty with moving Allen and probably could have gotten more for him. It is likely that the Cavs don't trade us KPJ if they didn't feel so happy with Allen's play, so maybe you view KPJ's acquisition as part of that move, in which case it looks better, but it's still a leap. We would have ended exactly where we did with Levert, and I was a big critic of the Oladipo trade. Really felt stupid at the time knowing what we knew about him, mainly that he was oft-injured and wanted to be in Miami. We unloaded Oladipo for basically nothing in return, and that was a huge blow. I feel that Levert would have held more value this season as a movable piece than Oladipo did last year, so to me that was a big miss. Green is still TBD, though I thought his return for RoCo was good as was the Tucker deal. Alpi is looking like a hit and shrewd trade up by Stone, and I really like what Jaygup has done so far. Garuba is TBD but not looking great, and signing Nix is looking like it could have some serious upside as he's been doing great, though it's early.
I would give him a "B" 1) Inspite of Green's slow start and Garuba being a No Show, I think he did alright in the draft. 2) I don't love the Harden trade but he did get a lot of future picks. I wanted a good young player and picks. 3) I love the Tate and KPJ pickups, which made up for the Harden trade. I hope like hell, he get some length on this team moving forward.
I think Oladipo even said as much in an interview. They knew he wasn't going to accept it, but he appreciated the offer.
If there's any hoops fans among the gods ... We will all get a Final 4 of Auburn v Gonzaga v Duke And Baylor just to see how each of the superstar trio handles Brown and the Bears' smotherball A scouting orgy on the grandest stage
I don't know long term whether Stone will be a good GM when it comes to winning. The Silas hire looks bad, choosing Oladipo, holding onto Gordon, and keeping Schroeder on the roster for no good reason jump to mind in the negative. However since the end of the 19-20 season he has added Green, Porter, Sengun, Christopher, Martin, Wood and Tate. I personally don't think Wood or Porter have any place on the team long term, but if he can flip either one for a 1st rd pick that's at the least more assets that were created. He also still has a possible first in Gordon and Garuba (who hasn't shown much yet) Whether he can take the next step and actually build us towards a winner is still an unknown, but it's basically impossible to argue that his work so far in the rebuild has been anything but a major success. He inherited zero long term young talent, and very limited draft capital and still assembled a lot of young assets.
I don't know how much of Stone's talent acquisition is due to his competence or luck. Definitely nabbing Green, Sengun, JC and KPJ in 2 seasons is amazing. That is a wealth of talent under 21 years of age. But let's keep in mind that Stone had a near 50% chance of not even having the second pick last lottery. How well does this rebuild look without Green who was basically a coin flip for us? So it's hard to tell if it's competence or luck. Picking Sengun and JC at 16 and 24 does point to Stone being a really good talent evaluator though. Can't really judge Green at 2 due to how stacked the top 4 picks were these year which means no GM could miss out unless they did something really dumb like chose Suggs before the top 4(Cade, Green, Mobley, Barnes) which didn't happen.
It's a nice start but drafting is only one component. Look at Sacramento for example, when they got Boogie those fans were so happy and they thought the draught was over. Again when they got Fox, and even Halliburton, who they inexplicably traded away. It is nice to see we got some talented players, you can't really deny that, but there are a lot more steps to building a successful team. We'll need the right coach, the right system, the right complementary pieces via trades/FA/late picks. There are tons of teams who have drafted great players and never seen success. Stone has to put all these pieces together and build a winning team. I agree with you that it looks great so far but it's really only one piece of the larger puzzle, we've got a long way to go. I can't really say he's seen success until this team is winning 50+ games.
There is a lot of luck in the NBA. A lot of what Stone has done has been low probability moves trying to increase the Rockets chances of getting a star. Porter and Wood were low probability adds trying to get a star. Keeping Gordon's soon to be expiring contract allows the Rockets still to have a small chance at a trade for a star (though greater than chance at a star with a late 2022 FRP). Stone is going to make mistakes when he is swinging for the fences. He's also going to get lucky sometimes too. I like the way Stone has operated so far, but I think a better test of a GM is how they handle things once they have 2-3 core pieces in place. Stone is going to have to add to roster while maintaining flexibility (i.e., locking a team's ceiling before they are contenders is a problem a lot of GMs have).
