The Athletic: End-of-season Rockets report card: Evaluating Roster

Or they could actually do some research/journalism?

 

Definitely asking too much of today's MSM. Especially sports media.

 

Rockets has paid the price for depending on so many G-league players.... Capela the only non G-league player in the list actually regressed in the playoffs compare to previous year's playoffs.
Rockets if still want to win championship shouldn't depend on any of those players.

 

You're not wrong. But I'm not saying we should be 'depending' on them.

Every team benefits from having a prospect pan out into a rotation depth player. The Rockets are really due for one. That has been one of Morey's biggest weaknesses - developing mid-level guys. Since we sold a lot of our assets to build a top-heavy team, we're going to have to hope for a longshot guy to turn into a specialist.

 

Sure, but I bet the people who follow that team would already do a much better job of writing up a summary of that team. It's hard to justify doing a bunch of research just for one article that will be at a "disadvantage," in that people would rather click on / read the article posted by authors who are already established in that field.

If one had to do it as part of a set of articles (i.e summarizing and grading the end-of-season rosters for all the teams) then it'd be worth the time and effort. But for one article about one team, where you have to go into detail about all the moves and players and other personnel? Hard to envision someone spending all that time, especially if they have to crank out many articles.

 

I don't think it takes that long. You're right that it takes more time, but there is something that comes out of that time: quality.

I didn't even bother skimming through it to be honest. Iko's not an analyst and he's a fan. The piece is just a polished BBS post, and I read dozens of those a day already.

To each their own I guess.

 

Kelly Iko is my new favorite sports journalist.

 

To be fair ...

We are only a little over a year removed from watching Capela dominate both KAT & Gobert in consecutive PO series

I think the blueprint for defending our P&R was formed towards the end of the Reg season, and our coaches/players did not respond with a counter-move adjustment to gain back the advantage with CC rolling to the rim

If next season starts with the same issues, that Head Coach seat could get REALLY warm, especially if Tilman is paying Luxury tax

 

point taken.

however clint's inability/refusal to box out, massive choking on FTs, listless lack of energy play overall are simply inexcusable. i hope he proves me wrong and comes back improved after this summer. but right now after that playoff performance i do not want to see his sorry ass in a rockets uniform again.

 

Hartenstein is the one that I really want to see improvement from, if for no other reasons than (1)it seems there's a mental block in the pro-game there for him, that if he could just get past, he could easily give you 10/5 in a backup role, and (2) he just turned 21.

House will be 26 in a few weeks. 26! He is what he is. Clark will actually turn 25 shortly after next season stars. I don't think he'll be on the team next year - not clear on his salary if it's only 50% guaranteed next year or already been triggered to be 100% guaranteed. But 2020 is non-guaranteed. I see him as an add-in to some trade. Capela... not sure what there is to develop?

 

It's not that we should depend on them, our salary cap depends on signing some of them every year.

It's them versus International players that want to come over vs scrub players from other teams waived or unwanted

 

I think 40-50% of current NBA C's are going to become unplayable next season. We saw a ton of playoff starting C's get massacred. We saw a ton get DNP'ed extremely quickly too. I don't think it's a coincidence. I think we taught the league how to be shameless with pulling big guys into PnR and everyone followed suit.

I love Capela and have defended him since his rookie year. He's exceeded expectations all but one season. I think the league is just making shifts of a magnitude we've not seen before. Trends used to take half a decade to permeate the whole league, now they take a season at most.

Until/unless Capela becomes capable of hitting 3's he's going to struggle to maintain his positive on-court impact. Watching Lopez in that series, he wasn't able to do for them what he did all season and we're talking about who averages 2.2 blocks and as a bonus is skillful in the post.

I really think we're coming to the era where Capela is an old school C. It blows my mind, but I watched virtually every NBA playoff game. I predict Gasol becomes unplayable. A unique thing about Milwaukee and Toronto is that neither of them have an explosive scorer in the backcourt. It's going to be interesting to watch Nurse put Gasol out there against Klay and Curry. I don't think Ibaka can handle it either.

It might be best for us to trade Capela before this comes out into the open. He's still more than a year away from having a 3pt shot. By then he'll be making $18-$20m and will have slowed down a bit too. We may have bulked him up too much to defend the type of C that's disappearing.

Hope I'm wrong.

 

I don't get the star ratings - is Hartenstein really anywhere near the player EGO is? Why do they both have the same amount of stars?