Everyone saw this a mile away, everybody was shocked at both the Clint and Okogie signings over guard depth. Why did we even re-sign Holiday if he’d get ZERO minutes if Fred went down? Why did we bring back Jeff and Tate with such glaring holes in back court depth? Our FO just looks incompetent
I agree. I didn’t like it at the time and I still don’t like it. I get wanting to preserve Adams on back to backs, but signing a 3rd string center for 3 yrs at $7 mil per fully guaranteed over another ball handler doesn’t make much sense. We already had plenty of size and Clint is far from a game-changer. Obviously not the biggest thing that’s wrong with the roster, and I get that it’s decent trade salary, but it was the one move we made this offseason tjat was a total head-scratcher to me. In fact, when I first heard the news I thought it was so bizarre that it might be the precursor to a Sengun-Giannis trade.
Everyone saw FVV missing the entire season? Being prepared to withstand a couple of months without FVV vs an entire season are two different things. It's been two games, lets relax before panicking. Our FO made us very flexible with a bunch of tradable contracts that come become available mid season. Time will tell.
Capela is 4% of the salary cap BTW... https://www.spotrac.com/nba/houston-rockets/yearly ^^ Let's see where we are at mid season and then we can make some moves if needed. Just Tari + Capela gets to ~12 million / 9% of the cap.
An FVV hedge wasn't just an FVV hedge - it was an FVV, Reed and Amen hedge. You could gamble on Reed and Amen with a healthy FVV, but he was probably the worst possible player to go down with an injury - Now you have to count on those other two. Right now, it's really hard to fix it, we're stuck until December unless they are willing to do something like Reed & Tari ($16.3m) for someone like Dennis Schröder ($14.1m), Coby White ($12.9m), Davion Mitchell ($11.6m) or Mike Conley ($10.7m). Any of those would not only solve the PG spot but would leave enough $$$ under the 1A to fill that 14th roster spot which is mandatory and still have enough $$ left to convert JD Davison (or someone else on a minimum) before the March 1 deadline. Here's a list of the point guards currently under contract in the league and their cap hits - the list of guys in the Rockets price range is short. 2025 Point Guard Cap Hit Rankings I won't bother listing the free agents still not on a roster since De'Anthony Melton signed with GSW.
No the fan base didn’t see the future and predict Fred misses the whole season… but everybody saw the possibility of Fred going down as a potential catastrophe if we didn’t add guard depth. That’s unfortunately exactly what happened. Last season Fred was out for stretches and we looked terrible. We looked terrible when Fred simply sat on the bench. Reed has proven nothing, and Holiday is limited. With Jalen gone, everyone expected our MLE to go to ball handling depth. It went to DFS, a lot of fans were confused, but said okay Then we signed Clint, most of the fan base were absolutely shocked and confused. Then we traded Cam for 2nds, surely the last roster spot is for guard depth we sign Okogie
We also expect Amen and Sengun to share more of the playmaking duty as that was the expectation before FVV went out. From your perspective, we "looked terrible with FVV" out last year but the record was the record. We can't hedge for every core player missing an entire season. We leaned into our strength of defense and rebounding in the offseason but we still have the means to combine contracts and /or picks for a mid season move. Folks need to stop ignoring we have some options and maybe give the team 10 games to see how things look....
Trading part of the young core for a quick PG fix would be very shortsighted. I hope they don't do it. Banking on two inexperienced guys to backup FVV was just too risky. I like Okogie. But he's not a PG. Neither is Holiday. (And please don't resurrect the PG Tate experiment!) They really had no sure Plan B in the case of FVV going down. I mean, even if the injury was not season ending, Fred's health shouldn't be trusted with a high degree. He played more than 70 games in only 2 of his 9 years career.
What about trading Reed straight up for Scoot? I think Tari will turn it around, but we need a good ballhandler Scoot is better at pg than Reed. If we can be patient, I would prefer to package Tari/Reed for Colby White.
They're trying an experiment that has already failed. IMO Udoka is digging his own grave if he doesn't get someone to help with the offense. If you have Sengun and Durant and surround them with a bunch of shooters, you should be able to produce a top 10 offense. Let's say those 3 "shooters" are Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith and DFS. That team can probably achieve a top 10 TS% in the NBA or a top 10 offense. Amen is not a shooter but he's an offensive net positive so it should work out. That team can also achieve a top 10 defense. That's it, that's all we're looking for. The balance of top 10 in each category is the sign of a real contender. Udoka's never met expectations offensively for a team he's coached. Celtics dropped from 3rd to 8th under his coaching. If you take away our rebounding, we've been a pretty bad TS% team since he's gotten here. I think 2nd worst of the playoff teams last season. Our personnel wasn't great but it wasn't THAT bad. I really don't mind a coach having a weakness, what bugs me is nothing is done to hire someone who can help in that area. All great coaches do it.
