So I've been frequenting the GARM for a couple of years now, and I'd never created a thread until today, because generally before I have a chance to have an opinion, another poster has already eloquently expressed how I felt on a topic. But after today's admittedly disappointing trade deadline (not exactly new for Rockets fans), I have to take the opportunity to call out all the sad sacks in here acting like the sky is falling because a guy they were desperate to get rid of 10 minutes earlier didn't net them a superstar package. I can understand the disappointment, but if you're a Houston sports fan and certainly someone who's paid attention to Houston sports in the last two years, today is hardly a catastrophe of epic proportions. Was it a good trade? No. Does it give them a significant piece for the rebuild? Definitely not. But when I see posters calling it "one of the most lopsided trades in history," I have to take a step back and question what your expectations were for today in the first place. Here are some reasons you should not be freaking out and should ultimately have a more positive outlook on the events of today than negative: 1. At 1:59 p.m., most of you were losing your freaking minds that Stone didn't move Dipo and would've taken the last pick of the 2nd round in 2045 and a ham sandwich if it had been offered to you. 10 minutes later a deal comes along that's better than just a second rounder, and it's some huge atrocity. 2. The point that should be obvious, but Dipo was probably going to be gone in a few months anyway, and there's no reason to think the market would be any better in a sign and trade deal. Hell, he might have requested a buyout in a week, and we'd all be distraught over what an embarrassment that would have been. 3. Brooklyn's 2022 pick is far more likely to be worse than Miami's, and I don't mind Stone hedging his bets to get a better first rounder. If it's only 3-5 picks higher, that's 3-5 positions higher than they had. And it could be more. It's a gamble, but it's a low-risk gamble worth taking if your options are that or literally nothing. 4. Oladipo was not good in Houston. He's been significantly better since the All-Star break, but this is a guy who's been a below average basketball player by pretty much every single barometer you'd use to judge a basketball player. I keep seeing people refer to him as a "former All-Star," but let's not confuse 2018-19 Oladipo with 2021 Oladipo; they are not the same players. I don't think Oladipo is this huge missing piece that makes Miami significantly better, shoots them up the standings and worsens the Rockets' pick should it not fall in the top 4. But that brings me to my next point, which is... 5. ...in the event that Houston doesn't get a top 4 pick, they're going to be so screwed, I'm not going to care about what numbered pick Miami is giving the Rockets. I'm trying to completely block that from my memory for the time being, because if that happens, they'll have much bigger problems then "Oh no, the Heat's pick is worse than we thought it was going to be." Not winning that lottery will set the Rockets' rebuild back significantly, regardless if Miami's pick is sitting at 17th or 25th. 6. Oladipo's absence gets rid of a huge piece of the logjam in the back court that was preventing KPJ from starting and some of the other young guys from getting more minutes. You guys wanted more KPJ; well you're about to get a lot more of him. Which brings me to my last point... 7. Most importantly, this team FINALLY seems to have the direction we've craved since Harden was traded. This was not a good deal. Not in the slightest. But for weeks we've wondered whether Stone and Fertitta truly viewed this as tanking and rebuilding from scratch or just a bad stretch in the middle of a quicker rebuild. It's clearly the former if they're willing to deal Oladipo for next to nothing instead of attempting to re-sign him in a few months. Stone's track record at this point has been a mixed bag, but overall I still feel pretty good about him considering some of the shrewd, low-key moves he's made to acquire young talent. And if you want to rip him, don't focus on today. He had a declining, oft-injured player on an expiring contract in a shrinking trade deadline market who nobody was bending over backwards to acquire. If you have to dwell on something (which I don't recommend), critique the original deal where they dealt LeVert for Dipo in the first place (which I know many of you are). I know this is a novel, but bottom line, if you're heavily drinking right now and mourning the loss of the great Victor Oladipo, stop it. It's not that bad, and he wasn't good enough to warrant the level of depression you guys are expressing in the GARM this evening. This is like the 17th most depressing thing that's happened this season, and in the grand scheme of the rebuild, this will be a blip on the radar most of us won't remember in five years. Be glad they got something for the man and that the team has direction finally. And if you're a superstitious person, do whatever the hell you think brings luck to ensure the lottery balls fall the Rockets way in a few months.
I'm with you on most of your thoughts, but I don't agree with "17 or 25th, what's the difference?" We're in a position now where every bit of incremental value matters. However, I noted this in another thread, but Miami supposedly was ready to make a trade for Lowry before we came in and agreed to trade Dipo for such a slim return. If Miami makes that trade with Toronto they probably improve for this season just as much as they would have by trading for Dipo. So likely no big loss there. As an added benefit, stopping a trade that would have resulted in Toronto trading Lowry means one less team full on tanking and give us slightly worse odds at keeping our pick.
You could also argue we would be better off keeping Oladipo than trading him to Miami. Don’t forget we are going to get their pick if we don’t land a top 4 pick. As Miami gets better, our draft pick gets worse. Still can’t believe the value of Oladipo is this low.
The Oladipo trade in a vacuum isn't a bad trade. An often injured former all-star who hasn't played well recently with a contract that's about to expire and want big money player is not exactly going to net you a lot in any trade. The only question is whether the Rockets could've gotten more in any deadline deals in if they had Allen and LeVert instead. I know Fertitta has absolutely zero interest in paying either of those players but the question is could they have fetched more on the trade market. That would be the question to consider more than the Oladipo trade itself.
When trades happen, we always say wait and see how it plays out before judging it. Well, trading Oladipo for a bag of beans confirms the initial diagnosis of the harden trade: it was not a good trade. That's what's important here. It's perfectly fair game to drag Stone over the coals for screwing it up.
The issue isn't what we got in return for Oladipo today. The issue is why Stone went for Oladipo in the first place in the Harden trade. It seems that enough research wasn't done to understand Oladipo's true value in the market and how good he is today. That is the bigger issue for the FO because Harden deal was great opportunity to get some quality prospect back and instead of getting a prospect like Levert, we now have nothing to show for it except for the draft picks which no one knows the true value of. That is the truly frustrating thing in all of this.
Yeah, and I'm very aware that point is totally hypocritical as I made the previous point that the trade is nice in that it could net them a slightly better pick in 2022. My overall point is just that I'm trying not to focus on what the other 48% of the lottery outcomes look like. Because if that happens, all of this year will have been for nothing, and I kinda doubt that a few extra spots from Miami will do much to save that disastrous outcome. But piggy-backing off of one of my other points, I don't think Oladipo is going to make a 4-5 win difference at the end of the day for Miami the rest of the way. He's not that good. I think the Heat are definitely capable of playing better basketball and winning at a higher rate than they've played at up to this point, but I think they were capable of that whether they added Oladipo or not. Dipo doesn't make a .500 Miami team into a .650 Miami team. He's not a top 25 guy; hell, I'm not even sure he's a top 100 guy.
I appreciate the optimism. I try to look at the bright side of things when I can, but there’s really no bright side to this one. This was handled just about as poorly as it possibly could have gone. At the end of the day, you win some and you lose some. Today was a loss. It happens. Time to move on.
Look there are good sides and bad sides to everything. Its like if somebody broke into your house and took everything you can still say at least you have insurance who will pay for some of the damage. But you still got robbed in the end. Thats the problem with Dipo trade no matter how you slice it they got robbed. And they made the team that they own the pick to get better. Keeping Dipo is bad but giving him to Miami is worse. You say the swap is 3-5 positions higher but Dipo to Miami for Bradley and Olynk can make them more than 3-5 positions better. It can be a net loss if the chips fall wrong.
-YESTERDAY the team was leaking to Woj that they had a package with a mid first round pick on the table and were exploring for upgraded packages. THEY set that expectation, they didn't have to do that. -Many people wanted Oladipo gone so that he would not help us win any games we shouldn't be winning and also to not take minutes away from KPJ -We may get 3-5 draft place higher next year (your words) but we are in the aggregate possibly losing draft positions as we just upgraded the team whose pick we receive if OKC executes the pick swap. So Miami may go from 16 to 25 this year, get the swap executed and move from their position up to OKC's position and we go back into the mid twenties for helping them out, then next year when they don't have another COVID rampage and injuries from a shortened offseason nuking their schedule they get back into the mid fifties for wins and we can only jump 3-5 spots and have cost ourselves 3-5 spots in the aggregate still. -Oladipo was playing out of position here especially when Wall was out, he is not a primary creator and won't have to be in Miami and will defend well as he did here and fit into the offense in a better, more structured role. -What exactly is our direction? We have Silas, Wall, and CWood that desperately want to win some games and Stone who has leveraged our next three 0.5-2.5 years on being terrible. Oh and also Orlando will not be tanking their asses off and we are already at 3. If we go to 4 then our chance to keep our pick goes down to 42%. This trade was not as devastating as losing our pick would be but this absolutely was a misstep. Not squeezing MIA for Okpala who will be out of their rotation was a huge blunder. We also helped Miami by allowing them to not have to renounce any of their young players with Dipo coming in now and it cost them potentially nothing or 3 spots in a draft they won't care about if they're good anyway.
And I understand that frustration, but literally nothing changed about that fact today. The Harden trade didn't suddenly get significantly worse because Oladipo was traded for scraps. It was already not great, and we all knew that. We knew it when it happened, and I think we knew that we'd be lucky to get another first rounder out of him today. I just don't get the point of dwelling on that and acting as if today is some horrific event, because I don't see a scenario where today would have played out significantly better. Nothing that happened today made that Harden deal any worse than what it was two months ago. Ultimately Dipo was always the worst part of that deal, and the outcome of the trade always going to hinge on the value of those Brooklyn picks.
I posted several of these ideas (although perhaps not as articulately) earlier in the day. I agree this deal only makes sense if either the rockets are embracing a long term rebuild or they are utterly incompetent. While I believe the team downgraded in leadership from DM to Stone and MDA to Silas, I don't think these guys are incompetent. I do worry that TF will try and rush things but I'm hoping that this draft brings 2-3 pieces and, along with KPJ, Wood, KMart and Tate, this team can start to re-establish Houston as a premiere franchise. Fingers crossed.
I think we could have gotten more for LeVert and Allen at the deadline, which is why i think Stone fked up. I also think Stone fked up by waiting too long. I'm sad that we couldn't dump wall, probably because we didnt want to. Just wondering if there were no other terrrible contracts to trade Wall for. Everything is better than having him on the roster imo. But overall, this season is all about that pick at the end of the day - If we keep our pick, it's a successful season, if not, we're doomed.
After watching him first hand for weeks, I certainly can. I can't believe we gave up anything of value to get him.
Didn’t address the wall situation ...he shouldn’t be here gonna take allot of the mins and opportunities away from kpj I think ...he could be a good mentor however
But can we trick a decent free agent to come here. Cousins/C Wood were recruited by Harden. Aaron Gordon said thinks but no thanks. Avery Bradley doesn't want to be in Houston, confirmed by Codman And Avery Bradley and Cousins are shells of the players they use to be.
You're assuming the Rockets leaked that and built up expectations for a trade that hadn't happened yet. If Morey taught us anything, it's that we should never trust rumors and to always expect to be disappointed at the trade deadline. I was prepared for this. See my response to the prior post on this. I agree it's hypocritical. I disagree that Oladipo would be the sold factor in Miami suddenly playing winning basketball they've always been capable of playing. I think Miami is hurting way more offensively and is more in need of a creator than you're giving them credit for. Last I checked, I think they were 25th in ORtg. In another forum I poste on, I saw a Heat fan suggest he start at point guard. Their offense has been pretty bad this year, and I do think they're adding Oladipo because they feel like they need more creators. Yeah, that's called tanking. Players and coaches want to win. The front office does everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen. Also, if they drop to 4, their odds go down to 48%, not 42%. Miami wasn't going to part ways with the one prospect of legitimate value (Herro) they had. I'm not sold that Houston is missing out on some other great prospect on Miami's roster that they could have acquired. If anything, I'm more disappointed they didn't make a move to add guys like Aaron Gordon or Lauri Markkanen, but Oladipo didn't really have that much to do with those guys, as Stone would have had to add more pieces to get young assets like them. I appreciate your response and understand your perspectives. But it's safe to say we can agree to disagree on some of these points.
I didn't need to, though. Wall was never going to get traded today. He's making $90 million the next two years. I want him gone, and I look forward to the day he's not in Rockets red. But it's going to be a while.
