His all defense team is a gimmick. And when he’s on this team for the next 4 years on that shitty contract, he’ll be an afterthought and I can’t wait to see all the i thought this guy was all defense posts. While bricking his usual %s and asking too shoot more
We'll see how things wash out but, didn't we also gain picks that turned into Eason and Cam over the years? Two guys who may turn out into steals of the draft? Also many drafted players don't become anything when picked in later or second rounds. Not happy or mad, but I'd like to see how the next seasons play out to judge our progress and what these players develop into personally. January 13, 2021: As part of a 4-team trade, the Houston Rockets traded a 2023 2nd round draft pick (Jalen Pickett was later selected) to the Indiana Pacers; the Houston Rockets traded James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets; the Brooklyn Nets traded Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince to the Cleveland Cavaliers; the Brooklyn Nets traded Rodions Kurucs, a 2021 1st round draft pick, a 2022 1st round draft pick (Tari Eason was later selected), a 2023 1st round draft pick, a 2024 1st round draft pick, a 2025 1st round draft pick, a 2026 1st round draft pick and a 2027 1st round draft pick to the Houston Rockets; February 9, 2023: As part of a 3-team trade, the Houston Rockets traded Eric Gordon and a 2023 1st round draft pick (Kobe Brown was later selected) to the Los Angeles Clippers; the Los Angeles Clippers traded John Wall and a 2023 1st round draft pick (Cam Whitmore was later selected) to the Houston Rockets;
You give me 6 first rounders and I can get something of value for them. That is a lot of draft capital.
Come on man late 1st round picks. Go through the draft and even now if you can pick players draftd after the ones we picked, you would be glad pressed to find good players. It happens l, it's not nfl where your 1st round is expected to hit everytime Also wood was trash as evidenced by no one wanting him this year in free agency. Correct me if I am wrong but didn't they get a first for Gordon the one that turned into whitmore? Were you expecting multiple firsts for him? Again I am not saying don't fire him, I don't really care but to pout about 2nd round picks is silly
Thing with draft picks is that while there's its actual value (and cost). The perceived value by NBA GMs matter more. Yes, actual cost of draft picks include risks of hit/miss, development infrastructure, playing time, how that prospect fits into the current OFF/DEF system. But in world of GM's the perceived value matters more. Because this is what GMs play with. What they spend lot of their time on (scouting and picking). There's three pillars in NBA currency. * A players' skills on the court * His contract (by market value) * Draft picks For a bottoming team; our picks and 1st round draftee, are one of the few things we do have; since most of the useful vets are already gone. Just because our roster was crowded (not enough playing time); there are other teams, who have their cap tied up; where these picks is a cheaper feasible to restock. Even if Garuba/Tyty may be perceived as little value around the league; I would not have PAID picks to get rid of them. Rocket's roster count is 12. fvv, jalen green, Dillion, jabari, sengun, kpj, tari, amen, landale, tate, jeff green, whitmore. Even if deep bench; there was still roster room for Tyty and Garuba. For all the talks about many teams trying to get Grant Williams, he ended up on $13.5 mil per year. (53 mil / 4yrs). What a bargain. All Celtics got was two 2nd round picks. Imagine if instead of Rockets paying ATL with those picks, giving Celtics those, a Tyty/Garuba (match salary), we could have even overpay/sweeten with more 2nd rounders from Clippers (KJ trade). Rockets could have easily outbid the Mavs/Spurs. Two Texas inter-state rivals no less. The issue is not only did Rockets pay the price, we didn't land Lopez AND wasting the 2nd rounders where opportunity cost like Grant slipped right by.
I’m no fan of Stone, I’ve said he was a poor choice for GM and unqualified for the job from the start. He is ultimately responsible for bad draft choices but that doesn’t mean the guys he traded (other than KJ) were going to make it with another organization. Only time will tell but I’m inclined to believe that none of JC, Garuba, or TyTy will make it in the NBA. They all had opportunities to shine with the Rockets.
So Nook I hope you'll excuse that I summarize my response here because I don't see a lot of disagreement between us on these issues. The main issue where we disagree - and it's honestly subjective - is that I don't think the Spurs have done some incredible job with their rebuild. I don't think Sochan is a guy who can offensively carry a team, whereas we have two guys who still have that possibility in their future. I think they've made - per year - about as many mistakes as Stone. I also don't believe that the Spurs playing the right way is unimportant but I don't think it's necessarily made a huge difference to them. I wish we had a better culture but I'm of the opinion a better culture and more professionalism would have netted us 30 wins and not the best odds in the draft. In fact we were barely able to nab the best odds it was very close. I don't believe that we've "ruined" players by putting them in a bad culture except possibly KPJ. I think people are largely who they are. The ones that were going to make it anyway are the ones that will flourish in this culture. No one is in a place where it's unrecoverable. Jabari, Jalen and Sengun all play hard on the court - they were just making stupid mistakes in the absence of mentorship and good coaching. In Jabari's case it was really just a confidence issue from the looks of it. Do I wish the culture was better and we won 30? Honestly yes. I would have preferred that, because a better culture and record would have made it easier for us to sign FA's and would have made the transition to Udoka easier. However, I'm not sure we'd have fired Silas if that was the case. I obviously don't think the Thunder rebuild is better. They're one season ahead in my eyes and Presti didn't start from a negative. We equipped him with a head start in fact. If we're only one year behind the Thunder's rebuild, we are doing well. On the other teams you're assessing us against their best outcome after years and years. You have to give Stone 6 years if you're going to compare him to teams that had 6 years to get to a conference finals or something. The only fair way to judge him is what he's done with what he's got within 3 years of a brutal rebuild. All of our picks are still in the league and imo all of them will remain in the league. It's a VERY high hit rate on draft picks even if 7 or 8 of them remain in the NBA. I was worried about culture, but I'm not longer worried about it. In fact I'm 99.99% confident Udoka will enforce that culture even if players don't fit into it. I'm happy with the signings too even though I despised Brooks. My biggest issue with Stone is with trades and letting go of trying to be a hero. Sometimes you can take 90 cents on the dollar so the team can move on instead of waiting ages to make a deal in the hope that you get 95 cents on the dollar. He screwed up with Gordon who imo poisoned the energy and ended up getting us a pick swap - he got extremely lucky that pick ended up being Whitmore. If this season we win something like 38 games and Jalen or Sengun show themselves to be able to carry an NBA offense as a #1 or #2, we will have done really really well. We'll be sitting on a roster full of players under 23 on the cusp of the playoffs and financial flexibility + assets available to upgrade. By the time we win a playoff series, we will own almost all our own future picks again too. Stone has made mistakes but he's done way more good than bad if you ask me and - to me - 70% of his report card is to be decided this season. We're too easily brushing under the rug the good things he's done - fast rebuild, lots of youth, hired Udoka, financial flexibility. People are ignoring how bad rebuilds tend to go half the time. This was a unique situation, no one has tanked this hard so it was always going to look worse. We have to allow that fog to clear to know what he's done in the big picture of things.
The worst part about Stone is his inability to consolidate all of the assets the team has accumulated at the high cost of tanking for several years now. Morey would have found ways to get some value of guys we have been giving away for nothing, blowing multiple first round picks and throwing them in on deals a couple years later is not acceptable. We will see if there were mistakes made at the top end of the first round, so far no player really stands out as being worth the entire tanking process. To me the Sixers process was/is a failure, and yet they still got an MVP and ROY out of it. The Rockets process so far does not look too great (no ROY and likely no one is getting league MVP), it seems like it would have been fixable with a good GM because they did luck out a bit getting decent draft positioning the last three years and the players he got that high will be decent NBA players. Stone does not have the ability to turn four quarters into a dollar like Morey consistently did for years. There is no incremental improvement, no smart trades at all. It is like a kid is running the franchise , tank , draft high, overpay free agents, and then dump old assets for nothing.
If Stone doesn't deliver a playoff ( or two) berth in this said second phase (3 yr stretch) he will be lunchmeat and get canned, unless secretly Tilman promised to keep him for duration of Udoka tenure To me where Stone messed up the most was allegedly meddling with rotation and not being wise enough to make sure Silas played all the 1st rd picks heavy quality minutes thru this 3 yr tank to at least boost their trade value to max so that when you decided to move them you wouldn't have to give up picks to do it, but keeping Gordon did land them Whitmore so he got somewhat lucky with that vet I give him a quasi pass on how he dealt with the Oladipo situation since he was just getting his feel wet and it showed
Ferntits is a bball illiterate, he knows nothing, he probably thinks waiving dollar bills around and signing overpriced FVV and Brooks is going to expedite Phase 2 or Phase 3.....what a joke. Typical short cut owner who prayed for Victor.
Can't defend him at all, but the bag$ rules everything and he had to splurge that cap space on somebody Maybe he thinks he is the Joke-r in Dark Knight and burned thru those dollar bills by signing those over priced media hyped free agents, only time will tell
Nobody is going to pay to watch Dillon Brooks getting ejected from games. Ah maybe guys who want to see some action in the game.
OKC fans are shocked they get extra 3 2nd round picks with taking on Patty Mills. Lol. We are laughing stock again.
Wohooo 2nd round picks. Championship guaranteed. If okc fans are happy about getting 2nd round picks then they must live a very sad life
Second picks are not really second round picks now. With the new financial restrictions 2nd round picks could serve as the last little something that tips the scale in trades. And it rounded out championship contenders without going into the Midlevel exceptions or beyond. It is like a cheaper currency.
Stone had two first rounders on the table for Gordon and didn’t trade him. He also had two first rounders on the table for Wood and did not take it…. He held onto both and overplayed his hand. He also choose Oladipo over LeVert and got almost nothing for Oladipo and LeVert was dealt to Cleveland for a #1 and a couple #2’s…. He also lost a #1 pick by having Prince go to Indiana because he didn’t want to pay Prince’s remaining contract. That is a LOT of draft picks squandered of unnecessarily sent to other teams. It’s absurd for a rebuilding team to just screw up like that to the extent that Stone did.
