We have maybe 7 NBA level players on our roster currently healthy which is kind of an indictment of Stone’s failure to provide depth this season. Love or hate Cam (and I know Cam is out this season anyways) but it shows trading him was foolish knowing now how shallow our bench talent was. But regardless saying Reed has the green light is just kind of an objective truth. Regardless of whether Ime feels forced to give it to him because of Stone’s failures or not. I guess Reed only fans can thank Stone.
That is a ridiculously high bar you are setting for Stone. The only miss he had on providing depth was Reed insurance. He signed Okogie, DFS, and Capella (someone virtually everybody was screaming as unnecessary.) No GM can prepare for injuries to both your backup forwards, your starting pg, your center and backup center. Before FVV’s injury we were 10 deep if you don’t include DFS. Depth chart before FVV injury: Amen, FVV, Reed, Okogie Durant, Jabari, Tari Sengun, Adams, Capella A lot of us wanted Reed insurance. We have 11 rotation worthy players when all healthy. Hindsight is 20/20.
You also as a GM have to be judged for signing clearly unhealthy players. DFS obviously was injured when they signed him and the Rockets didn’t do their homework. Capela, while healthy, was clearly out of shape. And Tate, Uncle Jeff, Crawford, and Newton clearly don’t belong on an NBA roster. Holiday and Davidson are questionable at this point given that nether play almost ever. That’s still a lot of roster spots that could be used for nba players or at least some higher upside talent. Stone is far from being a bad GM I’ll give him that much. However it’s just objectively true that he did field a very shallow bench this season and should have had his staff do more homework on the health and playability of who they did bring in.
DFS was probably a calculated gamble that Tari would stay healthy, plus they had Okogie that could take some SF minutes. Capella ended up being a great signing. Without him we would be completely screwed. 10-11 deep and staying under the apron is a doing a fine job. If you want to criticize Stone, it should be for the Ime and FVV extensions which were unnecessary, not for depth which he has provided in spades. We are only 2 games out of the second seed and DFS and Tari are back and Capella is playing very well. Hopefully we will sign Alvarado (who is a better backup than FVV) to make up for FVV being injured. Our issue is Sengun not playing up to snuff, Jabari and Reed’s inconsistency and Ime’s lousy bench coaching. You can blame Stone for extending Ime, but not for the rest.
It wasn’t 22 shots. Reed attempted 15 shots. He was 1-7 from 3 and 6-15 overall FG… so he made 5-2 pointers and 1-3 pointer.
