Why does no one care about the Miami Heat? Huge draft pick variance

I've been keeping up with them after every night of box scores for this reason.

If we ended up having to swap out the 5th pick for the ~13th pick that would suck but it isn't the end of the world.

The weird one to keep up with is the Trailblazers. You sort of want them to lose to improve the position of their pick if we get it, but you don't want them to somehow fall in the lottery and not get their pick. The play-in game has heightened the variance with that dynamic.

 

I agree with you on this. If someone can't scoreboard watch the Heat to track the position of a potential swap they are going to have a tough time handling this process.

A good chunk of this board was ready to trade Harden for a package headlined by Herro (who went 13th two years ago) but now can't stomach thinking about having the 13th pick.

 

Any season where a team is one of the worst in the league, yet is unable to acquire the only benefits of being one of the worst (a top 3 pick) is a MASSIVE failure.

So it's understandable why no rockets fans would wants to think about the possibility of ending this season with Silver announcing " with the 13th or 14th or 18th pick etc the Houston rockets select..."

 

I don't understand this way of thinking. The failure was the Westbrook trade and that event is long in the rearview even though we'll be paying for it for awhile. If the FO made some strategic decision coming into the season to tank at the expense of having a playoff caliber team and ultimately had nothing to show for it, I guess I could see calling it a "massive failure." But once Wood got hurt after the trade and it was apparent we couldn't be competitive it's not like tanking had any real opportunity cost other than possibly gifting a better pick to OKC than they would have gotten otherwise.

 

Nah, the failure was watering down the drinks and skimping on the margins from the very first offseason of tillman, remember when we were one game from the finals without paul while the entire league was stepping back for the warriors, that was clutch city mentality. Guess what? that offseason we had over 10 million in TPE to play with(Didn't use), we had the mLE(didn't use), we had bird rights(we ignored), and we had picks(we used mostly to get under the cap).

Theres an argument for if ariza was worth it, what isn't an argument is that he was a one year deal, no future ramifications, tradeable at the deadline as an expiring-which he was for kelly oubre, and let alone what he brought to the rockets was beyond what he did on the court :

Former Houston Rockets guard Chris Paul was on the Knuckleheads podcast with Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson and explained the impact of the Rockets losing Ariza.

“People don’t realize, that’s the biggest thing that we missed. That was tough when we lost [Ariza] because he sorta was like the glue. He was that glue for our team.”

But the NBA is tough decisions, I get wanting to get better when we're in our window not to waste away generational talent. What do we replace him with? James Ennis on a Minimum contract. He was playing in MDA's short rotation when he was traded in Feb for a top 55 protected 2nd rounder.

What about Daniel House?

"And that was the one thing that Morey never really had. According to the cap numbers at Spotrac, which go back to the 2010-11 season, the Rockets barely went over the luxury tax (just $3.65 million over) in their one season (2015-16) as a taxpayer. The Warriors spent $49.63 million in penalties over the last five seasons, while even the small-market Thunder spent $33.73 million. There was no excuse for Houston to not open up the checkbook. This is a franchise located in the fourth-biggest metro area in the U.S. that has had a superstar in the prime of his career. Alexander sat on his hands while Houston’s rivals went all in, counting on Morey’s ability to use advanced statistics to turn water into wine."

"
This refusal to spend money became farcical once Alexander sold the team to Tilman Fertitta in 2017. Fertitta spent so much money ($2.2 billion) to purchase the Rockets that he may not have had the liquidity to go into the red to build a title contender. Houston was a laughingstock around the league for the amount of juggling it had to do to stay under the tax. The best example came at the trade deadline last season, when Morey used a future first-round pick to shed the salaries of Brandon Knight and Marquese Chriss. There was no basketball reason for the move. It was just done to cut costs. It’s not that Knight and Chriss would have helped the Rockets. But there were certainly a lot of better things that Morey could have used that pick for.

Houston also spent that season in a bizarre staring contest with Danuel House Jr. House is the kind of diamond in the rough that Morey routinely uncovered in Houston, an undrafted free agent on a two-way contract who would become a starting-caliber wing. The problem was that players on those deals can spend only 45 days with the NBA team during the season before their contracts have to be converted. Money in Houston was so tight that Morey had to send House back to the G League when he wouldn’t sign a below-market long-term deal. He replaced House with two players he signed off the street (Gerald Green and Kenneth Faried) before bringing him back right before the playoffs. It’s not like House was asking for the world. He signed a three-year, $11 million contract in the offseason. But even that was more than Morey could offer at the time.

Houston’s limited financial flexibility became an even bigger issue last season after the trade for Westbrook. With the team’s two best players costing a combined $76.7 million, it became almost impossible for Morey to fill out the roster while staying under the luxury tax. Morey and head coach Mike D’Antoni had to conjure up production from players other teams didn’t want. Jeff Green went from being cut by the Jazz to being a crucial piece of the Rockets’ small-ball attack in the playoffs. It was the same story with Austin Rivers, who had been on three teams in five seasons before landing in Houston, and Ben McLemore, who had one foot out of the NBA before the Rockets turned him into a 3-point sniper. All were more valuable in Houston than anywhere else in the league because Morey identified what they could do well and put them in roles that didn’t ask them to do much else."


There are many dominos that led to the westbrook trade, there was a lot of cheaping out before hand on moves that champion mentality teams use, but don't make headlines. Its an absolute insult that the owner continues to say we went all in when 90 percent of our moves were cost cutting.
Imagine you're harden, teh whole league is touting Load Management, but you're still playing heavy games, historic Useage, and minutes willing a team that is growing thinner while you carry them in historic proportions. You get back Jan after a 38 minute game 40-17-9 performance, Daniel House's locker is sitting empty. We got him from the dleague, he helped fill ariza(your homeboy, locker room vet)'s void and he was a pleasant surprise, but he wasn't being tax friendly so he got cut for 2 months until it was. Then a month later you come back after a febuary game, the guy we signed to replace ariza, James Ennis, a respectable journeyman on a minimum, his locker is empty now too, no replacement, he was sent to Philly for a top 55 2nd round pick. Then that post season youre owner grabs the mike after a loss to the warriors, demands rockets should've done better with a worse product and says he will instill a killer instinct. Thats right, Tilman Fertitta will teach Chris Paul a killer instinct, and shout it publicly to the press....

I'm sure stars are itching to play for this guy as soon as they come in our arena and see his face in the mural more times and prominently than anyone else in our organization. I'd like you to go find that in ANY arena, including donald sterlings, including James Dolans.

 

That goes to OKC, right?

DD

 

Nope, outside the top 4 goes to them
we keep if top 4. Crossing fingers

 

5 Lottery Simulations

Rockets pick
#1
#5 pick goes to OKC
#5 " "
#1
#5

We are the worst team in the league its an epic fail if we don't land in top 4 and lose this pick to OKC. It also shows what a dumb trade the Westbrook deal was too.

 

If OKC gets two of the top 5 picks, we will be their b**** forever.

 

You of course want high picks rather than low lottery/mid first rounders and the odds of finding a high caliber player are better that way, but this kind of stuff is over conclusory. In the 2017 draft Fultz, Lonzo Ball, and Josh Jackson went in the top 5. Donovan Mitchell and Bam Adebayo went 13/14 the same year.

 

I doubt anyone knows what will happen until draft night. Pecking order, whos got what. etc..

 

Some reality check from previous NBA lottery:

2019 Draft

1st #7
2nd #8
3rd #1
4th #11


2020 Draft
1st #3
2nd #1
3rd #8
4th #7

 

2 Pac cares, if don’t nobody else care.

 

So four teams would need to jump us to lose that 4th spot, or does that matter?

DD

 

First 3 teams have an equal shot at 14 percent to getting the no 1.
then 4th place has 12.5 percent chance,3rd- 10.5 percent chance, then 5th place -9 percent chance.

This is from @Clutch : "The Rockets have a 14.0% chance at the #1 pick/Cade Cunningham. Those odds can't get better and they won't get worse. So 86% of the scenarios have a different team getting him. It's hard to get excited about those odds. Getting a top-4 pick (52.1% chance) is all that matters."

So we essentially have slightly better than a coin flip, 52.1 percent chance to keep our pick in the top 4. 14 percent to get that top no 1 pick


More details for then nerds:

The actual lottery procedure will take place in a separate room just before ESPN’s national broadcast. Select media members, NBA officials and representatives of the participating teams and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young will be in attendance for the drawings.

Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams. The lottery machine is manufactured by the Smart Play Company, a leading manufacturer of state lottery machines throughout the United States. Smart Play also weighs, measures and certifies the ping-pong balls before the drawing.

The drawing process occurs in the following manner: All 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine and they are mixed for 20 seconds, and then the first ball is removed. The remaining balls are mixed in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, and then the second ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the third ball is drawn. There is a 10-second mix, and then the fourth ball is drawn. The team that has been assigned that combination will receive the No. 1 pick. The same process is repeated with the same ping-pong balls and lottery machine for the second through fourth picks.

If the same team comes up more than once, the result is discarded and another four-ball combination is selected. Also, if the one unassigned combination is drawn, the result is discarded and the balls are drawn again. The length of time the balls are mixed is monitored by a timekeeper who faces away from the machine and signals the machine operator after the appropriate amount of time has elapsed.

Darrington Hobson, a partner in the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, oversees the entire lottery process and stuffs and seals the envelopes before bringing them to the studio for the broadcast. The announcement of the lottery results will be made by NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum. A second representative from each participating team will be seated on stage. Neither the Deputy Commissioner nor the team representatives on stage will be informed of the lottery results before the envelopes are opened.

The team whose logo is in the last envelope opened will have the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, to be held on Thursday, June 25 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

 

My dude we been talking about this in multiple threads all season how r u still confused about what we want? I'm pretty sure there's a thread that says top 4 pick or bust.

Interesting to note though, the wolves are in a similar situation except they need top 3 pick or else they have to give to gsw I think.

 

By the end of the 6th pick, we will pretty much know the out come for the Rockets

1. If 4 teams already jumped their order then it is over for the Rockets and we will hand out pick to OKC.

2. If 2 teams or less jumped their order, then we are guaranteed a top 4 pick

3. if exactly 3 teams jumped their order then it is unknown. It can go either way.

 

Yep, that is what I was getting at - I hope it works out, but man tanking this hard for a coin flip.....

DD

 

nm

 

They either tanked this hard for a coin flip or they didn't and got the worst of the 3 picks with no chance at the lottery.

I'll take a coin flip over no chance at all.