THIS SEASON WAS OVER ........WHEN STONE MADE THOSE COMMENTS,"MAYBE THIS IS NOT OUR SEASON". THEN HE COMES BACK AND SAY THE FANS AND MEDIA TOOK HIS WORDS OUT OF CONTEXT. If Tilman allows him to come back next yr, it says a lot about how much he cares about the avg fan.
People complaining about Rockets draft position are spewing total BS. The Rockets could've had Jared Allen in the Harden trade. Instead they asked for Oladipo. They could've taken Scottie Barnes or Evan Mobley with the 2nd pick. They took Jalen Green instead. OKC got Chet with the 2nd pick, yes. But they also got Jalen Williams with the 12th pick that they traded for. The Rockets didn't try moving up for anyone except Sengun, who ended up being their best player. There were other players in the 1st round that they could've traded up for. The aforementioned Jalen Williams, Jalen Johnson and Trey Murphy were just a few picks ahead of Garuba and Christopher. If Stone was simply a better talent evaluator, the Rockets easily could've accumulated way more talent and depth. And you won't have to pay old, injury risky players like Steven Adams and FVV boatload of money.
The Jalen Green pick was bad. Trey Murphy is the guy I wanted the Rockets to trade up with. That said, GMs aren't perfect. Even Presti traded away Sengun and drafted Dieng over Jalen Williams. To me, Stone's biggest problem has been not getting the Guy*. I think Luka is the only Guy drafted with a pick later than a Rockets pick or traded during Stone's tenure as GM, but I could be missing a Guy. Overall, I think Stone has done a good job relative to the majority of teams, mostly from draft pick management. I think pick quality has more or less been about average value for selection (not completely bombing on all the picks, but enough misses to counter Sengun and Tari as mid-FRP successes). If it was easy to accumulate more talent and depth than the Rockets, the Rockets would not be in the playoffs. Stone started with a dying team, down 2-3 FRPs, and having the backside of 2 FRP swaps. *I think roster construction problems are a result of the Rockets not having the Guy to tailor the roster around. Stone isn't going to expend too many resources to make the roster fit until he knows he has a roster worth spending many resources to make fit.
Well, most decades were dominated by one or two teams with other teams sprinkled in occasional championships here and there. 1960s: Celtics 1970s: ? 1980s: Lakers and Celtics 1990s: Bulls 2000s: Lakers and Spurs 2010s: Warriors 2020s: ?
Yep, it does not look like the Rockets will be one of the dominant teams for the decade. Though the dominant teams don't win every year as there are years when teams just have things go their way and they win. Usually, this is through being ready often.
There are usually 2 or 3 "contenders" or up and coming teams each year but they are typically a notch below the dominant teams. This year, Spurs, Nuggets, and Celtics are the contenders but OKC is the clear favorite to repeat. But you never know. Something crazy happened like the trading of Doncic. The Lakers being the Lakers may well be able to assemble a team around him when LeBron is finally riding to the sunset. The thing is, it is hard to build a dynasty. Everything has to align the right way with lots of luck and lots of good management foresight. But once you get it, you can ride it for at least half a decade.
Spurs and Celtics being this strong wasn't known at the beginning of the season, though I expect many thought they would be strong next season. I think the Rockets are in a spot that not many would be surprised if the Rockets had been a top contender this season, though, where the Rockets are isn't too surprising either. Rockets just got to keep working. I do think the Rockets are a star short. Most of the criticisms of Stone seem to be about guys who would not be the best Rocket. I tend to think the Rockets compare very well to almost every team when not looking at the top guy. Top guy, I'm not even sure the Rockets are average. It is just so hard to win in the NBA not having the best player in a game most of the time.
KD is just a stopgap in the hope that he could elevate the team into contention while the kids grow into their own. I don't think the problem for this year is losing FVV and Adams. It's the lack of leaps among the young players, specifically Sengun and Amen. It's pretty disappointing tbh. (Reed took a sizable "leap" but his floor last year was so low that the leap only took him to an average rookie prospect. It would take maybe 2 more years for him to get to the anticipated level of Sengun and Amen.)
Amen Thompson is better than Sengun going forward. He defends, rebounds, scores well inside and is a good secondary passer. He has shown he at worst is an elite role player.
Some knew the Spurs were going to be elite this season, I had them over the Rockets and I remember a few in the media had them stepping up. I think that people read too much into the Rockets being the #2 seed last season. The reality is that the Rockets won 52 games last year and lost in the first round to the 7 seed. The difference between the 2 seed and the 6 seed was like 3 games last season. Injuries are usually not taken into consideration with the Rockets. Yes, FVV and Adams were hurt, but KD has been for the most part healthy. The Rockets roster comes with a lot of injury risk, it is unlikely that the starting 5 is healthy all year. The Rockets over a four year span had: #2, #3, #4, #3, #10, #16, #17, #20 and #23. That is a massive amount of draft picks in a small period of time, they should have more than what they have on the court. I agree with you that it is hard to win without a franchise player -- but even that could have been handled differently. The Rockets could have moved some of the players for future picks, they could have continued trying to draft a franchise player. Instead they slapped a band aid on and declared themselves contenders, relying on a 37 year old and 33 year old to lead the way. A lot of these guys are now extended -- or are about to be free agents. Jalen Green is already gone, so that is the #2 pick.......... Jabari Smith is extended, but how much value does he have with his contract (#3 pick) ... Amen Thompson has been good, but he is due an extension. If he gets a max, how much surplus value is there? Tari Eason is a FA.... Reed will be eligible too, are you comfortable extending him? DFS? Does he have any real value on the market? FVV certainly has massive negative value with his contract.... Sengun? He likely has positive value, but hard to get a read on what his market value is. The Nets pick is gone, now it is Suns picks.... and Suns have been surprisingly competitive... so what are those picks worth? I don't see a lot of steaks on the Rockets menu .... I see a couple hamburgers and fries.
been saying it out loud. Too many people here lack a real personality to create its own opinion. They end up seeing everything through the lense of the pr realeases or the media who also gets paid by the agents like in any other sport industry. We are above average on defense bacause we drafted big guys, we have some talent and an old HOF. That's it.
Nobody asked Stone to be perfect. He had at worst a 50/50 shot of getting a high level player with the 2nd pick and he chose wrong. That's not being perfect. That's misreading two prospects. He chose Oladipo as his main player back in the Harden trade. That was just terrible talent/injury evaluation. Something he clearly repeated with DFS. And possibly even Adams or FVV. But most certainly with DFS. That's not asking him to be perfect. That's just a GM not doing his basic job. I mean just look at his draft results #2 Jalen - Bust #17 Sengun - Success #23 Garuba - salary dump #24 Christopher - salary dump #3 Jabari - role player #17 Tari - injury prone role player. Probably gonna leave this offseason #25 TyTy - salary dump #4 Amen - above average role player #20 Cam - traded for 2nd round picks #3 Reed - Maybe bright future but certainly not yet bright today Mind you, this is the draft history Stone used to justify trading for a 37yr old star because he believed the Rockets have arrived and is just one piece away from being a contender. So on top of missing a lot of his draft picks, he also grossly overestimated the Rockets ability to contend now, resulting in this current quagmire where they are stuck with a good team but zero chance to win a title.
I'd say it is a combination of the absence of FVV, Adams, and Sengun, and Amen not being better. The Rockets needed a lot to go right. I don't think FVV is as easily replaceable as many think, even if I, at the same time, don't think he was the only thing the Rockets needed. Though I think the trade deadline would have been interesting if FVV had been healthy. I'd put Sengun regressing as the number 1 issue. FVV as the 2nd. On Reed, I think he was about where Sengun was in his 2nd year and Amen in his first year regarding impact. While I'm not sure it will happen, it would not take as big a leap as this season for Reed to get in the spot Amen/Sengun were after 3 seasons. Reed is younger than those two so I expect they both should be better than Reed next year even if Reed catches up n the development curve.
You can play armchair GM and nitpick every pick, but the reality is simple: the Rockets are better now than the team he inherited and are loaded with future assets—despite starting just above the Stepien rule floor when he became GM. So how exactly did they end up making all these picks and still have more than a team's allotment of picks going forward? If Stone is so bad at his job, why aren’t all these “competent” teams ahead of Houston and sitting on more first-rounders?
The standard isn't whether the current Rockets are better than the inherited. He was able to gut the team and be at the top of the lottery for 3 years. Of course he has more talent than what he inherited, he would almost have to by default. He has had the luxury of 4 picks in the top 4 of the lotteries, and the #10 pick, #16 and #17 and a handful of other picks. He also was able to clear the cap and sign guys while the guys were under rookie scale deals. The real question is how have the Rockets had so many picks and assets and cap space and don't have more to show for it. How? He traded one of the top 4-5 players in the world for draft picks and he tanked. That is how....... there is nothing special about that. Four unprotected first-round draft picks from Brooklyn in 2022, 2024, and 2026 Four first-round pick swaps with Brooklyn in 2021, 2023, 2025, and 2027 Milwaukee's 2022 first-round pick (via Cleveland). This is what he got for Harden. What do the Rockets have to show for this? [QUOTE="Joe Joe, post: 16139680, member: 467"If Stone is so bad at his job, why aren’t all these “competent” teams ahead of Houston and sitting on more first-rounders?[/QUOTE] Bad at his job? He isn't terrible, he is just pedestrian. The Rockets have no picks in what is considered the best draft in a decade. The Rockets over the next 5-6 years are "+1" in first rounders, it isn't as if we are sitting on a large stockpile of picks.
when u have 6 years, of course u are supposed to be better than when you started. That is an incredibly low bar. there are plenty of teams that were rebuilding or started their rebuild in 2021 like Houston who are set up well, despite finishing behind Houston this yr. The Hornets are a good example. Other teams are actually ahead of Houston, like the pistons. Other teams like the Spurs got lucky with Wemby, but also acquired other difference makers to become far better than Houston. I’m not gonna argue that Stone has done a terrible job, but he certainly hadn’t don’t a great job. And I think u have to judge him on how well his draft picks are developing. Was giving up Brooklyn's 2026 pick a colossal disaster? Do we have a franchise player? How close are we to contending? The answers to those questions don’t sound very good to me heading into year 7. think of it this way: 6 yrs and your best player by far is a 37 yr old, and your core is not good enough to handle a lakers team that has no depth and is missing their two best players?
Yeah the mismanagement of assets and resource really sticks out. I agree with the sentiment about Stone not having access to the Luka/Wemby/Flagg/Cade types of "almost can't miss" types of prospects - that's real and sucks...but the problem is that we deluded ourselves into thinking our own assets were more valuable then they actually were and rather than consolidating draft assets and younger players to chase bigger fish, we just continued to draft solid but unlikely game changing talent AND what's worse is we continue to miss out on the appropriate time to sell high on this assets. The problem with Sengun today is the same problem we have been talking about since the 2nd season - is he going to play enough defense/is he going to develop an outside shot? Did we really need to get THIS far down the road to discover that? We should have traded him after the first All Star game. It's really hard to sell the "baby Jokic" thing when Alpi has looked fairly pedestrian on the biggest NBA stages multiple times now. ....and we haven't even scratched the surface on the amount of money we threw at lesser FA. I can at least sign off on the first contracts of Fred and Dillon because we had a cap floor to reach and everyone was on fixed rookie deals but so far Fred, DFS, Stevo, and Capela have been underwhelming signings and even KD, while valuable from a production standpoint is probably not where you want to invest money if you are growing a team for the future. This comes back to - are we building for the future or trying to win now because it looks like we are failing pretty hard at both right now. At the end of the day you can somwhat play some risk mitigation tactics but you have to prioritize one or the other.
Spoiler alert: Tilman couldn’t care less about the fans. If he was going to fire him it would’ve already been done. It’s not like Stone does anything at all during the season….look at his last 6 trade deadlines for reference.
The Rockets went to the 2nd round the season before he took over. So if the Rockets dont beat the Lakers or lose to the Thunder in 5 games or less, this Rockets team actually isn't as good as the Harden/Westbrook team he inherited.
