This - and it even extends beyond the GM. The Rockets organization is very low on actual basketball coaching and scouting experience and it shows in the lack of vision and depth. It is why the owner was talking about adding an Executive President to the team with a lot of experience before thin skin became an issue. There is a lot of value in having guys that have a lot of experience from the bottom up. The Rockets under Stone are always prepared. They know what the cap consequences are, they know what trades they can and cannot make under rules, and they can get very creative in trades. They also are cautious, which reflects someone with a background in corporate law. That is why I have always said Stone is competent. However, the Rockets are very weak at the other side of it - actual involvement from the ground up in player development and coaching, and understanding of what works on the court. I at one point wanted JVG to be the President, because he has that type of experience, even though he isn't perfect. Hubie Brown a few years ago was another one.
well said. And to be clear I agree that stone is good on the contract side. The contracts and salary cap mgmt are a huge part of being a good GM and I think Stone has really excelled there. It’s the player development/personnel side. And I continue to believe that he stumbled at the finish line with the Nets picks from the Harden trade by trading out of a generational draft. For me, this summer will really tell us a lot about Stone. I was keen on most of his moves last summer, but was frustrated by the lack of prioritizing guard depth. This season really exposed that but moreover it exposed the fact that our core pieces don’t fit together. We tried to address some of that by swapping out Jalen for a better shooter, but we also lost our most efficient 3-pt shooter in Dillon Brooks. The glaring thing to me about this year was that our player development isn’t what it should be. I hope Stone can objectively take the data from this season and apply it to his decision-making. I don’t want to run it back with Fred and Steveo but I also don’t want to cash in our young guys and picks for aging stars. Neither of those approaches will put us into contention. So I’m hoping for at least a soft reset. Obviously that’s unlikely but maybe Stone understands the best interest of the team long term is to go out and find that franchise guy on the front end of his career. And maybe we can figure out how to improve our player development.
He's got to be in the hot seat right? This is the offseason where he either saves or loses his job? It's hard to see us running it back with him again after what would likely be a third season of treading water and exiting the playoffs early. If he just runs this squad back with a minor tweak or two, that's actually seriously risky for him this time because the odds are very high it doesn't go much better, and it could even go worse if KD has a major injury (knock on wood) It may actually be less risky for him to make major changes. Whether that's a soft reset to bring expectations down, but he quietly manages to still keep us good in the meantime and everybody is happier with the direction we're headed, or whether it's a big splashy trade or series of trades where the plan is to get us deeper into the playoffs, I don't know. I think the latter would probably be a mistake, but it depends on the specifics of what goes down obviously.
Thompson and Sengun would be infinity times better with Harden leading the team. The chances of Sengun having multiple 6-16 type games in the playoffs would be nearly zilch.
Harden KD with Sengun, Amen and a bunch of good defensive role players would indeed have been interesting.
Yeah and if they trade Bridges they will have more capspace. lol They dont need to be good, they just need to not be tanking like the rest of the Leastern conference. Your post looks like 100% cope with 0% logic. Nets will have 5 draft picks and tons of capspace in a free agency class with lots of UFA including James Harden, Randle, Naz Reid, Myles Turner, Dennis Schroder (who beasted for them already), Ty Jerome etc By the deadline, so many players got traded for peanuts including Jose Alverado, Coby White, Luke Kennard etc Nets had 5 FRP if they werent tanking they could have gotten those guys for their picks instead of using them. I am not sure if Nets would have built a contender but with all that capspace and FRPS and being in the East its honestly kinda dumb to be insisting they would still be in the bottom with all that capspace and frps to burn.
Why? He was right. Even if he signed that guard everybody is crying for no vet min guard will beat OKC. We would have the same result except have easier time against LaL and be a little bit more competitive against OKC.
In retrospect this team would be killer if we signed Harden with that 40M over FVV, esp now we also got KD to play with him. But we just got Ime Udoka and you have to support the coach right. Nobody knew Udoka was a dummy on offense getting a defensive and solid guard with championship exp like FVV seemed like the move at the time.
We wouldnt have everybody else if it werent for Stone. You mean the development of Kmart JR and Christian Wood? SMH.
The roster became thin cuz we got KD duh. We lost 3 players to get KD. Denver Minny and NY dont have 50M of injured salary. We would also have depth at every position if we had everybody healthy. Even with all those injuries, the Rockets still equaled last years win total so put some respect in Stones name. Udoka just sucks at offense and roster utilization. Get him consultants and assistant coaches so he wont **** the bed. Stone isnt perfect. Signing DFS was a waste of our MLE. But nobody could have predicted he would lose his shooting after 4 yrs shooting 38%, that surgery was just supposed to be minor and he would be back by training camp. But even then DFS is an expiring next year, as is FVV and Adams. We go all in next year and if we fail, cut them all and now we have all that salary available to make further moves. . This is something most people dont even see they jsut see Stone not make a panic move at the deadline and cry about it.
We are 1M below the first apron they cant make any moves even if they wanted to. They can trade guys and multiple assets to get other guys but that would be for a rental and wouldnt change anything since no deadline player will beat OKC or SAS. Example Luke Kennard is on a 1 yr 11M salary. We can trade Eason to Hawks for Kennard + picks but next season he will be gone as he is a UFA. Will Luke Kennard or Jose Alvarado beat OKC? No. So whats the point of this rental? Might as well invest in Reed and Amen.
Not sure what is the point of this debate? They are trying to say players and coaches are the problem? Well, yes! guess who hired them? What is the actual case for keeping Stone?
. I asked about the status of Stone and Udoka and was told that both are completely safe. So - I don't think either will lose their job. I think it is more likely that Udoka asks to leave for another job than he is fired. Stone has so far shown to be very risk adverse and is very cautious. So, unless there is no choice, I don't think that he makes many high risk moves. He doesn't discuss it publicly obviously, but he is aware of the injury risks of his guys and that he paid most of them less because of it. I just wish that he would invest more into guys that have coached, have done lots of tape work and know the inside and out of basketball. He shouldn't see it as a threat, but more as an augmenting of information to make decisions.
Of course they're safe...the narrative is if we had a healthy FVV, Adams, and now KD we would have home court advantage 1st round and our offensive struggles would've been minimum. However, those injuries exposed Ime's inability to make the right adjustments to fit our roster. Also, Stone was exposed for the inability to maneuver around our salary cap issues to address our roster deficiencies...granted, he use the FVV injury as an opportunity to a better evaluation on Reed/Amen running our offense. We should've traded Tari for best available point guard that matched salary
The Rockets would be the third seed if they had FVV and Adams. However, the problem is that it is HIGHLY unlikely that the Rockets will ever have all three of those two and KD healthy and playing together for the majority of a season. Those guys are all older, have heavy milage. The problem is multi-faceted and won't be fixed by making a simple change.
