I celebrated because I thought removing Jalen Green would be our key to improvement. I thought KD would get injured (not play 40 mind a night every game of the season).
Whoops! I need to make a correction. I forgot all about the other bum we wasted a 1st round pick on in 2022, TyTy Washington. There's just so many bums and role players to keep up with. So, make that 10 first round whiffs without finding someone to build around. Just awesome!
Everyone on this team is worse than their fans and supporters think they are. We all make excuses for "our guy" and theyre all just mediocre. Its tiring. Reed is really bad. I've supported him and still will support him because he's a second year player with room to grow but he is almost unplayable on defense and put up an 0fer on offense. Jabari might actually be retar*ed. Amen is a liability on offense still and isnt anywhere near his defensive form last year. Dickerson cant find the word defense in the dictionary. And then theres Sengun. Ground zero for our problems. More than Ime. More than Stone. This dude provides nothing on offense and less on defense. Put a fork in him he is done here. And he's a reeeeally bad omen for another undersized defensive liability we have on the team I mentioned earlier. Ime and Stone will be back next year. Everyone not named Amen will be on the trade block. I'd probably put the order of most likely to least likely to be traded at: 1) Sengun 2) Reed 3) Jabari 4) Amen
Don’t forget players didn’t hit their shots. Eason Holliday Sheppard 4-21. Lots of great looks. Couldn’t hit
Tilman. Our owner sucks and it shows throughout the organization. He doesn't care about basketball. Ime second. This is well known. Stone third. He plays is safe with most decisions and doesn't know when to make moves. I'm afraid we won't get better with Tilman owning the team and that's sad. As long as he makes money, he'll keep it and so welcome to more mediocrity.
If everyone looks bad then it's on the head coach and system. Not every single player should look bad if you're playing to players strengths. I coach plenty of "bad teams" in my career but you always have at least a couple of players that look good because you're designing everything to fit around your best players and putting them in positions to succeed. You can lose games and some players still should look competent on the floor.
Ime cant make adjustments to make it easier on players that are struggling. Reddick is outcoaching him just by making small adjustments and playing off of our weaknesses. When Kennard looks like Kobe, you have a problem. Is there anyone that can take him "out"? Yes, most players are struggling but its on the coaching staff to get them out of this slump
I think a lot of you guys forget how good this team is when things are setup correctly, but you have to make adjustments when other team figure us out. We have no ball movement and missing Fred isnt an excuse...we have to move and cut, stop clogging the paint and stop with the dumb isos
The players dont fit each other. I was talking to my wife yesterday and when I told her about how the Rockets dont seem to pick a direction she responded with "they did. It was Jalen". Which sorta tracks. Jalen was the one player given free reign to become a superstar and he failed. This year it was kinda sorta Sengun but he can't succeed without shooters around him. And he just isnt good enough to justify building a whole team around him. We wasted 4 years of development on him and are now trying to create the production of a 23 year old budding superstar in the aggregate with a bunch of flawed players. We did sorta get our Wemby or Cooper. It was unfortunately Jalen Green. And we're going to limp on because of it.
You can adjust all you want but the Rockets players have to hit high percentage baskets (clean 3s and paint shots) - and they are not remotely close to acceptable
Stone is the key problem. His trust in his early evaluations--and unwillingness to adjust to changing market conditions--is pushing our franchise toward perpetual mediocrity. We had a rebuild with momentum, but it needed significant adjustment. He elected to add Durant without making other changes, resulting in a thin roster with multiple mismatched skill sets. Being a forward-thinking GM requires guts and risk. It was clear in my mind that Jalen Green wasn't the kind of player we could build around prior to the draft when they brought in Reed Sheppard. We sunk a lot of money into Green, but he's not a franchise-altering talent. Meanwhile, Stephon Castle had won an NCAA championship by dominating in the backcourt. To me, the harder move was to pass on Sheppard, collect Castle, and trade Jalen for better-fitting pieces around a new core. Anyone who thinks Castle is too poor a shooter to join Houston simply needs to watch tape of our current bricklaying. It would have been gutsy, but a backcourt of Castle, Amen, and Brooks could have become our new core. But Stone remained set in his ways. He kept Jalen too long, made a minimal pivot for Durant, and tried to shoehorn him next to our fairly anemic forward collection of Eason and Smith. At this stage of his career, Durant isn't a small forward. He thrives with quicker guys around him (see Golden State). So the right move at this year's deadline was to deal either Smith or Eason to add complementary players that fit next to Durant and Sheppard for a playoff push. But making significant changes was never even on Stone's radar. He likes what we have. But what we have can't even win a playoff game against a group that is clearly hurting and isn't even a top 10 offensive or defensive squad. Instead, Stone waits and now the plan is to bring back an injured Adams and FVV.
If you dont have a spark from some of our players, you need to make adjustments and force something...
There are lots of people to take the blame here but it really starts at the top with the Fertitias - especially Patrick since his daddy doesn't seem to be involved. Patrick needs to admit that he doesn't know what he is doing and that Rafael Stone doesn't know what he is doing as GM. Bring in a real basketball GM/coach and have them reconstruct the roster. Sadly, Udoka will be given one more season (even if the Rockets get swept) simply because they have yet to have a losing season under him. But we as Rockets fans deserve better than to have a team that makes the playoffs every year and then gets exposed in the first round. It shows me that our FO is not seriously interested in building a championship organization. You get the feeling that Stone, the Fertitias, Udoka, etc. didn't really give a **** about this season as they felt it was a "lost" season when Fred got hurt and the final nail in the coffin was Adams getting hurt. Thus the lack of moves of trying to get better. But it is so hard to watch this team play. The one on ones and isos and just throwing up shots and hoping to get rebounds - I can't watch it anymore. Udoka - get a real offensive coach who knows what they are doing and draw up some damn offensive plays - let's see some backscreens, moving without the ball, etc. And you are down 0-2 to a team that you were favored to beat - go ahead and start Reed Sheppard the rest of this series - what do you have to lose? It is better to have him out there and at least give our team another outside shooting threat to go with Durant than to have the useless, but "he plays hard" Okogie out there.
And just to add, Luke Kennard who is tearing the Rockets a new ahole was available at the trade deadline. I am not saying this guy is the second coming of Steph Curry but when one of your biggest weaknesses is the lack of outside shooting and you do NOTHING about it - that shows that you have given up on the season. So don't be surprised that we as the fans have GIVEN up on you, Stone, Udoka, and the rest of this team. You taught us well with your loser mentality.
