We are beyond the point of having thoughts on Rafael Stone. Talking to himself in front of a mirror for all I care.
why do they let this guy speak in public? I have such little hope that the Rockets will do anything other than stay the course with this group, which is disappointing to me. I know that we need to present a posture publicly that we are staying the course. But I just don’t believe in this front office enough to make smart moves to improve the long term competitiveness of this team. Such a buzz kill listening to Stone. I hope @carl_herrera is right and that it’s all a potential smokescreen.
He says such stupid things sometimes. Redundancy is better than having a lesser player who's a good fit? WHO THE F*CK CARES just get the one in between a fit/redundancy or trade the redundant player for an equal player who's a better fit. What a f*cking stupid self-serving thing to say - especially from someone who hired a coach that has 0 creativity in making redundancies work. He is literally expressing what a 10 year old does when they play NBA2K: "just choose the 5 best players and nothing else matters." Jesus. When you look at the impressive people in WINNING front offices whether as supervisors or hands-on POBO/GM's you realize damn we are weak in that spot. Popovic consults the Spurs front office, their GM is great. Presti. Myers. Riley. Stevens. Connelly. Can Stone even hold a conversation with any of these people, would any of them take him seriously? He's not the worst GM, but if we want a championship we need a championship level front office. He's not that at all. He's just a guy. His boss is just a guy. Ime is the most competent tactical-offensive mind in the entire organization top to bottom - that's terrifying. Please for the love of god hire a POBO and an offensive assistant.
Exactly. We have a guy that says he can't be judged for another decade, and a coach locked in for another 5 years at 11 million per. This sucks and it's all on Fertits and team leadership, not the players. We are not providing the players the tools they need to succeed.
Not sure Macey is available but I would unload all the assets for him just make sure you keep Durant Amen anyone else is on the table would prefer to keep Reed too
if I had to choose between replacing one of them, I would replace the coach but stone definitely needs to have a great off-season. not sure if that means trading KD or building out to give us a little bit of a window, but this is the last off-season that he should have a free hand.
I think the expectations some hold this front office to are just unreasonable. We're expecting Stone to magically acquire a guy who instantly transforms a franchise. Those players are special and very rare throughout the history of the league. There really might be 4 of them in the league right now .... SGA, Wemby, Jokic maybe Ant. (all of the rest of them are beyond their prime years, no longer capable of elevating a franchise). The bottom line is that we're asking of Stone and Co is to find us a first ballot hall of famer.
I think we could build a championship level roster without a generational guy. My problem with Stone is when he makes a mistake, he doubles down, instead of pivoting. Hiring Ime to that atrocious extension and bringing back FVV for way more than market were really stupid moves. I also think the Durant move was more about saving face for his idiotic move to trade the Nets picks for Phx picks, thinking it would force a Booker trade. When Phx called his bluff, he pivoted to a 38 year old guy that fit like OJ’s glove. I hate to waste another year of Amen’s development, but I think it is best to just run it back and fail on the chance that Tito will wake up and fire Stone and Ime. Neither Stone or Ime seem to have the ability to admit to themselves that they are fallible.
not really. I’m asking him not to miss on two top 3 picks. I’m asking him to improve the long term success of the team via trade. I’m asking him not to trade out of back to back amazing drafts. I’m asking him to invest in player development. I’m asking him not to prematurely and unnecessarily extend a coach who can’t coach offense at all. I’m asking not him not to build around old, injury prone players. Lastly I’m asking him to take some freaking responsibility. Not too much to ask.
Time to force Borrego down Ime’s throat. The New Orleans Pelicans are hiring former Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley as the franchise's new head coach on a five-year contract, sources told ESPN on Monday.
I struggle with the thought that Stone was an actual attorney at some point. Can't imagine talking to another attorney or judge in this manner.
I’m not sure I’ll get over when Russillo pointed out the spacing challenges with Amen and Sengun and then asked him if he considers “fit”. To which Stone replies, “at the back end of the roster. You want redundant strengths so I’m always thinking about fit at the back end of the roster”. lol.
Let's just look at how Cleveland was constructed. They had to decide which young players to keep and how to trade. They moved Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton, and capital for Mitchell. Then this year at the deadline, they added Harden for the low, low price of Darius Garland (injured) + a second-round pick. They made lots of other key moves that others (like Stone) missed: Jarrett Allen was productive when he played for the Nets and was roped in to make the salary cap work. Max Strus is a hard-nosed player. Lots of other pieces that fit together. There's no evidence that Stone can make deals and build a healthy, balanced roster. He's been in Houston for a while. Has he fielded on of those yet?
This **** is so bad I’ve been watching almost 3 decades, I can’t recall a stretch where it was so bleak. At worst it was sucking for a couple years but a gut feeling we’d claw it out we have a bunch of incompetent and self serving clwons steering the ship
Stone's quote about redundancy reeks of Morey's idea to pair Harden and Chris Paul because he wanted the team to have elite playmaking for 48 minutes. That wasn't a terrible concept in theory, but where it went wrong was that neither Harden nor Paul was particularly good off the ball. That meant there was no advantage to be had when you played your two best guys together - Harden was usually just hanging out close to the baseline and halfcourt lines when Paul was running the offense and I don't remember Paul doing anything much off the ball either. Some people claimed that Harden was pulling his defender out, but I remember a lot of times he was barely guarded when he didn't have the ball. Furthermore, because our role players were almost entirely 3 and D guys, it was easy for Harden's man to cheat onto another perimeter guy which enabled the opponent's defense to rotate more quickly onto another perimeter guy. I had hoped we'd moved away from that thinking with the departure of Morey, but it sounds like Stone ascribes to a similar philosophy. The end result is that our best players don't work well together. What's worse is that he's willing to double down on skills/attributes that don't lead to winning. For example, having a bunch of elite offensive rebounders gets you extra shots, but if nobody can consistently score, then the team is just wasting more possessions. Meanwhile, we are seriously lacking in ball-handling, play-making and shooting and from what I can tell, this is barely a concern to our coach and front office. At this point, the only thing I can do is tell my ticket sales agent that I won't be buying any tickets for next year because the team is ugly to watch and neither the coach nor GM shows any awareness that changes are needed.
