It's really quite hard to argue a case against Stone transactionally, if you're evaluating in a principled way compared to the league's other GMs. Every GM decision is a bet, and even the "best" decisions (outside of outlier deals like the Luka trade) will be maybe 60/40 in your favor retrospectively. There's a lot of variance in basketball outcomes, and in human-oriented businesses. On net, Stone has won transactions well more often than he has lost. It's why we are in the asset position we are in. If I want a GM to decide on a contract or execute a trade I'm picking Stone over 90% of other GMs. And those are the things we are most sure are his decision. The player development stuff however is a totally valid critique of the organization, as are roster fit shortcomings. How much of that is Stone vs. Tilman's spending or Ime's demands? Nobody on this board knows. IMO we can distribute some blame to each of them. Underneath it all though, is that we haven't gotten lucky yet. For me, if there's a critique of the org that most holds up, it's that we have given up too soon on trying to get lucky, and don't have the stomach for churning young player success stories who nevertheless don't have it. This summer will be the ultimate test of that.
On Westbrook, I agree Wall was a negative asset. I just think Westbrook was also viewed as a hugely negative contract at the time, and for a tanking team, swapping Westbrook’s contract for Wall’s did not really hurt Houston in a meaningful basketball sense. If anything, Wall being less productive probably fit the direction of the team. So getting a protected first in that context was a positive outcome, not using hindsight. Using hindsight, I also agree Washington made a good deal when it later moved Westbrook to the Lakers, and the Lakers made what turned out to be a pretty bad win-now decision. Good for Washington, but I don’t think that automatically means Houston did poorly in the Westbrook trade. Houston got the protected pick, and that pick later became part of the package to get Sengun. To me, that matters. If you want to use what Washington later got for Westbrook as evidence that Houston’s deal was bad, then I think you also have to account for what Houston ultimately got from the protected pick. Personally, I would take Houston’s share of Sengun over what Washington ultimately got from the Lakers. So from my point of view, you are focusing more on what Washington later got out of Westbrook while minimizing that Stone’s return still became something very valuable. On Covington, I agree that was a good trade. My point is more that you have repeatedly criticized the Wood experience as an example of Stone getting things wrong, but the Wood transaction tree included the Covington trade and ultimately included the other half of the Sengun package. So if we are going to criticize the Wood experience, I think we also have to acknowledge that the broader asset path helped produce one of Stone’s biggest wins. I agree Stone’s record is mixed. I’m not arguing he has been perfect or that every move was good. I just think a lot of the failures were relatively low-cost swings, second-rounders, Bird rights, MLE-type moves, short-term veteran bets, while the bigger-picture asset wins mattered more. I wish more of the upside swings had hit, especially at the top of the draft, but I still think the larger picture matters. When Stone took over, the Rockets had very little draft flexibility and limited young talent. Now, the team is at least comparable or better in overall quality, has several young players who are likely better than what you would normally expect from the four first-rounders Morey left him with, and has dramatically more draft capital going forward than when Stone became GM. That does not erase the mistakes, but it is why I have a hard time saying the overall value of his judgments has been more bad than good. Even after the misses, he still has roughly three more young players and FRPs and 2 more swaps than the number of firsts and swaps Morey left him with. To me, Stone has not made the Rockets great. He's not gotten the Rockets that guy. The majority of GMs never acquire that guy. On looking at what Morey left him, and what the Rockets have, I have a hard time agreeing that he's made the Rockets worse in terms of long-term assets.
I'm not sure this is true regarding often. Stone makes a ton of low risk, high upside moves. These more often fail than not. We hear about every move that fails thousands of times and even about moves that weren't fails (like Wood and Wall) very often. We hear about the busts much more than the throw-in FRPs that Stone was picking up early in his time as GM. My view is that his moves that succeed are worth more than moves that fail in total.
The problem with this line of thinking is that you only evaluate him on moves that he actually makes when I think his biggest weakness is inaction. I liked him in the past but he just lost me this season. FVV went down before actual training camp and we went all the way through the playoffs without a point guard. That's absolutely insane. He had all the time in the world to do something, he saw point guards being passed around the league for peanuts, and in the end decided to punt a season where our best player is 37 years old. He's a great rebuilding GM but so far I don't love him as a trying to win GM. Kinda like Ime as a coach.
This is how I basically thought before this season turned out the way it did. I really think the injuries to FVV, Adams, DFS, and KD in the playoffs really make Stone look like he made some mistakes with the roster this offseason and puts his tenure in a much more negative light as a GM. That's around half the theoretical playoff rotation and the majority of our payroll going toward net-nothing in the playoffs, in a season where we were trying to at least be a dark horse contender. Yes, there's some simple bad luck there, but I think it's the GM's job to predict injury risk, and while all of these guys having developed major problems by the time the playoffs arrived may have been unusually unlucky, I think it was fairly predictable that at least one or two of them would. And I do understand the mechanics of bird rights and being an over-the-cap team and such, but there's still an opportunity cost to having these guys on the roster, and there are always possibilities for sign-and-trade deals and things like that. It's not like you have to keep a player. (Another possibility might have been to just let Fred pick up his player option and try to trade him, but it's hard to know what might have been out there.) I do agree completely with your last paragraph. We just haven't been lucky enough to get that real ""franchise player"" yet, and I don't think that's Stone's fault because I don't see one he missed on so far in the draft. But we should probably be taking more shots at finding that guy instead of settling for veterans. Which I guess is my core criticism of this front office right now. Not sure how much it's Stone's fault though, like you said.
The scorecard matters here, though. Stone has traded veterans/players for 9 first round picks and has traded only 1 first round pick for a veteran. So I agree there’s an opportunity cost to using roster spots, cap space, and minutes on veterans instead of taking more swings, but those opprtunity costs are generally not close to that of FRPs. And I agree this past offseason was bad. But if the criticism is that this front office has generally “settled for veterans” instead of taking shots at finding young cornerstone talent, I don’t think the transaction history really supports that. Stone’s tenure has overwhelmingly been about converting veterans into first-round value and taking swings with those picks. Maybe how well he's used the picks at the time of the pick is debatable, but sheer number of shots generated by the GM is heavily in favor of Stone.
Stone has made a lot of little moves that are positive as well. If you think about it he only tanked for 3 yrs but somehow our core is 5 players and that doesnt include the guys we threw away in Jalen and Whitmore. Posters just keep comparing him to OKC and Spurs because those teams are best ones that show Stone in a poor light.
I think getting KD wasnt bad at all, it was a great move gave us an all NBA player for 3 yrs at a bargain price while dumping Jalens bad contract. That trade saved the season so I dont think the offseason was bad. Other good moves: -Jabari signed to 25M -Tari signed to "prove it deal", should be cheap to keep this season -Josh Okogie who is a keeper -JD davison who has potential as backup pg -convinced FVV to turn his 50M opt in to two years at 25M -Adams 12/2 While FVV and Adams got injured, they are still expirings and assets for the upcoming season and much better than losing them for nothing. If we compare it to Nuggets for example, they were rated as the team that had the best offseason but all their moves had backfired: -dumped WB for Bruce Brown, WB turned out to be the better player -overpaid Christian Braun -Cameron Johnson trade flopped -Jonas V has sucked -Tyus Jones a bad player
The new draft rules have been approved. https://www.nba.com/news/nba-board-governors-approve-new-draft-lottery-system
Stone did generate a huge number of shots, that's totally right. But that's in the past tense. For some reason we have stopped. Our last shot was taken two years ago (Reed), and we currently don't have a FRP in this draft either. We haven't picked anyone in the second round since KJ Martin, and have also been one of the least active teams in league in the UDFA / developmental two way market. It's like Stone/ownership/Ime decided that taking shots on young talent would only happen during a circumscribed 3 year period. Like we took our medicine and that's over. I don't think they particularly like player development, if I had to guess. I think they don't want to be a full spectrum basketball academy style organization, like OKC or San Antonio are. Ownership is a part of that. Those org's keep taking shots, even while being better than us on the court by far. Partially, I think it's also because they are so attached to the guys they have. For example - I like Reed, I think he'll be a good player in the league for a long time, but at this point we know he doesn't have the handle or elusiveness to be an offensive primary anytime soon. I would swap him for Labaron Philon or Ebuka Okorie or even Meleek Thomas in a second, just to take another swing, even if median outcome is lower. I do not think the FO or ownership would, and that's a problem IMO.
So now if you trade away your pick, couldn’t you suck on purpose and be in bottom 3 to ensure the other team gets lower odds at top pick vs trying to be middle? Or am I reading the rules incorrectly? Too many variables wait nm. I see this "Relegated" teams can't receive pick lower than #12“ but still wouldn’t being in bottom 3 be “better” when you don’t own your pick?
Just want to say that this thread has been an A+ on valuable information and discussion. Thanks, and carry on...
Can somebody give me a very simple explanation for what all of this means. my basic understanding of it is that I wish we had just kept this year’s pic, but that the odds of one of the Phoenix pics or the Nets pick being around the same range, meaning top six is generally OK. I do realize that this draft is looked at as strong.
With the new draft rules the BKN 2027 pick will have worse odds for the #1 pick, but the Suns '27 pick and the two 2029 picks will most likely improve in odds and result in a net positive for us.
Looks like under the new system, Washington can’t be #1 and the Utah pick (to Memphis) can’t be top 5. Their lotto balls are effectively gone for those picks. That’s pretty significant, especially if they are 3-ball teams. The odds of picking at one are just your balls divided by total balls. There are 37 balls in total when any of the 16 teams are eligible for a pick. Hence the rockets odds of #1 with two picks in the best scenario is 6/37 or 16%. But now their odds would be 6/31, or just about 20%
I have seen this mentioned a few times but don't understand it; how will BKN '27 have worse odds for the #1 pick? Is the assumption that they're bottom 3?
For the 2027 draft, the odds for the Nets pick for the 1st overall pick likely either stays about the same (if they finish bottom 3 as no teams are tanking hardcore) or jumps up a bit if they finish 4th worst to 16th worst. If the Suns miss the playoffs, the 27 pick likely jumps up a lot in odds. I'd say most likely scenario is that one of the teams ends up with 3 balls and the other 2. This would give the Rockets 15.6% at 1st overall, and about 49% of picking Top 4. Granted, I think the Suns benefited a lot this past season from Gillespie having a great 2/3 of the season, while 8 teams tanked and 2 sucked. If the Suns make the playoffs, looking at either around 5 to 9% for 1st overall with just the Nets pick.
If the Nets finish bottom 3 next year under this system, but would have finished in the bottom 8 of the old system, it will be worse. Most other scenarios, it will be better for the Rockets. Granted, the Nets were 5th worse when they had to increase the floggings for good play in January to turn the tanking amp to 11.
And the young core on hand is no longer in their first few seasons. All of a sudden this "young " team needs an infusion of youth.
