Nickeil Alexander-Walker instead of Capela/finney Smith

Again, no argument on that point.

 

I mean I made multiple posts in this thread that said this. Not sure why you need to quote my post to point this out to me

 

I admit to missing the dip, but that mistake only turns this into a maybe that the Rockets could offer a deal NAW would have thought was better. It does not guarantee NAW accepts it. Make excuses all you want, but the Rockets could not do the Hawks deal, and most people would prefer the Hawks deal slightly to a full 4-year MLE. Even then, it would have cost the Rockets 2 players to get full NT-MLE open (one of which they shed anyway), and there was no way the Rockets were offering anyone available a guaranteed full 4-year NT-MLE last season.

I would prefer to have NAW for more years than DFS. With how things have happened, I'd prefer NAW for this season and next over DFS. It was not NAW vs. DFS only as NAW would not accept DFS's deal. The future is not written. While Stone makes mistakes, he has managed the Rocket's financial situation well. You can make it so that NAW is younger than DFS, but he's significantly older than Sengun, JSJ, Amen, Reed, and players selected in the 2027 and 2028 drafts. If things go well, the Rockets' young players are going to get much more expensive. I would not risk giving NAW a 4-year full NT-MLE contract. Stone definitely would not. It isn't to say NAW would turn out bad, but I expect the Rockets retool or rebuild in 1 to 2 years such that they would not want to commit to NAW.

 

"Guard" doesn't have to be a primary playmaker in the traditional PG sense. If we had guard depth, even with a healthy FVV, we could play Amen as a wing instead of forcing him to be the PG. (With the emergence of Reed, they are moving away from Amen being the primary PG already.) Reed would still be FVV's main backup and if he did great could conceivably supplant FVV as the starter.

What we don't have is guard who can play decent defense and can shoot like an average NBA guard. FVV was the only one we had. Without FVV we have none. This is why Stone said this was not our year. But he made the situation that the season was totally hung on FVV being available.

 

I'd say Stone built the team to the point that FVV gave them a chance. Still have a small chance without him this year and next, but the Rockets likely needed a lot of things to go their way to win. FVV was just one of the pieces. A lot has gone wrong, such that FVV likely would not fix the team.

To me, it looks like Stone gave the vets 2 seasons to win. There will likely be one year of overlap for Capela and Adams, but it looks like Stone tried to preserve future odds of winning as much as possible, such that the Rockets can retool in 2-3 seasons as no vet has a deal past the 27-28 season.

 

I think this gets at what's frustrating about the discourse on this board and elsewhere.

For every complaint, the person should say what they think the team's goal is. Win the maximum games we possibly can and a playoff series this season? Or maximize long term championship equity while staying defensibly competitive every year? The two goals are often contradictory.

Like 80% of the discourse on this board or twitter comes from fans disagreeing with or not perceiving what the FO/ownership/coach are actually trying to do.

Which, it's fine to disagree with, but at least know what you're disagreeing about.

 

If you interpret that this season was the first of two seasons Stone expected us to be contending, then we have one more season to see how it goes. I do believe that Durant was an somewhat unplanned part coming a bit too early. If the Suns imploded one season later, it might have been a better situation. On the other hand, this is the season to decide on Tari's future and likely Amen's too if Stone wants to extend him early. I mean, this is a very critical season to test out how close we are to our goal, not just part of a narrow window.