Stone was great at pulling us out of purgatory... this organization was in shambles. but scaling often requires a completely different skill set. we may be in *that* in-between phase... where Stone's (and by extension Ime's) natural abilities have pulled us out of tank mode and led us back to relevance, but we're still not true contenders. taking the next step beyond mediocrity to legitimate contenders will require change, be it FO or on court personnel or both... and that may be exactly why stone called it out, saying this is a developmental year. i am curious to see how this FO addresses the need for improvement... because RUNNING IT BACK next season is not an option.
meh. Some of stone decisions were why we were in the basement. Silas, KPJ, Wall, Wood, Olidipo…. All mistakes. The culture and rep hit rock bottom under Stone. For all Ime’s faults, he’s really the person that turned the org around establishing accountability, culture and raised the floor on defense. But then again, you have additional poor front office decisions: trading away the Nets picks and sitting out back to back good drafts. Going into this season without a point guard; effectively having no Fred backup plan. is he the worst GM in the nba? No. But in year 7 we find ourselves tethered to a coach long term who may not be the right guy because Stone prematurely extended him for no reason. We have no franchise player. Our best player is a 37 yr old who doesn’t fit our timeline and is clearly frustrated with the team. And we are outside looking in at a franchise changing draft. We can do better than this.
Luhnow Click Stone is not a wartime consigliere. It is impossible to win a championship with him. On a more serious note, I think the Rockets run it back. Mostly, the young guys are having a bad year (Reed excepted) regarding development along with the vets having a horrible season. Development is not usually linear. I think the FO is not ready to say the young guys are ready such that they are willing to throw a lot of assets towards next season, but are not ready to give up on them as well by breaking up the young core (I don't think the FO had high feelings on Green and Cam). Also, Stone has not even been GM for 6 years yet. Maybe he ends up not being great. I think he's easily in the top half of GMs, and it is too early to tell if he can take a team from good to great.
Not to be a perfectionist but you forgot to mention DFS, no trade deadline moves for 5 straight seasons, and the Jarrett Allen giveaway. Overall problem is that the person needed to fix the problems is Fertitta and he is MIA and is a major part of the issue. We’re asking the problem to fix the problem.
you're not wrong about any of this... but i always interpreted the silas years as 'by design' how else do we get those draft picks?
In a league full of on-ball creators, we have absolutely no on-ball juice. Watching our guys desperately play hot potato and toss the ball to our 6'11" 37-year-old who hates double teams was just sad. And that was against a team known for its poor perimeter defense. Coby White barely went for anything this deadline. Same with Dosumnu. Neither would "save" us, but both would help a ton on an offense that's incredibly stagnant. FVV might steady us when he returns but he's sure as hell not going to solve this problem. We need some dynamism from the Guard spots badly.
He did not exactly say that it was a developmental year, he just called it an unlucky year, not our year.
I can get behind hiring Silas to be a bad coach but allowing him to bury Sengun behind Bruno is inexcusable
