ESPN Front Page: “Rockets Ready to Move Past Their Rebuild”

with our draft pick + salary cap room + existing roster... we sure as hell better be competitive...

only question is will it be a Silas 30 win season that he's proud of...

or the 40-50 wins we should garner under a good coach...

 

It seems to me the rebuild is yet to start.

 

it already is


Aplie says hi

 

I agree with this with one caveat : it depends on your definition of "competitive".

a) If "competitive" means "I want the Rockets to return to being a 50-win team", even 5 years is a maybe.
b) If "competitive" means "I want the Rockets to return to the playoffs", it may be do-able in 5 years.

Keep in mind that the majority of the league is pretty mediocre or bad at the moment. There are only about 10 teams with 44 or more wins and 1 of those is Brooklyn who probably is really just a .500 team right now. The rest of the league is basically a .500 team all the way down to being a horrible team. If you want to be a 50-win team, there are only about 6 of those. To me, there are only about 9 or so teams legitimately competing for a title and can do it on a nightly basis, so a lot of those playoff teams are just there for decoration.

So... we get a PG and a new coach. Great. That gives us maybe another 10-15 wins in my most-optimistic scenarios. Fine, I'll give you another 20 wins depending on the PG, the coach and the magic they bring. Sweet... now we're up to a mediocre-but-still-borderline-lottery-team. Yay. Go us.

I'm just going to wait. A lot of this depends on how our picks like Jalen, Jabari, Sengun, Wembanyama (*cough) evolve and turn out in the next 2-3 years. Time, experience, good decisions combined with a little luck are about the only things that are going to return us to what we were. I hope some of that luck comes in this draft.

 

The Rockets have the ability and resources to get 2 near max players (Harden, Brooks). Add a quality backup center and 45-50 wins is within reach.

 

This is the problem I have with people taking a situation and saying "they can..." and somehow equating or evolving that into "they will". I'm speaking the probability/certainty of something happening, not the ability to make it happen. There are a lot of teams out there that could do things like sign free agents and whatnot, but that relies on there being other teams not signing them, those free agents wanting to go to those teams, and a myriad of other things happening.

This is why I say there's going to be luck as well as ability involved in this. It's kind of like saying we had the ability to get Jokic, Dwight, Lebron, Bosh, Paul, Harden, etc. Did all those work out? No. Did some? Yes. You just hope some of the things that can work out, do. Sacramento had the opportunity to do damn-near everything for almost 2 decades before they returned to the playoffs. They swapped coaches, players, GM's, ownership, etc. during that process. Which is why it's not an overnight switch that can get flipped simply because you have the opportunity.

 

Lol, if you think Harden and a draft pick and this roster "under a good coach" are automatically one of the best teams in the league, prepare yourself for massive disappointment

I think Hardens a good addition but that's just - not how it works.

Rockets have been a horrible team because their players are not good. Hopefully theyll improve, but "kinda bad" is a useful target to aim for after 3 years of pathos

 

It was a planned 3-year tank. Unless the organization picks the wrong coach and/or royally screws up by trading Sengun, we will be competitive next year, if we add Harden/a strong vet and a top pick.

 

I don't see anything in the above that I disagree with. People saying we "should" have 40-50 wins next year with a good coach are dreaming (looking at you, @kayjp and @Hemingway). 40 wins next year would be a spectacular success, skipping 2 or 3 years in the rebuild process--and that's just not gonna happen. That said, I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

who said anything about Harden? Gawd i hope that narcissistic sob aint back... instant short term elevation for long term hell - pass... although he instantly puts us at .500 or better (barring notable injury) imo

i think .500 (41 wins) is mediocre... esp when u factor in teams tanking... if we got 3 top 3 picks and just spent 60M on the free agent market... and we cant field a .500 team... folks need to be fired... plus Sengun, Tari, etc...

Imo .500 is minimum expectations for next year... a decent coach should be able to pull us to .500... mediocre

a good coach... add another 5 or 6 wins.... somebody catches a spark...

plus... i dont think we're presently a 20 win team - although it may look it very often... we're tanking... if we were goin balls to the wall every night scrapping for every win - were really what? 27-30 win team... draft pick + 60M doesnt bump us 10 wins on its own? and then a decent or good coach...

 

I agree with your overall sentiment but I think you greatly underestimate how long 5 year is in NBA terms.
For perspective, EVERY NBA champion since the 2014 Spurs has been both a champ and a lottery team within a 5 year window.

This is why when people were pooh-poohing the Brooklyn picks (and a LOT of people were) because they had KD, Harden, and Kyrie, I thought it was a magnificent haul especially because many of the picks and swaps extended down the road.

 

Let's look at "every" team since then :

2014 - Spurs with Duncan, Parker, Kawhi, Ginobili, etc.
2015, 2017, 2018, 2022 - "Every team" these years was : the loaded Golden State Warriors. They'd have probably won more had KD not left and they'd stayed injury-free.
2016 - Cleveland : Thanks for returning and doing us a solid, LeBron!
2019 - Raptors : Thanks Kawhi and Golden State injuries!
2020 - Lakers : COVID ring with Lebron ... meh. I'm not sure I even count this as an NBA season.
2021 - Bucks : Giannis. This is the type of team/history I want to build.

If you look at these teams, there were maybe 2 or 3 that are legit what I'm hoping for : Bucks, Spurs, and Warriors. Most of those rings belong to the Warriors or they were runner-up in other years. They got lucky with some players, spent, built around them, and maintained it. I also love the Bucks who got a stud who decided to stick around and win rings. The Spurs were, like the Warriors, a bit lucky, loaded with talent, and had a triadition of winning. The Raptors were a Kawhi flash-in-the-pan now looking to return to relevance. I don't want to be like them and rent a ring. The 2020 Lakers? Whatever. The 2016 Cavs? Rent-a-ring with Lebron, but I kind of like what they're doing now.

I'm not really sure I underestimate 5 years in the NBA. There are more teams that don't have success that prove five years may not enough. Even in that list above, the clearly dominant team is really one team if you count the 2 years they were runner-up (the Warriors). Most of what I'm stating is borne out by the above - it takes a lot of planning and luck to win these things, but in order to "flip a switch" and be good, you definitely need luck on your side. Maybe we'll get that stud as a free agent. Maybe we'll get lucky and draft some all-stars/all-time greats. But neither of these are a given and that's proven every year by all the teams that attempt it and can't do it like a Golden State.

Conversely, we could look at all the teams that really don't make it to the Finals or Conference Finals, too, and how long they've been at it over the years. But like I said, it all depends on what you think "competitive" is. If you want a 40-50 win team, sweet. We may be able to do that within 5 years. You really want to legitimately compete for a ring? Who knows. Pray for Wembanyama? For right now, Jabari, Sengun, and Green ain't Klay, Draymond, Curry (and Durant) or Parker, Ginobili, Kawhi, and Duncan. Maybe that changes.

 

So Udoka/Nurse/Atkinson/whoever + a couple of FAs and another high draft pick give us an additional 27 wins? More than twice that of this year, with an otherwise-similar roster? The only tanking team that quickly comes to mind that did that in one season is the Spurs in Pop's first year. But that team "tanked" for one year because of D-Rob's injury, and had won 59 games the year before that. AND they landed the #1 pick and grabbed Duncan, who had four full years of college and was NBA-ready from the jump.

Just out of curiosity, how many wins did you think we'd have THIS season?

 

Don't forget that our 4-5 best players will get a year closer to their prime, a few of them are teenagers or were last year. They should make a big jump in performance.

 

Harden/Beverley
Green/KPJ
Bridges/KJ
Jabari/Wemby
B. Lopez/Wemby
C: Udoka
14% chance of a 50+ win season.

KPJ/Nix
Green/JC
maxCam/#6 pick
Jabari/KJ
Bruno/Sengun
C: Mark Jackson
86% chance of another 20 win season.

 

Harden/Beverley
Green/KPJ
Bridges/KJ
Jabari/Wemby
B. Lopez/Wemby
C: Udoka
14% chance of a 50+ win season.

KPJ/Nix
Green/JC
maxCam/#6 pick
Jabari/KJ
Bruno/Sengun
C: Mark Jackson
86% chance of another 20 win season.

 

I don’t think u just flip the switch. I think winning habits, skills development, IQ and winning culture take time to develop. And then there’s building a great roster. My expectations for next year are pretty low; I’m not expecting a play-in caliber team. What I am asking for is a clear pivot to being more competitive and a clear upward trajectory. I need to see a team with a bright future. Orlando has a bright future. OKC has a bright future. And u can see it in their improved records this year. That needs to be Houston next year. That’s the bar. We need to be at least as good as OKC and Orlando were this year.

 

I guess part of being a super fan of a team is being delusional. It's crazy to see people thinking we're going to win 50 games next year.

We're not a particularly deep team. So, that would mean we'd have probably 2 all stars. This would take hitting a homerun trade, one of our young guys exploding with an amazing year, and some of the rest continuing to progress at a pretty good clip.

I'd actually be more nervous if we 'went all in' trading away all our pics for older guys and signed some other older vets. I'd be perfectly fine with using the cap to take some chances on younger free agents with upside and continue build with the players we've drafted.

 

FIFY

 

This is the way.