Rockets would have been better. The Russell trade was a mistake. Chris Paul has been the much better player from OKC to PHX.
If Westbrook trade did not happen, there would have been positives and negatives Positive : def would have meant that there was no covid. Millions are saved. Negative: china, being pissed at Morey, invades houston over the Rockets not letting him go. Millions die. Universe auto corrects
if we didn't trade for westbrooks, Rockets would still have their picks. More assets for the rebuild.
I thought Morey was pressured by Tilman and Harden to trade for Westbrook, and it was part of the reasons he and MDA quit. BTW, on another "what if" in that article, if Murray did not get injured, there wouldn't have had doubters saying a bad defensive center like Jokic would never win a championship.
They might have pulled off the upset in the Bubble over the Lakers, unlikely (about 35% chance), and would have won a title. If Harden still wanted out, the team gets blown up anyways for the 2021 season but we don't have the looming doom of all our draft picks going to a team at least a year ahead of us in a rebuild via pick swaps and outright until 2029.
You're 100% wrong here. There are so many facts that point to the direct impact Fertitta had on the team's decline - and they are well-documented on Clutchfans by myself and others - that it would be a waste of human endeavor to re-type them here. It is offensive to the sane human mind that any die-hard Rockets fan could watch the last 5 years of Rockets basketball and think "yes, this is well-handled. I am watching elite decision making." As far as Paul, he had a positive impact on Phoenix for 2 years but has a magic ability to get injured right when it matters most. I expect that he has probably fully declined at this point; his shot selection and impact on spacing have changed. However the debate isn't about 2023 Chris Paul so Phoenix "wanting to cut him outright" is revisionist / not relevant. Watching Paul take Harden and Westie to 7 in the first round with a journeyman OKC team was morbidly entertaining and yet tragic as a Rockets fan.
It's pretty well-documented... no, scratch that -- Tilman himself took first-hand credit for it that was cited in media reports. He also separately stated Paul's contract was "the worst in sports". He used technically illegal ageism tactics to force D'Antoni out of town. Morey then said he was stepping down from GM'ing for "personal and family reasons", to take another GM job a month later. We aren't even talking about depth moves he made to cut tax and acquire such luminaries as Brandon Knight, Iman Shumpert and James Ennis. That list gets embarrassing fast for a team that had just made the WCF. Then we have the WOW year, and the Silas years. We are all living this. Still, some people choose to pretend they were never informed of this, because Tilman <3 Houston and Alexander didn't.
President of basketball operations. Fancier title. Paul was looked as an injury prone player before his health renaissance. Westbrook trade was in hopes of giving Rockets a larger window. That was the logic at the time and obviously didn't work out as Paul ended up staying healthy and Westbrook and Harden couldn't play together.
WHAT IF.... What if Harden and Paul stayed tied at the hip and during a practice they finally go after each other? Because Paul is having carnivore withdrawals from recently becoming a Vegan he goes berserk and gets an assault rifle from his Benz and shoots Harden multiple times. Once again, because of the carnivore withdrawals he does a lousy job and only manages to maim Harden for life and does not send him to the afterlife. End result: Harden never steps foot in an NBA court again and Paul ends up in prison getting really, really friendly in the shower with other inmates. Boy o' Boy did the Rockets dodge a bullet!! (pun intended) THIS IS THE WAY.... ....... ....... .......
But even more importantly the Rockets would be one year closer to the next rebuild and all possible future rebuilds. They basically traded 1 year of Harden to be years until heat death of universe/5 further away from the ultimate goal of transversal relevance Remember optimizing yourself for endless rebuilds via careful asset maximization is what sports is all about. Games are just child's play.
Mistake was made, not in trading for CP3; but for extending CP3 for that huge amount. That mistake led to the Westbrook trade. Westbrook mistake led to the John Wall trade John Wall mistake led to an Oladipo trade and then trade again Now the Rockets have screwed up free agency by signing an average VanVleet for top 13 players in the league money. Rockets completely suck at Point Guard evaluation and acquisition
This is going to be an interesting thread to revisit years down the road if we do end up finding a superstar out of all these young dudes we collected. What if trading for Russ, a bad decision at the time, ends up having been the first brick in a new dynasty?
It wouldn't have mattered in my opinion. From what I've seen from Harden these last few years, the man would have found a way to sabotage it. Harden is so unrelenting in the way he hoops he would have never tried to help CP3 in his washed state.
We would've made playoffs and go deep until meeting GSW. I give us a 79% chance of one or two injuries that derail the series. But I would be happy with being 2nd best contender in the league unlike the idiots who wanted to blow it all up.
Not sure on the team success, but not having these pick obligations to OKC would be amazing. In case it hasn't been made clear, Tilman has been a train wreck as an owner, just an absolute disaster.
