[ClutchFans] Heavy investment in Kevin Porter Jr raises serious questions about Rockets front office

Only @Clutch knows which feedback in this tread is from journalists or Rocket employees.

 

Garuba and JC dumped for nothing.
Amen yet to be evaluated but almost consensus pick at that spot
Jabari consensus pick at his spot
Cam falling to houston has nothing to do with Stone and he is also yet to be evaluated
The only two that can be considered successes of Stone are Sengun and Tari.
Mobley didn't even practice with the Rockets so he didn't have much of a choice with Green(and was the right pick imo anyway)

Overall picture doesn't look like a great success, rather two good picks. He seems to pick hard-worker, good-character guys completely opposite to signings of Wood, KPJ, Nix which is kind of something that makes me think different people have more weight in these decisions.

 

Sengun and Eason were GREAT picks, and how many teams passed on Cam? I don't know if it is Stone or not, but someone deserves some credit because those were not accidents.

 

Sengun was Witus's pick. Not sure about Eason and Whitmore.

IIRC, Eason was picked at about the expected spot. I think there were several guys in that range. They did pick a good one.

Whitmore fell A LOT. He was projected to go as high as top 5. Many teams passing on him does not make whoever picked him a genius. Was Denver a genius by picking Jokic in the second round? Not really. If they were really that smart, they would have picked Jokic at #11 instead of traded it for Nurkic.

When a great players fell to low draft spots, it says more about the stupidity of those who passed on them than the genius of those who eventually picked them up.

 

It all is about the angle.

I for one think drafting is the basis of everything and it is the bottom line, where you draw the line and it should not be viewed as some talent of drafting.

At least it should not be the last straw for a potential sacking.

 

Again, how did we get in POSITION to get those consensus picks? Successfully tanking takes patience & Stone did it by the book

 

I don’t see why that matters. First off, it was a trade, not a pick. How often did Morey say he wanted someone, but couldn’t make the trade. Are ppl saying Witus made the trade, too?

Also, how many times do the other great GMs rely upon their staff to suggest someone. Probably happens all the time, yet we don’t hear about it. How much of this taking credit away from Stone is only because the Rockets are our team and we know so much about them?

 

The Rockets already knew Harden and Westbrook were very unlikely to stay. Daryl Morey was leaving.

The decision to hire Silas was made by Stone and TF. There was no way he was going to coach Harden, and Stone knew that or he was a fool.

 

Stone deserves some credit for Sengun, he could have told Witus “no”.
I think the argument some are trying to make is that Witus would be a better GM than Stone. Perhaps? He is very shy though, so maybe not?

 

Or he could have failed to get someone to trade with him, like happened to Morey nearly every draft — which btw also happened with Whitmore, as didn’t Stone say they tried to trade up several times.

I’m not a big fan of Stone, but saying Stone deserves “some credit” bc he didn’t say no is imo an obvious effort to take “some credit” away.

My point is, relying on staff recommendations happens every draft to every great GM. It’s only when we need to downplay a trade do we look to take away “some credit,” by saying one of the staff brought a recommendation to the table (which still required the trade to execute).

And it’s cute how if a trade (or pick) doesn’t pan out, it’s never (NEVER) the staff’s fault for making the recommendation.

Nah, to me the argument is simply an attempt to downplay the Sengun trade, which might someday be looked upon as one of the best trades any Rockets GM has ever made.

 

Lol nah bro, there is a middle ground between what we were clearly doing and the Spurs. Thunder, Pistons, Hornets were all teams that tanked without the reputation the Rockets got the last few years.

Edit: Forgot to add the Orlando Magic to that mix as well. There is no reason why they should have been much better than us last season. They have a lot more structure and know who they have now in their young players.

 

I hope so. I am still holding my breath to see if Sengun will be in trade rumor before he breaks out.

 

A little bit yeah lol.

Look the downward spiral started when Tillman pushed to trade CP3 for Westbrook. The franchise was doomed to spiral out of control at that point with that one cataclysmic failure. Harden was never going to win a title with just him and Russ.

But yeah, after that it's been kind of a joke, and as you point out we had the cards already stacked against us so arguing about better culture, etc. last season is a bit silly, but still... A little bit of an effort in that direction wouldn't be too much to ask.

 

I don't understand how KPJ's arrest changes the narrative. If you had such vision before the incident then you should have been voicing that. The article should have came out well before the final incident. Hindsight is 20/20. Making these articles after the fact is uninspiring. The people who had this opinion before the incident are the real winners.

While I do agree that KPJ was a huge sunken cost its hard to say how much of that is on the GM and how much is that on the coach. We didn't have a PG that could have replaced him unless you counted Tyty. I think its more of the coaches fault for not recognizing that KPJ wasn't going to cut it and exploring more into Sengun as the facilitator.

While the KPJ experiment is definitely a mark on Stone's gming resume I don't think it is the worst blunder of all time. Now if Stone had knowledge of KPJ's domestic abuse history well before this and ignored it that would change my perspective. I am not up to date enough on the situation to know what he knew before this happened.

KPJ would have been a great 6th man and his PG experiment would have definitely benefited him in that role. Overall I think Stone is a middle of the pack GM, some things he does well and some things he doesn't. Having said that being a middle of the pack GM might overall lead to being middle of the pack team. Stone has been really lucky so far with a lot of things so that might cover up his poor asset management.

At the end of the day I don't think this is the end of the world. I am going to assume KPJ will get what is coming to him after all the facts come out, whatever that might be.

 

The Rockets had strong reason to believe based on the reported behavior of KPJ at practices etc... that he was not gonna accept not starting. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

 

I don't agree with this as a uniform statement. It says a lot about the PLAYER.

It's one thing for one team to pass on a guy, but when every team (or almost all of them) pass on a guy and he turns out to be great, that doesn't mean the teams who passed on him were stupid, because they all did. It means there was something there that concerned everyone and he overcame it. Most guys who fall late don't work out.

Everyone is stoked about Cam but that's because of who they thought he was before the draft. After year 1 he could be a bust for all we know.

 

It was likely a semi wrong message that he had issues in College or whatever.....and it came about shortly before the draft.

 

Right I hope so, no idea what caused it.

I do think it's wild to give Stone credit for drafting a player who hasn't played at all in the NBA yet. Like let's chill out guys.

 

Not everyone wants to be "up front" and I suspect that is the case with Eli. On a personal level I can relate. So, as long as Stone listens to Eli and values his input, Eli is in a good position.

 

Yes... thats EXACTLY what shoulda happened.... 'class, grace and culture' dont cost a dime... doesnt cost future draft capital.... doesnt infringe on our cap room...

Point being, when u are 'blatantly tanking' you dont care about wins... so u can hammer process rather results - hoping the results will come down the road... its laying the foundation for future success... molding young players and minds - and therfore molding the team...

but obviously Stone figured he'd rather go the Morey route of enabling asshats....

Congrats - we lost enough games to get a high draft pick - is that really an accomplishment? We lost on purpose, got a high draft pick and took the bpa... I dont understand how this is an accomplishment? Like Cam - he just fell to us... we didnt do anything... we didnt move up to get him or nothing... Sengun was a good pick - but mostly we just took bpa at whatever pick we got...

Do u really not understand the b**** or are u just being contrarian? lol