Ime wasn't a reclamation coach he was one of the most sought after coaches in the market, in fact he got paid the most after that dude on the Pistons.
There were some teams like the Nets that could have signed him, but decided they didn't want Ime's baggage. But I certainly feel that had the Rockets passed on Ime, Ime would not have had too hard of a time finding a job. I believe he would have gotten several offers.
You can say any of the great moves GMs make anyone would make lol. The point of being a good GM is putting yourself in POSITION to make those moves. Stone put us in position to get Udoka, he put us in position to get back draft capital from the Harden trade (heavily critized here btw). You speak on these things like they landed in Stone's lap
His 2 biggest FA signings this offseason FVV & Dillon Brooks, criticized by most the sports world (including this board) have been culture changing. Not great at free agency?
I know why he did it but it doesn't make maxing FVV or making Brooks a 20m dollar player unquestionably fantastic moves. They are what they are. Having two quality free signings doesn't undo the bad ones either. 8m for Jock Landale? Boban? Theis? Nwaba? Christian Wood? Fernando? Easily more misses than hits. I love Tate and Tate at 8m is a stretch. He offered Oladipo a billion dollars too. Not great at free agency. Geez looking at that list and knowing it was Eli Witus pushing for Sengun makes me question his ability to assess players over 6'9" period.
I think the owner hired Ime and we only have 2 possible franchise players(Cam and Amen), when you are picking in the top 4 in the last 3 years…it’s not hard
I'll grade him against the 29 other GMs and based on what he has to work with. I think there's only a few elite GMs like Sam Presti. A lot of other guys like Pat Riley get credit when they just have benefits that others don't have (like being a destination city or having an owner with deep pockets). I don't count those types as elite. To me, the next tier below elite, is the big group of guys that just don't screw up their cap/future. They kinda just do the obvious moves that a good armchair gm would do. That's Stone, to me. The majority of GMs are actually bad and often make moves that significantly hamper their franchise for the future. Stone tanked while we owned our picks. He prioritized playing time for his young guys. He tends to draft who he's expected to draft. Outside of Sengun, he doesn't have those picks that surprise people and end up being great. But he also rarely has a big suprise pick that becomes a bust. I personally think there's a lot of luck in drafting and I don't hold it against him that some guys didn't pan out. It is what it is. I also don't think the Silas years did as much longterm damage others think. It just made the team suck more those years than they would have which was kinda the point of those seasons. My primary negative is that he's intentionally overcompensating to shed this rockets perception of viewing players as assets. The issue is it doesn't really negatively affect Morey's ability to get players and I'm not sure it ever has. Who cares if people don't like you if you get the player or asset you want. So, Stone has held onto some players a little longer than he needed to and tried to send them to where they wanted to go as opposed to just giving them to the highest bidder early. He also never really rented out his cap space by taking on bad contracts for picks. We should have been doing that as soon as we traded away Harden. I think the best GMs horde picks but mainly to actually get more cracks at the draft since it can be a crapshoot. You don't have to trade your picks for stars. You just rack up enough picks to eventually win the lottery of a star. People don't make a big fuss about young guys like Poku or Tre Mann that the Thunder drafted because they draft so many that the ones that hit over shadow the ones that don't. B
Who should he have picked though? It's nice to say "all those lotto picks should've gotten us a number 1 option" but I don't see how you can criticize Stone unless you have a specific player in mind. If you look at the top players out of the past 3 drafts, in no particular order, it's Sengun, Barnes, Chet, Wemby, Paolo, Franz I guess. Jalen Williams maybe? Cade hasn't been very impressive, nor has Mobley, or Suggs. Scoot has looked pretty bad. Giddey, Brandon Miller, Keegan Murray are okay. But who specifically are the players you wish Stone would've picked? Because the very best guys on this list were not available (Wemby, Chet, Paolo), and IMO the best guy on this list that was available is Sengun, and Stone picked him.
As the team needed a big and Walker Kessler was available till #22, not picking him is a mistake. Giving TyTy away so early/easily is another mistake. Letting Denis Schroder to sign minimum with Lakers is also not a good move. He might sign Schroder for $5M/year. FVV is an upgrade from Denis but not for 8x salary. But at the end he was successful at draft. Could be little bit better.
We did have the opportunity to pick Barnes, of course, and passed. In hindsight that was a mistake, but the consensus leading into the draft was firmly in Stone's corner--Jalen was considered by most to be a tier above Barnes--and at least he was smart enough to trade up for Alpi, as you say. It's hard for me to second guess a GM too hard when making a better pick would require blatantly ignoring the consensus. GMs rarely do that near the top of the draft because if they f*ck it up they have to explain to their owner why they decided to play maverick. Reverse isn't necessarily true--maybe Jabari is a bit worse than Jalen Williams, for example, but nobody is calling for Stone's job for taking a guy in the conversation for #1 over a guy who went #12. I'm generally most interested in how well a GM does when picking in the middle of the first round, when there is still usually some really good talent on the board but you have to correctly identify the right guy(s) amid a number of other players in the same "tier".
Like Brooks, Dennis overachieved in the World Cup, and even being voted into the Top 5 performers. National pride let certain player play above their heads.
He made Germany World Champion and had very good relations with the younger Rockets players in his short stint. He owns a basketball team and I don't think he is a non leader. Might be different than US players expect.
