[Woj] Rafael Stone & Eli Witus sign extensions

It would have been hard not to extend him after a successful season. That said, I'm not sold on Stone's roster management abilities and his ability to find value and get big hits on the free agent/trade market. I don't think he's made even one trade I've been really impressed by, unless you count snagging Sengun during the draft. His free agent signings have been okay at best. His one big "diamond in the rough" swing backfired spectacularly and the dude is now playing in Greece.

I hope we don't come to regret this now that we're looking to make the moves that turn us into a true contender over the next two or three years.

 

Eli Witus is our backup QB. He can do no wrong because he's technically not the one responsible for any wrong decisions.

But...somehow...everyone seems to know Eli is responsible for all the good decisions and none of the bad ones.

It's particularly beneficial if you have taken the stance that the GM isn't good. You have his subordinate as your ultimate trump card if anything goes well. You'll see the same thing with coaches. If you don't like a coach and the defense is doing well - it was the lead defensive assistant. If the offense starts clicking it's because of the offensive coordinator.

 

I don't know how long his original contract was, so I am completely unemotional one way or another about him getting extended. The fact that @Medicine N Music thinks highly of him is a good sign, because @Medicine N Music seems to be right more often than not (certainly when it comes to the draft!!!). I just hope he and the "front office" make the right decisions going forward (committing to Alpi, Tari, Amen (when the time comes), extending Adams, keeping FVV, if you ask me).

 

Clearly Eli Wallach is the brains of the operation. Been saying that for years.

 

Has anyone ever seen a photo of Eli Witus? Looks like he really avoids any limelight?

 

I'll do it! Hell, I'll even move to Houston - something I said I would never do again....

 

I just have to ask, what was the alternative to the sucking on purpose?


It wasn't Stone who screwed up a 67 win team, that's on Morey & Fertitta and no other GM was offering a player worth a damn for Harden in his fat suit demanding to be traded. That's on Morey too, Stone walked into a bad situation.

Maybe he should have kept Jared Allen, Caris Lavert, Rodions Kurucs & Dante Exum instead of going the tank route .... we probably wouldn't have any of the core 6 in that scenario and we'd probably have watched below .500 ball the last 3 years anyway .... and the next 3 years too.


That 3 years of suck planted the seeds for what can be another decade of exceptional results.

 

How about the Harden trade?

 

Why even mention "And Eli Wittus"? It's Stone's operation. Nobody knows how many mistakes Eli Wittus has made, the onus falls on the GM not his assistant. Very odd

 

You should admit every mistake or poor basketball prediction you've posted. The list is long

 

It's called tanking, you should read about it

 

What decisions has Eli made that changed the franchise? Give me 3

 

I said I would not judge his plan till precisely now, so here we go.

I think he's done well overall. We're at 41 wins and gave all 6 young players key rotation minutes. There are 0 teams doing that except OKC. All the other young teams are far more reliant on vets. We're a top 10 defense which is so difficult to achieve with a young team and bodes stupendously well for our contention hopes. Two-way teams win championships, and most examples of young exciting teams seem to result in "were never able to play good enough defense". By next season, we will be competing with the Mavericks in the win column and they have Luka Doncic.

There are some errors that could have been avoided but may not repeat:

- Dumped Garuba, Tyty and Christopher instead of KPJ in order to make cap room for a flimsy verbal agreement from Brook Lopez. I don't care if you think those 3 were not close to being NBA players. This team knew KPJ was a f*cking nightmare off the court and a disgustingly bad PG on the court. It was a great opportunity to quietly dump a bad character and move on from that culture voluntarily. Those 3 guys were just one year into their NBA careers - we spent 3 first round picks on them, think about what you can get in a trade for that these days. That was a major dent in our assets which we have nothing to show for.

- In our two years of tanking, there was no development. I preached patience about this and obviously you're just not going to get good development when the feedback loop is f*cked (situation where high effort doesn't lead to wins no matter how much you try). What many here didn't understand at that time is the changes they were demanding would have resulted in more wins, and we simply did not want more wins. It became a fine line that requires a lot of experience. I didn't expect Silas/Stone to make 18 year olds behave like 25 year olds. However, it would have been best to at least get someone who is a defensive expert because that's pretty talent-neutral and we could have neglected offense instead. They should have made Lucas the HC to begin with. Stone shouldn't have involved himself in practices. He should have allowed a high character sucky PG (DJ Augustin?) to run the team instead of KPJ. Just that one vet would have helped development and character without compromising losses.

- The absolute idiocy of putting out an article - while we're in the thick of a playoff race with an infant roster - stating that no one is untouchable but Jalen is most available of all. Why the F did you throw the other 5 young guys under the bus? This team had just bled their souls out to get us into top 6 defense. Fine you don't have the benefit of hindsight to know that Jalen was going to make you look like an idiot. What about the other guys? No one can deny the 1 month dip in team performance came immediately after that article. Sengun even had some inexplicable performances after that. It was very very stupid and I blame Udoka for this one too because he was a part of it. If you're trying to light a fire under someone, don't burn the whole house down.

Given the overall incredible position we're sitting in right now, I can forgive these mistakes as long as he learned from them. I think the only team in the NBA that has a comparable 10-year window to us is the Thunder. We're going to win 50+ for ten years.

Finally, the big warning:

STONE, your job is SO easy right now. You don't have to hit ANY home runs. If you sit on this team and do nothing at all, it will win 50 next season and keep improving after that. No one has the benefit of this volume of expected internal development. All the trades and signings you make from this point forward just have to be SAFE. Don't take any risks. Don't swing for the fences. Don't go all in on anything but a certainty. Please keep your ego and Ime in check and just build on this team slowly and patiently. Just keep swapping out the lower rotation players for better ones.

 

Yeah the Stone hatred is outright insane here. You guys are delusional & at times incoherent with your takes on Rafael Stone. The Rockets are one of the best young teams but the GM is atrocious??? Lol

 

Correct. So technically Stone should get credit for all of Morey's good moves, since he was his assistant

 

I was going to respond to this. And then I just thought, "If he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it."

This is very well earned. When we began the tanking process there was a common argument in which a poster pointed towards the worst franchises in the league and said, "How's it working for them?"

Well it's worked out great for us. In three short seasons he was able to completely rebuild this team and turn around the entire franchise. How long did it take the Kings to get back to relevance? The Timberwolves? How long now have the Pistons been cellar dwellers? You can mess this up. Stone didn't.

Look at the position we're in.

We have 6 potential all-stars who are 22 or younger on this roster (and no, I do not expect them all to achieve their potential). We won 41 games this year and without making a single move:

1. We should see most if not all of our young players develop further.
2. We will add Tari Eason and Steven Adams to our roster and Alperen Sengun will return.

But we have the Nets pick, we have the MLE and we have the ability to package a whole **** ton of non-guaranteed salary to bring talent back in trade. I think Dillon is our only long term guaranteed contract. Is that right?

It's wild how well he's managed this team. It's weird how there are those of you who are still butt hurt over Jarrett Allen or want to complain about the KPJ gamble when you look at the team he's put together. If some of you were born in Oklahoma City you'd be posting somewhere right now that Sam Presti should be fired for trading away James Harden and Alperen Sengun as the Thunder won the #1 seed in the West and have more future picks than any team in the NBA. (those were really dumb trades though)

I'm really excited to see the team we walk onto the court next year. I feel like it's just going to get better and better from here.

 

Even if i had made a mistake before, it wouldn't change the fact that Stone missed on the guy he took #2 overall.

 

I agree

it’s not even that I would have wanted him not to tank . It takes luck and genius not to tank and rebuild .

but , I’m just not over the moon about him . The easy part is over . I don’t think it was hard , what he did .

and he has some draft picks that look good right now . But it’s still just potential . Our best pick in terms of contributing to winning just got hurt . It was mainly waiting 3 years and signing max vets FVV and paying for brooks .

the bar keeps going up .

we’ve got a lot of winning to make up

 

@Williamson

how did we not make a single move when we added 60+ mil in FA salary

we won’t have the opportunity to do that again

 

We were a bottom 3 team 3 years in a row. A gm doesn’t get credit for that