Not only that the dumbass won a coin flip to keep the jalen green pick. He also inherited one of the best assets available for trade in a mvp in his prime
Seems about right in hindsight. It is definitely one of the worst deals with only 2 years of guaranteed money. Of the moves on that list, 1, 2, 3, and 5 looked really bad at the time those moves were made. On 4, I just wasn't aware of the contracts of everyone in the deal, but it looked like a trash-for-trash trade. 6 didn't look good at the time, but it didn't seem as bad as 1, 2, 3, and 5. I think the move made sense at the time. Always risk going for an older player, but the Rockets managed the risk by only guaranteeing two years.
I don't think Stone is a terrible GM. A terrible GM makes ridiculous off-the-cuff moves that go against consensus and backfire horribly. Stone is a mediocre, timid GM who has been somewhat lucky (but not very lucky, or he'd have gotten at least one #1 pick). He's made some good moves, some average moves, and some bad but not franchise-ruining moves. He's never made a brilliant move and he appears to be fairly risk-averse. That said, this previous offseason as a whole was pretty bad for him. Trading for KD, I would say was a neutral move in the end given Dillon's emergence and the locker room stuff that happened afterward. Capela was also a net neutral move IMO. He's been fine, but not a game changer. Signing Okogie to the minimum was a net positive but didn't move the needle much (kind of hard to do that with a min salary player). But Re-signing FVV, Adams, and signing DFS amount to a lot of pretty bad money on the books. Granted, we weren't going to get to spend the cap space from FVV and Adams anyway, but those moves did put us up against the apron and limited our flexibility this season, and don't really benefit us in the long run. Overall, I'd like us to have a better GM. Mediocre doesn't cut it when you're trying to win a 1 in 30 dice roll (soon to be 1 in 32). But Stone could have been a lot worse, and I do appreciate that at least none of his top 5 draft picks have been full-blown "WTF are you doing" busts, and 3 of the 4 appear to be starting caliber players, with two of them still having strong potential to become star players.
I like the Sengun trade. These moves did not significantly hurt the Rockets in the long run. Considering how the Rockets look without FVV and Adams, I think the flexibility of not having them is overrated. The Rockets made moves for this season, trying to catch lightning in a bottle in a manner that did not significantly change the long-term outlook of the team. The team has been horrible because these moves failed, but these moves are unlikely to have any lasting impact on the Rockets, and are unlikely to be the reason the Rockets don't win the NBA championship this year. I'd say these moves the Rockets a small hope for this season. I just don't see the Rockets having even that much hope in most of the hindsight moves. It is just hard to cover PG, center, and having guards/wings that can shoot and play defense out of 1 NT-MLE especially when one doesn't want to damage the long term equity of the team.
We are 3 seasons (including this one) removed from being a bottom 3 team in the league for 3 consecutives, you think maybe you are expecting a bit too much without a Cade or Wemby on the team? I doubt Stone wanted FVV to be out for the season, Adams out for more than half, and not have the young core take that leap forward. You can judge the move in hindsight, but the plan was to build upon last seasons success with an improved young core buoyed by vets and a HOF scorer.
The lakers warned us that his ankle is cooked... guess what stone did anyways? You guessed it. What a moron
It’s not normal to drop off this much from a real RAPM king to a certified cardio runner. However, if you were building a championship roster (remember FVV and Adams were both well at the signing) taking such a bloated risk is a damn stupid thing to do. It’s one thing to trade three second rounders for a rehab project. It’s another to dedicate your MOST valuable MLE to a dude with only one ankle. Sheer malpractice. It’s just a signature Stone move. If the risk pays off, he’s the smartest a$$ on earth. But track record says the opposite. Most of the time, the market knows better. And you are left to be the dumb a$$ in the room. Thats when you pull the this-is-just-not-our-year immunity card. Stone has it all figured out.
He has a month (more if we're lucky) to prove us all wrong...but he is one of the worst signings I can remember, EVER. ugh
Have you looked at what Morey has done lately? Incremental moves like trading Mccain for our own 1st rounder and 2 2nds?
Dillons emergence is due to him chucking. He had the worst TS% in the NBA scoring 20 ppg or more. Not sure what locker room problems you are talking about they seemed fine to me. The KD trade was an S class move that got masked by season long injuries to Steven Adams and FVV and Ime Udoka's general incompetence. Hell even with just Adams the Rockets started out 15-5 showing how good this roster really is. We got rid of Jalen's 100M deal and instead of having to pay assets just to dump him we actually got a massive upgrade in KD back. Calling Stone a mediocre gm is a joke as with only a 3 yr runway he made the team have championship aspirations. Everyone is mad but the reason why they would be mad is because the Rockets are now a good team.
I had a slight preference for Mobley and picking Jalen has turned out to be Stone's worst move by far, but this wasn't true. Overall more boards had Mobley at 2 than anyone else. But Jalen was #2 on a decent number. Occasionally Suggs and maybe Barnes would show up as #2 on a board as well. A few people like Hollinger were more down down on Green but there wasn't anything close to consensus that drafting him over Mobley was a huge mistake at the time. It's nothing like the Kings drafting Bagley over Luka were they were killed for it at the time.
In terms of the draft, I agree that he is lucky but not lucky enough. Overall he chose the consensus on his high picks. Some panned out some didn't. But that's the nature of the draft. I don't really blame him. If he picked Jalen Williams instead of Jabari Smith, he would have been a genius. The Sengun trade was good. But he wasted many late first rounders, Christopher, Garuba, Washington, Whitmore. The low key good luck was Oladipo's rejecting the max offer, KPJ's getting rid of himself, and now maybe Tari's contract. Those could have had pretty bad repercussions. He also held on to Eric Gordon for far too long. The Nets picks-Suns-picks trade remains to be seen. It was a calculated gamble. He didn't get his first goal, which was Booker, in that trade. And we likely will miss a good draft this year. How good that trade was will depend on how the Nets and the Suns end up, and how the draft structure might be changed. No matter, I still think he didn't get enough out of the Nets when we had all the leverage.
In the end, one should judge a GM on the totality of their work. All of the wasted FRPs you listed were picks Stone acquired if memory serves, such that you are grading him on his negatives, but not getting the credit for getting the picks in the first place. Harden, Westbrook, Ariza (or was it Covington), and some SRPs have been turned into Durant, Sengun, Tari, Reed, 2027 Pho pick, 2027 Nets pick, 2029 Phoenix pick, and 2029 Dallas pick. Trading the 2026 Nets picks is viewed as horrible, but Stone acquired that pick in the first place. Rockets had to endure some tank years, but Harden has been replaced by Durant, and the Rockets were not winning anything with Harden and the few assets Morey left before jumping ship. On bad things that didn't happen...Stone shouldn't be judged on them as there are likely good things that didn't happen as well. If the Rockets had won Wemby, the Rockets are likely the 2nd best team in the NBA along with having a ton of draft capital. The Westbrook trade still annoys me. Stone salvaged it some in the Wall trade, but the Rockets would be in a much better position if Stone did not start with such a depleted draft pick pool. Stone may end up not being good enough to bringing a champinship to Houston, but he's been better than most of this board give him credit. Even in his ghastly mistakes like signing FVV, DFS, and Adams, for the most part those will be erased within two years. His good moves have left the Rockets with a Top 5 young core along with a ton of draft capital for a team as good as they are.
I still feel like the thesis was good…. Improved young core + vets + Durant for a short two year window/maybe 3 year. We still have a lot of assets and good picks. We have flexibility to add a poor guard since the young core didn’t take the leap. A lot of folks just like complain because we aren’t a contender after being a bottom 3 team just 3 seasons ago.
