Do not trade the 2027 Draft pick!!!

They got the date wrong, it should have been 2026, but yeah fewer stars but lots of decent players in 2027.

 

They shouldn’t trade any of their picks and I’ve been saying that for a long team. Every year they need to have at least one good first round talent brought onto the team. You see it clearly that our bench has very little upside. Some players just aren’t going to cut it and this team is not as deep as you think.

 

In the last years many teams gutted their future for a win-now move.

Only for the bucks did it somewhat pay out with a championship but they're going to pay a huge price for it once Giannis leaves. They have no control over most if not all of their draft picks until like 2032. That's a long long time...

 

We have a lot of draft capital. Trading 2025 pick made sense cuz there was no one at #10 level that would’ve satisfied our needs. Maybe Malbauch or however u spell his name would’ve been better that Clint Shitpela

 

Yeah I want the rockets to zig here where everyone wants to zag. I would rather the team extend the longevity with a constant stream of talent then have maybe 2 season with a win now roster that is destined to disappoint.

 

Gotta love Spurs Culture saying "just this one time"......aside from 87, 97 and 2023. Just this 4th time.

 

If they trade Gianni’s, they get it all back

 

All jokes aside, we still don't have a franchise level guy. We have to keep drafting and hope to hit the jackpot one day. It doesn't have to be the #1 pick. Just high enough to get high potential players. You never know. The draft is a crapshoot. Luck has a lot to do with it.

 

This is why I want to trade back into the 2026 class. You never know, sometimes a franchise guy comes out of the middle part of the first round, especially in a deep draft like this one. By 2029 our "young core" won't be so young anymore, and their second contracts will be almost up (except maybe Reed's). We may not have a few more seasons after that to develop a young guy.

I'd like us to shoot a couple more shots in this year's draft as well as next year's.

 

Stone is a ****in idiot. This the year you need one of those picks.

 

Yeah, this has me really concerned. Those anti-tanking measures could completely F us over. Brooklyn has been in full tank mode since the calendar hit 2026 and currently has the 3rd worst record in the league. Which means they're tied with the Pacers and Kings for a 14% shot at the #1 pick.

One of the proposals by the league is that no team can have a top 4 pick two straight years. If the Nets land in the top 4 this summer(and the odds favor that), then the 5th pick is the best we can do in 2027. Unless the Suns have an unexpectedly massive dropoff next season and their pick winds up being great.

 

Stone should've realized this last year before we traded for KD. Could've used that pick on Cedric Coward.

 

Next year--- are those not our tanking measures? Not our year again....

Too bad he is no politician, would have been made fun of every minute.

 

funny thing is everyone knew Eli Witus was the brains behind Morey. How did Stone just swoop in for the job?

 

He knew how to communicate to the Fertittas serving to bridge the gap to the coaching staff.

See both Tilman and Rafael were fond of KPJ and Green thus allowing them to chuck up those shots.

 

Stone helped Fertitta buy the team.

@Nook can confirm/explain (which I think he already did at/around the time)

Spoiler

https://www.truehoop.com/p/the-fuse-of-the-rockets-has-been







2015
The Rockets made it to the Western conference finals, where they lost to the Warriors but seemed destined for great things. (The Rockets have a knack for being eliminated by the team on its way to the title, having managed it three times in five years.) James Harden was living in Los Angeles, dating a Kardashian, and reportedly showed up to training camp out of shape. The Rockets had high expectations, but struggled out of the gate—and soon fired coach Kevin McHale.

People who worked for the Rockets were almost certain the interim would be one of McHale’s associate head coaches, Chris Finch. Morey’s front office had once pressured Rick Adelman to elevate Finch to lead assistant. Adelman refused, but Finch later got the gig under McHale.

What exactly happened is open to debate, but what’s not is that the team’s then-general counsel, and now GM, Rafael Stone, became a forceful figure in the process, and by the end, J.B. Bickerstaff won the interim job. Two former Rockets employees brought up this story as an example of why the Rockets would not be a good place to work, because they are wary of Stone, and how decisions are made.

…

2017-2018
Fertitta was making his presence known in all kinds of ways. Importantly, Alexander’s side of the sale process had been led by the team’s president, Tad Brown, and general counsel, Rafael Stone. As Michael Hardy of Texas Monthly has detailed, Fertitta emerged as the victorious bidder, but not clearly the highest one. There was a lot of dealmaking and convincing first to emerge as the pick, and then to close the deal—which reportedly required putting up $100 million in earnest money and raising money through a bond issue.

Most NBA teams function like monarchies, with all the palace intrigue of The Crown. Various figures jostle and backstab in the hunt for the billionaire’s attention. By the end of the process, to many Rockets’ staffers, it became clear that Brown and Stone had entered Fertitta’s good graces, which is no small thing.

This effectively moved everyone else down a few spots, leading to more than a little uncertainty. A team that had been centered around Morey and D’Antoni now had less clear underpinnings, especially as Fertitta began talking in public.

The Rockets went on to win 65 games. Even with Chris Paul out injured, the Rockets almost made the Finals. They lost Game 7 of the Western conference finals in a heartbreaker to the Warriors—who would sweep the Cavaliers in the Finals. It’s easy to imagine that, healthy, the Rockets could have won a title. Maybe nothing needed to change.

In the hallway after the season-ending loss, Fertitta rattled many. First, he made a classic billionaire mistake by suggesting in public that he, a restaurant magnate born into money, had much to teach the full-time professional basketball experts he employed, most of whom had defied incredible odds to get where they were. Fertitta also conspicuously praised only a few players, but not the coach or GM, saying “I have five great starters. They’re all great. I love all five of my starters.” He made clear that lessons he learned from his restaurant empire would help in basketball. “I’m a fighter. That’s my culture. The longer I own this team the more they’re going to pick up my culture.”

D’Antoni pioneered an offense that has infused the NBA—perhaps no team better than the Warriors who had just beat the Rockets—with a belief in the power of the 3-pointer. It felt pointed when Fertitta says “it’s not let’s make a few shots and win. It’s step on their throats. We will pick up a few Tilmanisms along the way.”

Meanwhile, Tucker emerged as a major force on the team. He was not only one of those five starters, but he led all players in minutes in Game 7, as the linchpin of a Rockets defense that almost contained the uncontainable, fully empowered Stephen Curry/Kevin Durant Warriors.

It was already clear Tucker was worth more than his $8 million salary. One source says the discussions were routine: “every year they promised to pay P.J. They were never going to pay P.J.”

…

September 13, 2020
The next day both D’Antoni and Morey sent word to Fertitta that they wouldn’t be back, although news of Morey’s departure would take a month to become public.

September 17, 2020
Monte McNair, a key Morey deputy, left the Rockets for a job as GM of the Sacramento Kings. If the Rockets had been divided over Capela vs. Covington, tradition vs. innovation, small vs. big—McNair was seen as being on team Robert Covington.

With D’Antoni and McNair out, and rumblings about Morey, one former Rockets employee says, “it was clear the other side was in charge, and now Robert Covington would be gone, P.J. Tucker would want out, a lot of people.”

October 15, 2020
Morey and Fertitta agreed Morey would be stepping down, and would be replaced by Rafael Stone.

Sources with the Rockets worry who is left at the organization with the respect of players like Harden.

In a follow-up interview with Fertitta and Morey, Fertitta talked about how deep the bench was under Morey—an apparent allusion to Stone and Witus, now that McNair was gone. Morey also mentioned “Patrick” being part of the process, in reference to Fertitta’s son, who is said to be close to Stone, and playing an increasingly important role.

November 16, 2020
The bold Robert Covington experiment ended in a trade with the Blazers that brought back another player who is reportedly fed up with the Rockets (and reportedly seeking an apology) Trevor Ariza, who was then traded again.

The roster shuffling eventually resulted in young big man Christian Wood, restoring much of the basketball thinking before the Covington trade—to pair Harden with a big man, as the Rockets once did with Dwight Howard.

Stephen Silas was announced as head coach. The many different Rockets bigwigs—Fertitta, Harden, Westbrook, Stone—had varied notions of who should coach. Fertitta was talked out of Jeff Van Gundy who was seen as a tough fit with Harden and Westbrook. Harden reportedly wanted Lue. Stone is close with John Lucas.

Stephen Silas—who one source called “just the nicest guy”—emerged as the compromise. Morey had long been a fan. Silas had briefly been a head coach in Charlotte, filling in when Steve Clifford missed several games in the 2017-2018 season. The feedback from those who had been there at the time was a question about his ability to take charge of strong personalities. One source sees confirmation of this in Harden’s calculation that he didn’t need to arrive at training camp on time.

Much has happened to erode employees’ trust in the organization, including signs of belt-tightening. Fertitta earned a certain reputation with the staff years ago when he made them stay in his casino hotel in old Vegas for summer league, while most teams—and a few select executives like Stone and Brown—stayed in high-end hotels on the strip.

More recently:

•Two sources noted that the combination of Silas and Stone saved Fertitta millions—one guessed $8 million—compared to the more accomplished D’Antoni and Morey.
•John Hollinger examined the Rockets latest moves and sniffed out “backflips to get out of the luxury tax.”

…

The conversation is already underway about who will be the coach after Silas and the GM after Stone.

As Dewey & LeBoeuf fell apart, the leader said that “if it is only money that holds a firm and its partners together, then there is really no glue at all.” And then the whole thing fell apart.

A footnote with a coincidence: Rafael Stone’s first job, after graduating from Stanford Law School in 1997, was at Dewey Ballantine. He made partner at the young age of 32. He left for the Rockets in 2005, before the merger that made Dewey & LeBoeuf and the drama that followed. But in the big picture: the man running the Rockets has seen shows like this before.


_______________

https://texaslawbook.net/texas-gcs-...legal-minds-behind-2-2b-houston-rockets-deal/
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bu...yers-help-seal-Tilman-Fertitta-s-12178632.php

… But two Texas lawyers - Steven Scheinthal and Rafael Stone - were the real legal minds behind the deal, The Texas Lawbook reports.

Scheinthal is the general counsel for Fertitta's restaurant, entertainment and hotel company Landry's. Stone is the longtime general counsel for the Rockets and its home court, the Toyota Center. Together, they negotiated the deal while the New York firms handled the documentation at their direction, Scheinthal said in an email to Texas Lawbook.

"That is how we kept it quiet and it was done fast," he said.

…Rafael Stone, meanwhile, has been general counsel for the Rockets and the Toyota Center for more than 10 years. The Seattle native played basketball for Williams College and graduated from Stanford Law School in 1997. He previously practiced in the mergers and acquisitions and capital markets group at the now-defunct Dewey Ballantine.