Pointlessly trading the Nets top pick for a Suns future pick is a fire able offense

A couple things to consider:

- nets pick wouldn't have been a top pick if they didn't own their pick
- they couldn't close games and it looked like they needed someone to that. KD on paper was a good fit
- JG did not improve here for a long time. Teams develop players. Good coaches make players look better. It is quite possible that Sengun and Amen will shine somewhere else if either is traded. It doesn't mean that they will shine here

All in all Stone's biggest mistakes were Silas, and giving Ime a long extension with weak assistant coaches, both of which had a huge impact on player development. KD trade is not the main mistake here, imo.

 

G Min FGM FGA FG% 3PM 3PA 3P% FTM FTA FT% OR DR Reb Ast Stl Blk TO PF Pts
2024-25 HOU Reg 82 32:53 7.4 17.5 42.3 2.9 8.1 35.4 3.3 4.1 81.3 0.5 4.0 4.6 3.4 0.9 0.3 2.5 1.5 21.0
2025-26 PHO Reg 17 23:25 5.7 15.1 37.9 2.1 7.3 28.2 1.9 2.5 76.2 0.4 2.8 3.2 2.4 1.1 0.1 2.1 1.1 15.4

 

I don’t agree that the Nets pick wouldn’t have been a top pick. On the contrary, they were never gonna be good enough to stay out of the lotto with or without Bridges. I also believe the Nets would have made the Bridges trade no matter what. It was too good an offer to pass up and they knew they were gonna have to rebuild anyway. They knew the top of the 2025 draft was special, they knew they’d have major cap space in the 2026 offseason, and they knew the 2026 draft was potentially one of the best this decade. We got played.

honestly people make mistakes. And I’m convinced Stone wanted to be able to extend the lifetime if those picks so he had more time to trade them for a star. Obviously picking up those additional picks was also meaningful. But they made the mistake of thinking they had all the talent they needed and didn’t need to be in the draft business. And they didn’t properly account for how good the 2026 draft was, which was no secret.

They simply got it wrong. It was a major screwup. It happens. There were a lot of reasons to think it would work out. The Suns looked ready to implode. But many of us thought it was better to take a swing at cooper flag and this generational 2026 draft rather than trade Brooklyn’s picks back to them, or at least negotiate for more. The rockets had all the leverage and we didn’t maximize it.

 

He has had just 1 game this year where he shot over 50% and that was against the 15-51 pacers who are in full on mega tanking mode.

Can he break out, sure. Was that evidence of that? Not really. He is a high volume low efficiency player which will lose you a giant number of games.

 

The sad thing is we still could have gotten kd without giving the nets pick back... and nets might not be very bad but they would have won 30 to 33 games which gives a chance to get a top pick in this draft

 

Yes, we would have had a top 3 unprotected pick in the greatest draft of the century and Stone gave it inexplicably away. Yes, trading a 22 year old budding star, Brooks, and lottery pick (and 5 seconds) for a 37 year old player was moronic. Yes, hiring Silas was awful, yes trading Jarrett Allen for zippo hurt us, yes not making deadline moves hurt us, yes Stone should be fired!!!

 

shooting over 50% isn’t the key, guess who else rarely shoots above 50% - Tatum, Brown, Mitchell, Booker, etc etc (foul calls help a lot with efficiency)

yall stat geeks think every player should be KD who purposely will not shoot the ball to maintain his 50/40/90

We have no one on this team who can drop 20+ in a qtr anymore and create for themselves regularly

 

The suns are lapping the rockets? lol

 

Only a fool wants players who even try to score more than 20 in a quarter. 99 time out of 100 you will lose those attempts. KD does do it right taking shots that are reasonable to take. JG lost countless rockets games due to stupid stuff exactly like you are describing.

High volume low efficiency is the bane of winning in the NBA.

 

The issue wasn't the Nets trade in of itself. When I first heard it I was thinking the return was too light. It was essentially one extra draft pick in order to basically swap the Nets with the Suns. But it looked a lot better when the Mavs traded Luka and the Suns looked awful. But now it's swung more to what the pre-trade situation look like due to the Mavs likely getting out of the gutter sooner than later. And the Suns looking more average than just purely bad.

Ironically, if the Rockets traded Jabari instead of Brooks to the Suns, they'd probably be a lot worse and we'd be better. And our pick next year from them would be better. But that's another issue...

 

If the Rockets had their 2026 pick when Stone was hired as GM, traded it for a player that sucks, and then traded that player for OKC's 2026 pick, Clutchfans would say that is a fireable offense for Stone as the OKC 2026 pick is much worse than the Rockets' 2026 pick

Basically, the reverse has happened, and it is still viewed as a fireable offense.

The Rockets didn't have a 2026 pick when Stone became GM. Now the Rockets have Reed, Tari, two extra 1st round picks, two swaps that may be valuable, Durant instead of Jalen Green, Brooks, and Harden, and still don't have a 2026 pick.

Even Presti has made a lot of mistakes on intermediate steps involving draft pick value and prospect value. Presti essentially traded Sengun and a FRP for Dieng. The essential thing is that he's made a ton of trades that overall increase the number of picks with a few timely trades in which picks are traded for consolidated talent (though for young players instead of someone like KD).

 

I meant, since they don't have their own picks, they would have performed better. But we would probably still have a valuable pick, just not as valuable as the current nets pick. In the end it was a bad decision but don't think it was as bad as the Silas and Ime extensions imo.

I agree it is a mistake. Stone's idea was to have a shot at an nba finals right away. With FVV out it is a total disaster now. We probably would have improved with fvv compared to last year, but not as much as Stone hoped, not enough to be a serious contender. Maybe it is just semantics, but when you make such huge mistakes with coaching, with both Silas and Ime, the others seem secondary to me.

 

Complaining about the Nets ‘26 pick as if we would’ve had the Nets current top 3 lottery odds is basically an IQ test.

Non-tanking teams do not finish below tanking teams in the 2020s NBA. That is a law of nature. There are 7 tanking teams this year.

So the best/worst case scenario is the Nets are equivalent to the disaster Pelicans this year and will give up the 8th/9th lottery slot.

That’s ~20% chance of a top 3 slot, or otherwise the 8th-10th pick. If everything goes our way.

Of course, infinitely more likely is that the Nets actually build a real roster with their $100M cap space + ~15 future FRPs and the pick is mostly worthless, because without trading for their ‘25 and ‘26 picks back there would have been literally zero reason for the Nets to attempt to build through the draft at all.

 

Fal

False…have a great morning tho

 

Breaking out? I could argue he’s been the worst player in the nba this year. Have you looked at his game log. Just a lot of crap.

 

Same thing as d&d. Poster doesn’t know up from down. Is typically quite angry and loves to throw insults to anyone and everyone.

 

The Mavs didnt trade Luca for a bag of chips. They (de facto) traded him for Flagg.

 

Actually Stone's biggest mistake was building around Alperen Sengun. Once Sengun got that contract he never improved, got lazy & entitled. Ime's not the problem. Silas was paid to lose which accelerated the rebuild. Stone's overall job is a B+