It was a successful flip of harden, tank and draft. that is a fact. whether that translates to ongoing, future success - We can only hope.
You can tell who are the ones who wanted the Simmons package and gave Stone so much **** cuz of it, clearly they are the ones posting sarcastic/passive aggressive posts. Now Simmons got exposed and it is shown Stone made the right call they still cant admit they made a mistake.
Granted, I haven't been quite as active here over the last season, but I honestly can't recall some prolific amount of posters hating on Stone. He's popular enough, given that he replaced one of the franchise's most beloved front office staff members of all time. Virtually all of Stone's moves have been pretty well received. Maybe it didn't deserve it's own thread?
Stone has done OK so far, mostly by getting such a poor return for Harden ,Westbrook, and Oladipo that the team had the worst record in the NBA and ended up with the second pick, so congratulations to him I guess? Who knows what we would have received from Miami, we were likely asking for Duncan, Herro and picks. We ended up trading away 4-5 players that were involved in the Harden trade and have no remaining players from that deal, no young talent from that deal, just some future picks and swaps, you don't see two recent former MVPs traded for a bad contract and some way out in the future picks. You can easily argue the Westbrook trade could have been much better, we pretty much dumped him for a player of even less use while Westbrook averaged a triple double this season. The Oladipo trade appeared botched. We got nothing in return. I think there was definitely luck involved here. Houston would have taken a deal from Philly or Miami had they thrown in a pick or two, and then we would be stuck with Ben Simmons, or we could have ended up losing the pick to OKC and then how would Stone look then? The Christian Wood signing was something Morey had already teed up. KPJ was a good move by Stone in my opinion so we can definitely give him credit for that. The rest of the draft, we will wait and see how we did. On paper we did well, but we won't know how he did until the season starts. Apologizing for criticizing those early trade returns does not make sense.
Those were not a part of the, "you owe Stone an apology" quotient Tate was a low dollar, Rockets couldn't afford jack, Weaver find. Wood was recruited by Harden, before Morey left time period....same as Cousins. If Stone gets credit for Wood then he gets blame for Cousins fail. Also desperation low cost move like Tate because Rockets couldn't afford jack was Cousins. Rockets traded Covington to clear room for free agent Wood. KPjr was good since I saw him his 5th game as a Bull. I wanted KPjr when rumor Bulls had to cut ties with him. Where some think Porter and his past is trouble, I forgive and forget. Low risk when pick is conditional to him getting in trouble again before that time. Almost no risk at all. KMjr has turned out well......how much of that was Morey and crew scouting as Stone has been a part of the Rockets since 2008? Does Morey get the blame for every fail and Stone get credit for every gem since 2008? How far back do you want to take this apology thing back?
Morey was a good GM, but his loyalists may be a bit vocal. Also I didn’t see overt negativity to stone specifically…just the FO in general which has been **** the last couple yrs
I may have just missed/avoided Stone threads, but wasn’t like 99.9999999% of the b****ing going on around here aimed at TF and Harden?
See thats the problem with society today - its all or nothing! Either someone is a god - or a ******* dog - nothing in the middle... Either a cornerstone to build a team around - or a scrub... Stone is a human being... I'm sure he will do some things that are good - and probably make a few missteps along the way that are bad - he's human. This whole mindset that either someone is the messiah who walks on water - or they are the next Hitler who needs to be cancelled is such a short cut to thinking that it drives me crazy... Either Harden is the best player ever who can do no wrong and was totally justified in all his actions - or he's a selfish self absorbed cancer who drove our team into the dark ages with his narcissistic demands.... and in reality its kinda both imo... (pardon the political parallel.... but its like the people that think Trump was the best president ever - or those that view him as the anti-Christ who give him 0 credit for anything he did in 4 years... in reality he did some good things - and he did a lot of really stupid/bad things... but if u like him then u try to justify every little thing he did and dismiss anything negative - and if you dont like him you are gonna harp on every little comment and blame him for anything and everything... You can draw your own overall view - but the need to then twist every single instance to fit that overall view/narrative in very disheartening and a short cut to thinking...imo... but such is the world today...)
I mean isn‘t the jury still out? There was good and bad and a lot of stuff, that is too early to judge. I haven‘t b****ed about Stone so far but was underwhelmed by the Harden trade - overall that whole year of trading Paul for Westbrook, losing Morey and then trading Harden for probably non lottery picks just sucked. Stone was thrown in the middle of it - and for the most part, he did a good job. But I wouldn‘t want to crown him a great GM just yet - but I am cautiously optimistic.
2008? What?? I was just pointing out the players he signed or obtained that's all. You want to dissect it, then that's fine. Sure they didn't have alot of money but they didn't have to sign the players they did. They could have signed other players at the same cost but they didn't. You can't take that away from them, if anything it's even more credit to them to get players when they had little option. The opposite would actually deserve less credit as in they had alot of cap space so they signed lebron. Are you really discrediting them for signing productive players due to their lack of resources? Cousins didn't work out but what did it cost you? He actually had some good games but was also brought on with harden being their so him leaving changed the equation Trading Covington for a first and woods was a great move, not only was woods great with harden but also is a better piece than Covington without harden.
Being able to lay a future foundation of KPJ/Green/Tate/KJ/Christopher/Sengun/Garuba all within one year after Harden basically says go **** yourself has to be respected Not saying they will all work out but it has to be respected
I realized this I normally use Twitter/Reddit for Rockets info, so I’m sorta new to clutch fans but the misery and pessimism on here is so dumb. It doesn’t even make sense sometimes
No one is saying he’s a genius. OP is saying people should apologize for calling him incompetent Y’all know it’s ok to give Stone props.
