That entire interview/podcast was pretty hilarious to listen to, especially because of Channing Crowder. Dude is a straight up freak. LOL. Worth a listen and NSFW.
4. The Rockets should climb on at least one end of the floor The Houston Rockets were one of two teams that finished the season with just one guy (Kevin Porter Jr.) who shot the league average or better on at least 100 3-point attempts last season. They were also the first team in 29 years* (and the first team in a 30-team league) to rank in the bottom five on both ends of the floor in a third straight season, ranking 27th in offensive efficiency and 29th in defensive efficiency in ’22-23. Not coincidentally, the Rockets have had the league’s worst record (59-177, .250) over these past three years. * The last team to rank in the bottom five on both ends of the floor in three straight seasons was the Mavs in 1991-92, ’92-93 and ’93-94, when there were 27 teams. It’s also not a coincidence that the Rockets have a new coach, replacing Stephen Silas with Ime Udoka, whose Celtics ranked ninth offensively and first defensively in his one season as head coach, eventually reaching the 2022 Finals. Houston also used its cap space to add five veterans to the roster. They still have just one guy (Porter) who shot better than 36% on at least 100 3-point attempts last season, with the two highest-paid of those new vets – Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks – having shot 34.2% and 32.6%, respectively. Those two guys have also shot worse than 50% in the paint over the last three years, and among 243 players with at least 1,000 field goal attempts over those three seasons, they rank 194th and 233rd in true shooting percentage. But they should help the Rockets improve defensively. VanVleet led the league (for the third time in the last four seasons) with 3.8 deflections per game. Brooks is a more physical defender who’s had some strong isolation numbers over the last few years. Both guys can get a little overzealous defensively, Brooks with his physicality and VanVleet with his ball-chasing. But, between them, they’ve been on eight top-10 defenses, the kind of experience the Rockets really need.
For those of you who actually watched the entire last three season, kudos for you watching this train wreck. I finally gave up halfway through last season I just couldn't take it anymore.
I listened to it this morning and loved it. FVV definitely sounds like, personality wise, the opposite of James Harden. I hate to do this but his character reminds me of Altuve. The underdog who realized his dreams through hard work, discipline, and smarts. I would recommend every Rockets fan listen to this.
Ridiculous that the fanbase thinks the Rockets sucked because players like Jabari and Jalen sucked, rather than vice versa. Our young guys got the short end of the stick being in a much more difficult situation than their peers on bad teams. You could have put 19 year old Lebron James on those teams and Stone/Silas would have made sure we lost 60 games. You could have put both Paolo Banchero and Evan Mobley on those teams (instead of two of our guys) and we still would have finished with roughly the same record. We're used to a team sucking because the players suck (accountability). That's the natural way things work in the NBA. However, this was an artificial situation. The downward force was coming from the top of the organization and it pushed everyone's performance/stats downward, and that generated the losses they required. Who gives 19 year old Jalen Green 14 shots and 30 minutes a game his rookie season? This is a HS kid with 1 month of bubble G League experience. Nothing stable around him, everyone around him needing to make their own mistakes too. No sh*t he looked lost off ball. I'll give you a great example. The article mentions Dallas as the only team who did so badly for 3 straight seasons. You guys always say "well shooters aren't making open shots, and there's no excuse for that." A guy named Tim Legler joined the Mavs in the 2nd and 3rd seasons of that catastrophe. Tim Legler was a 3pt shooting god and ended up a career 43% shooter. In those two seasons with the Mavs, he shot 33% on 2.2 attempts and then 37% on 1.8 attempts. Why was Tim Legler not making as big a proportion of his open shots as he always did before and after that? The following two seasons he shot 52% and 52% on more attempts. If you're not the lead ball handler, this situation will destroy your rhythm and it will destroy your confidence. A situation where working hard leads to nothing is ingraining a terrible feedback loop. Because there's tanking and then there's TANKING. We were TANKING. The way we tanked kills confidence (leading to poor shooting) and it kills execution (leading to poor efficiency). We allowed the first and last line of defense to be poor. We allowed players to give up on defense with relatively no accountability. We intentionally refused to sign high character veterans - which is SO rare for a rebuilding team to do. We allowed a bunch of 19 year olds to freestyle on offense. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the strategy, you have to recognize: the only usable data that's going to come out of those seasons is understanding the youngsters' athleticism, individual skills and get flashes of potential. The good news is being wrong about this means you're going to be pleasantly surprised next season. Jalen Green, Jabari Smith and Alperen Sengun are better than you think. You're about to learn a huge lesson in how confidence, stability and accountability have a much greater impact on wins than ESPN will tell you.
Meh. Doesn't matter. We got the years right, whatever he gets paid for 2 years is fine. He's an expiring contract in 1 year. That's such a forgiving contract. The issue with Dillon is we neither got a good deal on the length or salary of that contract.
A couple things standing out ! He’s putting in the work even after signing that huge contract and also KPJ being there supporting him signing that contract tells me he is gonna embrace coming off the bench for the better good of the team !!
Are people really worried about cap space going forward? I mean, I'm no cap expert, but our books seem pretty clean. Look at 2025. We only have $121 mil in taxable salaries, with the ability to shed like $100 mil (!) as needed. Even without shedding salaries, however, we have almost $70 mil in luxury tax space, which means we can sign Green to a max without making any adjustments to the roster. https://www.spotrac.com/nba/houston-rockets/cap/2025/
