This phase of the rebuild feels like those lucid few hours between a nightmare and reality. Like a 3-nippled fluorescent dinosaur chasing you down the aisle of a supermarket in Ancient Egypt while you simultaneously hear your iPhone alarm ringing. It's time to wake up. It's time to put the player resentment of the Silas era behind us. How they performed in those circumstances is not indicative of who they are. It's not fair to say that the good things they did were meaningless but the bad things they did in those 2 seasons still count. How they performed this season is indicative of what they are with the help of half a season of good coaching. How they grow means everything. There's no way all 7 picks before this season were lazy at working on their game, that is WAY too big a coincidence. No one is wrong 7 times in a row in the draft. If you TRIED to draft 7 uncoachable players, at least one would surprise you. There was a brutal regime holding these players back and in hindsight it wasn't worth it but we have the means to get over it easily. Udoka said he doesn't judge his players on those 2 seasons. Only on their improvement since he got here. There's a reason why he was patient with Jalen - it's because he doesn't have the resentment we sometimes had/have. He wasn't here for the 164-game exhibition of bad habits. That's a healthy mindset for us to adopt as much as we can. If a strict coach like Udoka can say the past 2 seasons don't matter, we can definitely stop worrying that it was telling us something profound. Let's judge everyone just from this season onwards including the 58 games Jalen took to figure winning out. Let's judge Jabari and Tari as though this is their rookie season. Let's be honest, what Jalen, Sengun, Tari and Jabari could do before those 2 seasons is almost exactly the same as what they could do after. That was a systemic problem. Stone and Silas designed a development program that for whatever reason did not work. As far as I'm concerned, those seasons didn't exist. Silas never existed. If anyone mentions that guy to me from this point forward, I will act like I've never even heard of him. Say it with me. "Stephen who?" I'm ready to move on from that nightmare and free this team of that unfair debt. Are you?
I’m just ready to start winning again. Three years of basketball hell, and things are finally looking up. Our young guys are laden with potential, coach Udoka is setting up a great team culture, and we have more to be optimistic about than I could’ve hoped for before the season started. Rockets basketball is fun again, and that’s something worth celebrating
for the record: OP is full of sheet! For these two years in question he was the most vocal proponent of patience, "everything is going according to plan", "emphasis on player development over winning", etc. BS Now it’s "nightmare"? GTFOH!
I'll remember the good and try to forget the bad. There was a whole lotta bad so... Expected when the FO had them tanking. They are now heading in the right direction. That's all that matters to me.
I said very clearly I would NOT go the brutal tanking route myself, but since the org is doing it anyway let's focus on what's possible.You still can't see, everything did go according to plan. We tanked for Wemby and stifled our development - yes we should have focused as much on player development as possible then. We didn't get Wemby. Ended up with semi-developed players. Like I predicted, a coach came and turned the culture around almost instantly. Since then everything's been going great. Is it a coincidence you're mad that someone focused on the positives without panicking about the negatives - when you couldn't? It's not a coincidence at all.
I am eager to but I still have fresh memories of Stone’s wheeling and dealing trying to get Lopez, wanting to extend Oladipo and allowing Ime to control at least partially who we go after. I have no faith yet he can build a contender the way Morey could.
It's almost like the Rockets needed someone as hapless as Silas to coach this team the last couple of seasons. Silas was so BAAAD that he is like one of those movies that is so bad, it's good like a cult classic, i.e. Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Seriously, though, I would be surprised if he ever gets another head coaching job. I am happy with how this season has played out - I wasn't expecting playoffs after enduring the last couple of seasons but with Udoka as coach and so many rising stars in Sengun, Green, Smith, and Thompson to name a few - the future is very bright indeed for the Rockets and it is fun to be a Rockets fan again.
Let's not forget that the much-reviled Coach Silas helped greatly to put us in position to draft those 7 guys. A better coach might have forced us to select guys like James Bouknight, Dyson Daniels, Jett Howard, etc. instead.
I just want to move on from the constant rooting against and bashing of our own players. If you aren't being constructive, what's the ****ing point?
Morey was saved by David Stern in 2011 from trading Scola, Kevin Martin and Dragic for Pau Gasol, and he wanted to use the added cap space to sign Nene to a max deal and give a long-term extension to Chuck Hayes. Both he and Les were supposedly convinced that a Lowry-Lee-Budinger(or TWill)-Pau-Nene team would be a top contender in the Western Conference for years to come. He regularly made Scrooge McDuck cost-saving moves like not signing Dragic to an extension (because of a fourth-year player option), waiving Jeremy Lin and Shaun Livingston from opening day rosters (to avoid contract guarantees) and dumping players to avoid luxury tax (often including first-rounders to sweeten the deal, leading to the Rockets only having two first-rounders in an eight-year span: Dekker and Capela). Traded a first-rounder for TWill, Ty Lawson, Iman Shumpert, Robert Covington. Missed out on two top coaches in his own backyard in Nick Nurse and Chris Finch because he thought head coaches are overrated and "only bring max 5-10 wins extra in the regular season, with even less impact during playoffs", so he hired Kevin McHale. Was supposedly a control freak, not wanting to hand over any decision making to the head coach, hand-picking the assistant coaching staff, dictating the type of play, which made Houston a less desirable spot for coaches. Had an unhealthy obsession with Carmelo Anthony, wanting to trade for him for years, then signing a washed up version of him as a free agent, only to dump him unceremoniously ten games into the season and completely cutting off any contact with him, which led to Melo bad-mouthing the team. Repeated the same thing with CP3. He viewed players as "assets" and a lot of players didn't want to play for him (confirmed by JJ Redick). Oh, he also drafted Marcus Morris over Kawhi Leonard because Morris was "the next Melo". I am very cautious with Stone, I don't think he has the guts to pull off ballsy moves nor does he have the intellect, but Morey also had his set of problems and a few close shaves. There is some luck involved in the GM business - if Presti had signed Harden to an extension, Morey would have lost his job soon after and been remembered as the mediocrity treadmill doofus.
Yeah it's ok to be mad at a player but when it's in a sustained constant way then it's poison to the person's own body even. Literally holding a feeling that floods your system with hormones that make everything you experience feel worse then they actually are.
Ego boasting. They rather double down on how right they are about a player suckin rather than admit that they knee jerk and were btching throughout a few seasons.
It's just easier to say "how could anyone have known from what we were seeing" than it is to say "I cheerfully believed and I was wrong." As though we can't laugh at ourselves for being wrong in our hopefulness. You're right definitely an ego inflammation issue.
In fairness, Les Alexander demanded standards that created mediocrity. By putting limits of wanting winning teams, but never a luxury tax, and never tanking. Morey more preferred tanking than doing a Courtney Lee retool, but Les wasnt having that What Morey hated, was Rockets FINALLY had a legit contender with Harden & CP3. But Tilman blew up a good thing imposing even goofier ways. Such as the infamous Westbrook trade. Oddly Morey could have gone with tanking after squeezing all the juice out the contention window. As long as he had the control (which Tilman wasnt giving at first) Not to defend Morey, the Carmelo worship & cold fallout was weird. Still its justifiable enough doing it for competitiveness basketball reasons, cutting a loss early. Instead of giving cancerous Porter Jr the reigns for 3 seasons like Stone
This team has already won more games than the final 9th seed Rockets team the year before Harden got here, while being significantly younger with better talent and coaching, I think they'll be fine.
