would never trade for Kevin Durant <\/a>and hang their championship hopes on a 37-year-old with a lengthy injury history. That to me is kind of the issue. I hope they know what the plan is, because from where I am sitting, I have no clue. I have stood 10 toes down for Rafael Stone and Ime Udoka over the last three seasons, but in my humble opinion, enough time has passed where it\u2019s time to start asking some questions about the job Rafael Stone has done.<\/p>\nMy first question is this\u2026 How is it that after having a top four pick for four years in a row, having 10 first round nd picks total, the Rockets managed to get exactly zero consistent shooters, and after trading away Jalen Green and Cam Whitmore, have just one freakishly athletic player in Amen Thompson, who can create their own shot or shots for others. Yes, Alperen Sengun is athletic for his size, however he is not the type of player that will break down any defender and create offense, and if you want to agree to disagree that\u2019s okay\u2026 I\u2019ll give Stone two guys\u2026 out of 10. Neither of whom is a consistent shooter.<\/p>\n
How is it that the Oklahoma City Thunder have shooters all the way down to the ball boy and guy who wipes the sweat off the floor, and the Houston Rockets have none? How is it that they have 11 guys who can create a shot for themselves, and the Houston Rockets have two? Rafael Stone built this team. No one, and I mean NO ONE he has drafted is a consistent shooter. If Reed Sheppard becomes that, then he will have drafted exactly one shooter.<\/p>\n
Now, for those of you who will say, \u201cBut the ping pong balls never went his way\u2026\u201d Okay, so he couldn\u2019t have drafted Cade Cunningham, but you did get an absolute freak of nature in Jalen Green, and you gave up on him at the age of 23. He couldn\u2019t draft Paolo Banchero\u2026 but he could have drafted Jaylen Williams. I\u2019ll give a slight pass on this as Jabari was projected to be a much more consistent shooter in the NBA, but I get my draft analysis from TV and the internet. Rafael Stone gets paid a lot of money to be right. I will give Jabari this complement. He cares and he steps his game up in big moments. That\u2019s the kind of guy you want on your team, but in hindsight, he is not the third best player from that draft class. I\u2019m not going to fault him for drafting Amen Thompson because in my opinion, outside of Wemby, Thompson is the best player from that class. However, Thompson is a guy you put on a team full of shooters and the Rockets had none at the time they drafted him.<\/p>\n
So, if you couldn\u2019t draft the shooters then why couldn\u2019t you add them in free-agency? Luke Kennard could have been made a Rocket last offseason. Instead, Stone signed DFS to a three-year deal. A 35-percent career three-point shooter, because he had one efficient shooting season with the Lakers and Nets. Duncan Robinson, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Seth Curry??? Anyone? Rather, we saw the Rockets turn into a stand around and watch KD, because no one else can create a shot, offense. Udoka is not absolved from this conversation, but Raphael Stone is doing the grocery shopping, and like me when my wife sends me to the store, he keeps forgetting stuff.<\/p>\n
The Rockets cannot, in my opinion, turn around and make the Kevin Durant trade obsolete by flipping him after one season. I think, they want to get a look at the team with Fred Van Vleet, with a healthy DFS, with a healthy Durant and Steven Adams, but go back and just read what I wrote there. Put the odds on all of that happening. Put the odds on that beating OKC, or even the Lakers. The year to run it back one more time was this past season and Rafael Stone said \u201cNOPE!\u201d So now, what is he going to do? Because the job is still his. He painted himself into this corner and he\u2019s going to have to get himself out of it, quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rockets are not going to fire their GM or their Head Coach. Once you allow the emotion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,3197,292,194,4066,6,211,9782,1353],"class_list":["post-726242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-rockets","tag-basketball","tag-commentary","tag-houston","tag-houston-rockets","tag-houstonrockets","tag-nba","tag-rockets","tag-rockets-analysis","tag-rockets-playoffs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116521579543743075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}