- 7 weeks ago
Seth and Sean assess Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated's take that the Rockets will either go after Giannis or try to run it back next season, and what actually went wrong with the Rockets this year.
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00:00Chris Mannix, who covers the NBA, I believe S.I.,
00:04I know that's where he's been for a number of years.
00:07He was on a podcast and said that this is what he's been hearing
00:12about the Rockets in this upcoming offseason.
00:16I wouldn't – I mean, look, the Giannis thing that's out there,
00:18and I know – I believe that they're going to try to make a run on him
00:21in the offseason, so that looms.
00:23Right.
00:23But if they don't get him, I don't think the result of this year is, you know,
00:27hit the nuke button on some of this stuff.
00:28I think Fred – it's a little misleading about, like, if Fred came back,
00:32they'd be better at this.
00:33Like, they're not – he wasn't a great shooter last year.
00:36Like, he's –
00:36No, but he's –
00:37He'd get better opportunities with Durant around.
00:38He's an actual point guard.
00:39He's an actual point guard.
00:40But I don't know if he solves the shooting problem that they have,
00:42which I think – like, you can argue Reed Shepard, he comes back a better player
00:46next year.
00:46Maybe he's ready for a bigger role in another offseason for Thompson,
00:50for Eason if he resigns, like some of these other guys.
00:52Shingun, he keeps working on his three-point shot.
00:54Maybe organically that gets better, and I would roll the dice on that.
00:57I mean, if it's not Giannis, I would want to bring this group back
01:00with a healthy Fred VanVleet.
01:01Okay.
01:02You know my feeling on this, Seth.
01:04I had that clip queued up on Wednesday before the catastrophic failure
01:11that we saw at the end of that Minnesota game on Wednesday night.
01:14And I have softened on my stance of can't trade any of these young guys for Giannis.
01:20I'm willing to listen.
01:21Now after that game on Wednesday, I'm like, just do whatever you're going to do.
01:24Whatever you're going to do.
01:25Trade for Giannis.
01:26Run it back.
01:28Make some moves.
01:29I'm just so disgusted with this team right now.
01:31I just can't even entertain Giannis as the elixir to this whole thing.
01:35Yeah, that is – we're in that awful, awful place where you try to envision
01:40exactly what it would look like and how everything's going to go.
01:43And it's just so hard.
01:45There's something – there's something that just jumps in your way
01:49when you try to – when you try to get the sentence out of your mouth
01:54and say, well, Fred VanVleet is really the key to getting Kevin Durant
02:00and Giannis to work together and have a good, competent offense.
02:05Like, it's just – it's hard to – it's hard to latch onto that and really believe it,
02:09even though it might be true.
02:11It's just there's more – there's more wrong with the offense right now
02:15than can be explained away simply by the absence of Fred VanVleet.
02:19You know what it is?
02:19There's more problems with the defense right now especially
02:21that can't be explained away by the absence of Fred VanVleet.
02:25So it's at both ends of the court and then also just I don't – I can't sit here
02:31and act like, oh, yeah, that's the reason they don't look like they know
02:35how to play basketball is because their above-average point guard is gone.
02:39Because that rolls Rafael Stone into it too.
02:42Why are there no options when a good, incompetent, but not superstar point guard
02:47is not on the floor?
02:49I saw on Twitter yesterday, and I think you saw me retweet this,
02:54Salman Ali, who is at Salman Ali, A-L-I is how he pronounces his last name,
02:59at Salman Ali NBA, covers the Rockets for Red Nation hoops.
03:04He had a tweet kind of going through the exercise that you just did a minute ago.
03:07If I were to diagnose what went wrong this season in order, he says,
03:12number one, injuries.
03:13Number two, lack of offensive imagination.
03:16Number three, lack of spacing.
03:18Number four, mistake to double down on bigs.
03:22So that's kind of speaking, I guess, to like, hey, man, you play with this
03:26Steven Adams injury fire, you get burned, that kind of thing.
03:30And also, and you roll out the largest lineup in NBA history, et cetera, et cetera.
03:35Yep.
03:35Number five, and this has come back to bite them more in recent days
03:38than it was at the beginning of the year because the injuries have,
03:41what a weak bench.
03:42And then number six, the injury declined, particularly at the point of attack
03:46and at the rim.
03:47And he goes on to say, Salman Ali, at Salman Ali NBA, says,
03:52so the answer is not, this organization is a hot mess,
03:55the whole rebuild is a failure, fire everyone.
03:58I agree with that.
03:59He also says, nor is it, if not for Fred Van Vliet and Steven Adams getting injured,
04:04they'd be at the top of the West right now.
04:05I don't know that, and I kind of agree with that as well.
04:08So he says it's more nuanced.
04:10They've made mistakes.
04:11The rebuild has generally been pretty competent,
04:13but they need to make changes this summer,
04:15and the answers go beyond just get everyone healthy and run it back.
04:19I agree.
04:20This is the point of view I've seen online that I agree the most with when it comes
04:23to, forget, I'm flushing this season.
04:26I think they're going to get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.
04:28This is the view that I agree the most with when it comes to moving forward from this.
04:33This is where I guess the question is,
04:36and that's where people start training their sights on Udoka.
04:39And when you do, when you have to start conceding to people like Kendrick Perkins
04:45that, all right, you know what, yeah, the body language does suck.
04:49All right, yeah, you know what, yeah, the chemistry does suck as well.
04:52The bench sucks.
04:54Everything sucks.
04:55The bench sucks.
04:56Yes.
04:58So you start judging Udoka by that standard,
05:00and I'm not sure it's the right standard to judge him by,
05:03which is, all right, shouldn't he still be doing more with what he does have to work
05:09with, and shouldn't these guys look like a better version of themselves?
05:13Yeah.
05:13I think that the answer can both be yes to that question,
05:17but also that coaching a team with Fred Van Vliet and whatever else changes they make
05:25next year is a different set of challenges.
05:27And that I can't sit here and in good conscience say that Udoka would have screwed it up or something
05:33if he did have those things.
05:35Yeah, and I know, look, I get a lot of my intel from what this team can and can't do,
05:40like by the bylaws of the CBA, from guys like Adam Spillane who follow it very clearly,
05:45follow that aspect very closely.
05:47Other people, you know, Dave Hardesty is a really good follower of Clutch fans,
05:52is really good on that kind of stuff.
05:54I just, from everything I've seen from them, the Dorian Finney-Smith signing not only is bad
05:58because he's been awful this year, but that signing put them in a spot near these aprons
06:02that you talk about where it just really handcuffs Raphael Stone in terms of the types of moves
06:07he can go make.
06:09Because I'm, there's part of me that wants to say Daryl Morey never would have let this
06:15whole situation happen in terms of not having a point guard in the offense looking like this.
06:20Right.
06:21Probably would have more shooters if I'm being honest.
06:22But, so the team might look different, substantially different.
06:27So I want to say that, like, you know, it sounds bitter to do that.
06:30Like, it sounds like, oh, my ex would have done this, you know?
06:32You know what?
06:33Yeah.
06:34But, but real quick, I, but I, it feels like too, because of moves he made though,
06:39Raphael Stone, like the DFS signing, is that they, they're really kind of handcuffed until
06:44after this season with the variety of moves they can make.
06:46I think it would be interesting with Daryl Morey just partly because, hey, look, the,
06:50the rest of the league caught up to the thing that gave Daryl Morey's way of doing things,
06:55you know, just volumes of threes, that he's always going to be looking for a different
07:00angle or a different way to do things.
07:02And I felt like the, the rebounding last year and the offensive rebounding might have been
07:05something that Daryl Morey really leaned into.
07:07He's like, oh, this is something that's atypical from the rest of the league.
07:10Let's exploit this.
07:11But the point guard part of it, I think a hundred percent, I don't think that, I think
07:15at some point between Fred Van Vliet's injury and the trade deadline, Morey would have been
07:22on phone calls at 2 a.m.
07:24He would have been in some little village in Eastern Europe.
07:27Yeah.
07:27Yeah.
07:27He would have figured out a way to, to, to do something about it.
07:30And I don't think Raphael Stone was doing nothing that whole time.
07:33I think, man, I think he was exploring things, but I, but I think maybe Daryl's got a different
07:37type of appetite for that kind of thing.
07:39You're way more active on social media than I am.
07:41Are you ready to face the onslaught, the attacks that you're going to get?
07:47If you decide that you want to get rid of Shang-Goon, if that's, I'm not, I do.
07:52I've heard from basically like taking on the whole Byzantine empire.
07:55No, I've heard, I've heard from others.
07:57I've heard, I've talked to others in our industry who have done that before.
08:02And they have said, the Byzantine empire, I, uh, they've said, boy,
08:09these Turkish fans are like nothing.
08:13They love him from Shang-Goon and they are loyal to him.
08:16They do, man.
08:17They do.
08:17And they're protected by an entire ocean.
08:19It's funny.
08:20You know, the Shang-Goon thing.
08:22And the continent.
08:22That's right.
08:23The, uh, the, the play that he made, I, these are things that I'm just not as tuned in and
08:29I'm a body language person.
08:30I really am.
08:31Um, but I, I, like, I, I choose to believe that this team hasn't all just all of a sudden
08:36started hating each other.
08:37I choose to believe that whatever Kevin Durant was saying in those, you know, in those group
08:42texts or whatever they were, the, the burner account that it's not, that's not enough to
08:48tear this team apart.
08:49And yet I saw several people pointing this out and I don't think it's nothing that the
08:55play that Alper and Shang-Goon made at the end of regulation to clean up Kevin Durant's
08:58mess, by the way, just turn the ball over, um, where he blocked the shot at the end of
09:03regulation.
09:03Like out of nowhere, like it was a very unsheng-goon like thing, got way up in the air, big
09:08defensive
09:09play and, and saves the game essentially for the, for the, uh, for the Rockets that other
09:15than Reed Shepard going up and giving Shang-Goon a little, little, little dap, a little dap on
09:19the hand, nobody went up to him.
09:21They all just walked back to the bench and it was a spectacular play that saved the game
09:25and either they're not enjoying each other or they're just not enjoying basketball or something.
09:30There's a disconnect.
09:30That's what it looks like.
09:31Right. And that's where you always get into the chicken and egg argument where, all right,
09:35yeah. Okay. Is it, is that the cause of all of these other issues? Or is it, man, when
09:41you're having all of these issues, sure, guys, guys aren't going to look like they have awesome
09:46chemistry and that they're enjoying each other as they're just not playing good basketball.
09:51Yep. Hey, Seth, um, you just got hit with one of the most amazing. Well, actually is on
09:56the text page. Oh, it's, uh, it's the base power text line. Um, Ottoman empire, not
10:01the Byzantine empire. Uh, the capital of the Byzantine empire was Constantinople, which
10:06is now Istanbul. Okay. I love your confidence right there. Yeah. Unless I'm mistaken on something
10:12like this. Yeah. It became the, it became the, yeah, we could, I could have gone with
10:16either of those. I chose Byzantine. I'm just here. It's more fun to say. Yeah. I'm just
10:19here to read the text. Sorry that you only studied back a few hundred years.
10:24Uh, sorry that your YouTube documentary, uh, watching got cut off before you went back that
10:32far. Uh, someone says, I don't think they all of a sudden hate each other. I think they've
10:37always hated each other. That's pretty funny. Talking about the Rockets other from the get
10:42go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's the case, man. Everything coming out of the
10:46training camp that they do at the, you know, that facility they've got there and everything,
10:51you know, all the interviews, everybody was loving each other at the beginning of the year.
10:53Well, KD was blending right in with everybody. And, um, and you know, now it just doesn't look
10:58that way.
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