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ITL debates whether the Rockets GM is feeling real pressure right now.
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00:00The conference finals are set in the NBA after what was a wild weekend of basketball.
00:07It culminated by an absolute drubbing in the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Pistons.
00:15Western Conference, too.
00:16Yes, that is true.
00:17But I was just talking about the final one.
00:18But, yeah, right, the Western Conference finals.
00:21The Timberwolves dispatched pretty easily by Wemby and the Spurs.
00:25Anthony Edwards was dabbing people up eight minutes later.
00:28Yeah, he was like, look, guys, it's been a good season.
00:30I know what time it is.
00:31Why wait?
00:32Can I just go to y'all's locker room at halftime?
00:36See, now we're disparaging on Anthony Edwards.
00:38I don't think he's that kind of guy.
00:39He's deeply competitive.
00:40I saw a video of him meeting some, like, teenagers this weekend in a tunnel somewhere.
00:44And he's like, how old are y'all?
00:46Y'all who?
00:46And they were like, yeah.
00:47He's like, I'll bust y'all out.
00:49I was like, okay, all right.
00:50No, you don't.
00:51So I think that that's there.
00:52However, there was a lot of great play.
00:55And somehow, I think that you can make the argument that the worst weekend that was had
01:01basketball-wise with Raphael Stone, you want to make this?
01:04If you want to be in Houston, Texas, that is the story.
01:07You think so?
01:09No one had a worse weekend in the conference semifinal than Raphael Stone.
01:15Okay, make the argument.
01:15Raphael listening to the radio, like, what do I got to do with this?
01:18Well, sit down.
01:19Now, why am I in it, he says.
01:21You're talking about me.
01:22And let me explain.
01:25We saw what happened in these two games.
01:28And if you go back to Friday, I mean, freaking Stephon Castle.
01:32Yeah, man.
01:33My goodness.
01:34He looked like the MVP.
01:35They were chanting for Wemby behind the Spurs bench.
01:39And I'm like, look at that dude right there.
01:432024 draft.
01:45Stephon Castle was sitting right there.
01:46Oh, by the way, pretty good defender.
01:47In fact, one of the best defenders in the league.
01:49Will you get him over?
01:51You got Reed Shepard over him.
01:53No?
01:53No, you got Reed Shepard.
01:55Sorry, I'm mixing things up.
01:56You got Reed Shepard instead of Stephon Castle.
01:58Which, by the way, most mock drafts, as we go back, had Stephon Castle in that slot.
02:03You know, and you got Reed Shepard.
02:05And this has nothing to do with Reed Shepard.
02:07You know, you can still think.
02:08In fact, I saw.
02:09See, it'd be your own people.
02:10Yeah.
02:11The Reed Shepard man himself.
02:12Like, well.
02:13Yeah.
02:14No, that's Stephon Castle.
02:16Yes.
02:18He's like, that is what I said.
02:19Yes.
02:19You correct.
02:20Technically, you could have.
02:22I like Reed Shepard, but yes.
02:2411 of 16.
02:2632 points, mind you.
02:275 of 7 shooting.
02:28That's the thing, right?
02:29Because Reed Shepard, you went and acquired because he was the shooting guy.
02:33You needed to add shooting.
02:34Which, 100% thought that in the process.
02:38Stephon Castle has been able to shoot the basketball for this team.
02:40Now, he's not like, I am shooter guy.
02:42But actually, let me go ahead and look at what his laundry numbers are.
02:44Well, just towards the end of the year and in the postseason, he's just stepped it up.
02:47Which, again, that's another aspect of Stephon Castle.
02:50But he fits more in what is a modern NBA where you need to be able to do a little
02:55bit of everything to stay on the court.
02:56This is one of the differentiating factors between NBA right now versus the NBA, let's say, a decade ago, two
03:03decades ago, is that you could find a niche on the floor if you could do one thing really well
03:07and then manage.
03:08You need to be able to do most things on the floor, otherwise you can't play.
03:11And this is where, I think, Emil Doka, he definitely took his lashings, whether it was on radio here or
03:17elsewhere, about not playing Reed.
03:19But I think that that is some of what he was getting at, which is, hey, man, you've got to
03:23be able to do everything on the floor to play in the modern NBA.
03:25Stephon Castle has that.
03:26Like Stephon Castle.
03:27Yeah.
03:27And so, let me go through all of them.
03:30And you guys tell me.
03:31I just jotted this down for you guys before the show.
03:35Did anyone have a worse conference semifinals than Raphael Stone?
03:38Okay.
03:39Let me just go through them.
03:40So, 2021, you draft Jalen Green over Evan Mobley.
03:452022, Jabari Smith over Jaden Ivey.
03:47Whatever.
03:47Jalen Duren was taken 13th as well.
03:50Jalen Duren.
03:51Jalen Duren might actually be the dude who had the worst semifinals, though.
03:54Yeah.
03:552024, Reed Shepard over Stephon Castle.
03:58These are all Raphael Stone picks.
04:00And then, say what you will about this, and maybe it was not realistic, but there are a lot of
04:06reports saying that Jared Allen was ripe,
04:09was part of the, could have been part of the James Harden trade.
04:13Jared Allen was outstanding.
04:14Cold.
04:15You talk about somebody, you know, people use that word a lot, cold.
04:17Yeah.
04:18That dude is cold, man.
04:19In every way.
04:21Instead, they went with Victor Oladipo.
04:23Instead, in the James Harden trade over Jared Allen.
04:25So, just those four things alone, it's a rough weekend, man.
04:29Yeah, hindsight.
04:30And as Cam Newton loves to say, hindsight is 50-50.
04:34But with this, I think that there's justification in the moment for some of these.
04:40I think the Oladipo more than any other.
04:42Oladipo you can absolutely justify because Jared Allen.
04:45Contract and, you know, you were going to move on.
04:48They were trying to tank, too.
04:49And that's what I'm saying, yeah.
04:50They were trying to tank.
04:51And there was a question as to can Victor Oladipo, you know, manage to get past the injuries
04:56and continue to be the engine type.
04:59Because if you have healthy Victor Oladipo, which when we start getting ifs and buts, right,
05:04but healthy Victor Oladipo is one of the better players that we're talking about amongst all these guys.
05:08But if you're building Jared Allen, you know, and so, yeah.
05:12It is worth noting that Jared Allen has moved because he is more finishing piece than central item.
05:19I think that is worth noting.
05:20At that time, he was like a young player that just got an extension, though.
05:26But the other three, I'd love to hear your justification.
05:29I think Jabari is playing, but I mean, Jaden Ivey got moved on from it.
05:32And it wasn't just because he was being weird in the locker room amongst them boys.
05:35Like, he was not as effective as a hooper as he should be.
05:39Reed Shepard, so the Jabari Smith Jr., I'm good with that one.
05:42Jalen Green over Evan Mobley is harder and harder to deal with this.
05:45Evan Mobley has been an incredible defender and is now adding to his offense in a way that is very,
05:49very valuable.
05:50I think the idea was just Jalen Green, you were hoping he could be a centralized scoring piece.
05:54And he is a scoring piece, but it became clear.
05:57I mean, we even had the realization last year that, okay, this is not going to reach the way that
06:01we had thought.
06:01Up until that point, it felt like that was a possibility.
06:03So, I'm not mad in the moment, but it does, looking at it afterwards, and it is worth noting, Evan
06:08Mobley isn't the central piece of what they're doing there, even, in the way that Jalen Green was supposed to
06:12be here.
06:12So, I do think that that factors in, but it does suck when you put it all in all together,
06:17whole cloth, and you look around and you're like, damn, it does feel like you missed.
06:21And the Stephon Castle thing, to me, I still believe I've been the guy advocating for him.
06:28You know, Reed Shepard's going to be a valuable piece, but you have to step back and realize he's not
06:32that.
06:33You know, he's not Stephon Castle, and I don't know if he ever will be, especially from the defensive perspective.
06:38You know, Stephon Castle with Ime Adoka, you would never even think twice about, you know, who's going to be
06:44where.
06:45Well, that was the question I was going to ask, is does this look different if you swap them, if
06:49they're in different contexts?
06:50Because, I mean, I remember with Stephon, well, I guess Stephon Castle, you know, pretty young guy in this.
06:55Like, you did not have him on those Spurs teams before Big Vic, right?
07:00But does he look the same if he is not in that context of what the Spurs have built?
07:04Because it is worth noting that, you know, the sum of the parts is greater than, or the whole is
07:09greater than, you know, the parts in some instances.
07:12And that does look like, obviously, with Vic and the way that they've built it, I mean, it's hard to
07:16deny they're going to the Western Conference Final right now.
07:18Well, all these guys, I mean, and by the way, the Cavaliers, man, Harden didn't do squat.
07:24Yeah, that's correct.
07:24He didn't do anything.
07:26That is correct.
07:27It was the game seven.
07:30But the game wasn't even close.
07:31And I was saying, they still just drubbed them.
07:34And Harden's like, I'm going to go two for nine or whatever he was.
07:37Two for eight.
07:38Yeah, so I was like, okay.
07:40Yeah.
07:42But not.
07:43So what does this do for your evaluation of Rafael Stone in general?
07:46I think in general it speaks for itself.
07:48I think those are, whether in retrospect, you know, whether it's revisionist, I don't think it's revisionist because we know
07:55these guys are good.
07:57It was bad evaluation.
07:59They got the wrong guys.
08:01They got the wrong guys.
08:02I'm just wondering because I feel like they did take Reed strictly because of the shooting.
08:07Because they did have, at that time, they did have our man Thompson.
08:12They did have, you know, Jalen Green for what it's worth and all that.
08:15And Fred VanVleet.
08:16Yes.
08:16We know that they value highly.
08:18Yeah.
08:18So I'm just wondering if they felt like that was too many wing guys, maybe.
08:23Maybe they just wanted somebody that could really shoot lights out.
08:26Yeah.
08:27But unfortunately, that didn't really happen how it was.
08:30It was tough, man.
08:31I mean, that's what I was thinking about the whole time.
08:32Yeah, when you look at it like this, it is tough.
08:34Okay, so then real quick because we're kind of far spent on time.
08:39B. Scott was making a valuable point, I think, over the weekend about how one of the probably biggest places
08:46for hope when you talk about building this team is the fact that you have control of Brooklyn's pick next
08:51year and Phoenix's pick next year.
08:54And one, maybe both of those teams can be bad, very much so, to the point where you could be
08:58talking about lottery picks.
09:01Is this hurting that portion of your evaluation where you go, those are the pieces that could help you take
09:06that step forward?
09:06I think it's affecting your confidence.
09:07You know, we can go back to the Texans and drafting offensive linemen.
09:12They haven't been real good about it.
09:13We think that might be changing, but they haven't been real good about it.
09:16All those picks, there was a time, would they have like seven, nine picks or something, you know, way back
09:21in the day that they had accumulated?
09:23You didn't make the most out of them.
09:25You haven't made the most out of them.
09:26So how does it make you feel about the picks coming up?
09:30Interesting question that we'll have to dig into.
09:32I mean, this offseason is going to be an important one, and so these are the things that I imagine
09:35you have to consider when you're doing things.
09:37But maybe this is like an internal evaluation, but I don't think Rafael Stone would look at all these, or
09:42maybe he would.
09:42Maybe in some level of truth serum circumstance, he would look at it and go, okay, in hindsight, but in
09:48the moment, you make the best choice that you can, and then you try and develop it.
09:51Right side, he did get the right Thompson to win.
09:53He got the right one.
09:54All-Star was out there looking useless, man.
09:57That brother cannot shoot.
09:58Both of them boys need to do like Kanye West that one time, lock themselves in the gym for three
10:02summers.
10:03For three summers, yes.
10:04You're exactly where I'm going.
10:05Just shoot.
10:06Shoot 100, 200, 300 shots a day.
10:08You need to get the best shooting coach on the planet.
10:11On the planet.
10:12Yeah, leave the shooter.
10:13Where you at, my boy?
10:14They would be cold if they had a shot, man.
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