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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