Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
Disagree. You don't take a 55 win team with a 27 year old superstar and blow it up, unless you believe every team in the league should just lie down for the Warriors.
Morey is a swing for the fences GM and no doubt will be pursuing George as well. This gives Rockets a couple of years to take a run at this and they gave up little of consequence. Harden was a huge disappointment in the playoffs biggest games for sure, but you play the cards you're dealt as best you can.
Harden also needs to handle the ball a little less. He had an amazing season but they were predictable in crunch time.
As a fan of the team, I'm excited to see what they can do next year.
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Reminder: They lost by 40, at home, in a must win situation, against a team missing one of the top 3 players in the league. This is a team that barely plays any defense, the only way you can beat the Warriors. Getting George is not possible, everyone else can offer more and better assets. The Rockets just gave up all their tradeable assets in this trade. Best case is they can get Milsap, but even then that's getting in luxury tax hell, and that team with Milsap still has less than a 1% chance of beating the Warriors. There's the hope they maybe get Carmelo if he gets bought out, but I suspect part of the reason the Zen Master was shown the door was he intended to do that. Dolan won't let that happen now.
I think best case scenario for the Rockets is getting swept by the Warriors in the WCF. Worst case scenario is Paul and Harden don't mesh, and you're on the hook for $40 million a season to a player in decline over five more years, with a team stuck going nowhere. I don't think every team should lie down...just every team but the Spurs and Cavs (to become the Sixers next year). Everyone else should develop their young guys and wait for the post-Warriors world. But when your chances of winning it all hinge on Durant or Curry getting seriously hurt, it's a pretty poor strategy to win a title. Trading Harden now would have allowed them to stack up on assets for the post-Warriors world. Now they'll be lucky to not be crippled going into that world since they are now all in and will likely waste even more assets in a fruitless effort to beat the Warriors.