- 2 days ago
Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast dive into what Rockets GM Rafael Stone had to say to the media about trading away Jalen Green and Cam Whitmore, as well as bringing in Clint Capela.
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00:00Rappel Stone met with the media yesterday.
00:02Yay!
00:03Yeah, well, it's the Kevin Durant trade.
00:06We've known about it for two weeks, but it didn't become official until Sunday.
00:09It turns out it was a seven-team trade.
00:11Everybody got involved in it.
00:13I ignored all the news.
00:14It didn't really register until the trade was official.
00:16Until the trade, yes.
00:17I was like, oh, this thing's really happening.
00:18Seth is somebody who goes by the business year.
00:21Like, until it's done, I don't even want to hear about it.
00:24I'll tell you what, if there was ever anything that was going to fall through
00:27after things had been agreed upon, but it couldn't be made official yet.
00:30If there was ever anything that was going to fall through,
00:32it might be a seven-team trade.
00:35Dude, I think about, like, what if one of these players,
00:38not if we get morbid about this,
00:39but, like, what if one of the players involved gets hit by a bus
00:41two days before the start of the league year?
00:44I know, yeah.
00:45That guy would screw everything up.
00:46Are we trading his corpse in the deal?
00:49Like, what's going on?
00:50This jackass was looking at his cell phone as he was crossing the street.
00:53Right.
00:53You know?
00:54And that bus driver's got to live with it the rest of his life.
00:56Yeah.
00:57Even though it's not his fault.
00:58Yeah, I don't know.
00:59With a seven-team trade, you're just waiting for at some point,
01:02basically, it's like the car salesman saying, like,
01:05so you want the rust-proofing, right?
01:07Yeah.
01:08Can't do it without the rust-proofing.
01:09They're like, oh, no, wait, wait, I thought we had a deal.
01:12What's up?
01:12Nope, you've got to get the rust-proofing.
01:14You're going to ruin the seven-team trade if you don't get the rust-proofing.
01:18So, the deal's done.
01:19Kevin Durant is a rocket.
01:20Jalen Green out the door.
01:22Here is Raphael Stone, who drafted Jalen Green with the thought that he would be the face
01:29of this franchise four years after being in the league.
01:31Instead, he is the key component going out in a trade for one of the best players of all
01:36time in Kevin Durant.
01:37Here's Raphael Stone yesterday on trading Jalen Green.
01:39Was it a difficult decision to move on from Jalen Green?
01:42Yeah, like, Jalen's awesome.
01:45He did everything we asked.
01:48He's a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic, along with being just a great human
01:56being.
01:57And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works
02:04really hard and is really nice, you should value it.
02:08And so, organizationally, we've valued him tremendously.
02:12So, yeah, very hard.
02:14Yeah.
02:14I believe every word of that.
02:16I think they wanted Jalen Green to be the guy who was going to lead them to whatever it
02:22is they're hoping they experience these next couple years.
02:24It's honestly probably one of the hardest things to do as a general manager or as a coach is
02:30to try to just really objectively look at, all right, what is this guy?
02:36What did we hope that he would be?
02:39We've seen four years of it.
02:41At what point do you just move on from a decision?
02:46Because it's not like they're moving on from Jalen Green, obviously.
02:49You're bringing in Kevin Durant.
02:50Yeah.
02:51But you are.
02:52And I think I'm in the same place as maybe the majority of Rockets fans in which, look,
02:57yes, Jalen Green obviously has a lot of value to a basketball team.
03:01But I'd abandoned any thought that he would superstar at some point, which is fine.
03:08It's not like that's a huge flaming indictment of the guy or anything.
03:13It was that, okay, this guy's not going to be Kobe Bryant.
03:16Right.
03:16You know, like that's not the worst crime in the world.
03:19No.
03:19But it's just you've got to make your decisions more rationally and without being infused with
03:27hope and aspirations necessarily.
03:29Yeah, Jalen Green's not a bust.
03:31You know, like that's the thing.
03:32It's like he's the second overall pick.
03:34And if the goal for him, Seth, was that we want him to be the best player on a championship
03:40team, it didn't work out.
03:41He's not the best player.
03:42I don't think he ever will be the best player on a championship team.
03:45But the blow is cushioned by the fact that, yes, Kevin Durant is coming back in the, freaking
03:51Kevin Durant is coming back in the trade.
03:53And two, the other picks you've made, I think have all worked out to a degree that you're
03:59cool with it or very, very cool with it.
04:01Like you traded into, that same draft, you traded back into the first round with OKC to
04:06draft Alperin Shangun.
04:08He's an all-star.
04:08You drafted him at 16.
04:10He's an all-star.
04:11Jabari Smith is fine at three.
04:13I know Paolo Boncaro just got like a max deal yesterday and Jabari Smith got 125 million
04:17for the same amount of time.
04:19I'm more comfortable with the Jabari contract at 125 than paying Paolo Boncaro 60 million
04:23a year, but that's a separate topic.
04:25Jabari's been fine.
04:26Fine enough where you extended him for five years.
04:28Tar Eason has been at 17.
04:31Great at 17.
04:33And then obviously, Alman Thompson, I think, has the potential to be a top 10 player in
04:37the league.
04:38So the fact that, A, you're getting Kevin Durant, B, Jalen Green was a good player.
04:43He just wasn't a great player.
04:46Everything else working out around this is like, OK, it should make it easy.
04:50The only thing that should be hard for Raphael Stone is if there is an emotional tie to this
04:55was the first guy.
04:55That's the first guy I ever drafted as the Rockets GM.
04:58You know?
04:58But I think Raphael Stone is able to do a very good job of divorcing himself and separating
05:03the emotional part, like a lot of these analytic, quasi-analytic GMs are.
05:07I really liked just the first three words, or the first word of that response, where
05:12Ben, can we apologize, Ben?
05:16I know it's hard to cue these things.
05:17Yeah.
05:17Like, Jalen's awesome.
05:19You know what we need?
05:20Yeah.
05:20Was it hard?
05:21We need that.
05:23Anytime we need a yes, that'll be our yes.
05:25And anytime we need a no, it'll be Raphael Devers.
05:28Yeah.
05:29Was it hard to trade Jalen Green?
05:31Yeah.
05:31Yeah.
05:33Was it hard to trade Cam Whitmore, though?
05:37No.
05:37There we go.
05:39There we go.
05:42Hey, in fact, now that's not what he said, to be fair.
05:45Here's what Raphael Stone said about trading Cam Whitmore yesterday.
05:51I just think, yeah, we're just not a developmental team right now.
05:53It's really like we wanted to provide Cam with the opportunity to do in his career what
05:57we still believe he very much can do.
05:59So I think Cam's insanely talented, really nice young man and wanted to provide him an
06:06opportunity to go home and be in a situation where he could really play through mistakes
06:12in a way that we never could afford him just in the iteration of the Rockets that he joined.
06:16See, this is another one where I'm not kidding.
06:18Like, there's people that are upset that they only got two second-round picks for the 20th
06:23pick in the draft in a couple years.
06:26And I can't get upset about this.
06:28Like, I can't.
06:29No, it's a...
06:29Look at where this team is right now.
06:31And there's...
06:32The physical upside there is huge, obviously.
06:35But there's a reason he fell.
06:37With all of that ability and upside, there's a reason he fell to 20th in the draft.
06:41Yeah.
06:42And then you get the other dynamic where this is where it's...
06:46I'm watching that Damian Pierce interview that Texans Radio did with him yesterday.
06:50Texans Radio is smart.
06:51They did that Damian Pierce interview, like, a couple weeks ago.
06:56Oh, did they?
06:56And they rolled out a few last week of guys that weren't going to get as many kids, like
07:01Laken Tomlinson and everything.
07:02And they waited until Monday after the 4th of July to put the Damian Pierce one.
07:05Yeah, he's good.
07:06Because he's going to be a popular one.
07:08Yep.
07:08So, but I'm watching Damian Pierce, and a lot of it just goes into, man, there's some guys
07:14that would have been better served by being non-first-round picks.
07:20Like, Damian is wired in such a way that it's been a really challenging couple years for
07:27him.
07:27It just hasn't worked out the same way it did his rookie year.
07:30Yeah.
07:31But he's also a guy that doesn't have the lofty expectations or pressure necessarily of
07:37a first-round pick.
07:38And he's been a model citizen when it comes to kind of fighting through the adversity.
07:42With Cam Whitmore, he's acted as if he is constantly put out by the fact that he's not getting more
07:51playing time.
07:52To the point where the reports are that Udoka just couldn't get this guy to buy into the
07:57team mentality and everything.
07:59So it just, it was a bad fit for a lot of reasons.
08:02And then maybe Cam Whitmore in a new setting, and it was maybe good for him.
08:07But it just, it was the wrong fit at that moment.
08:11Like, you just don't have, your roster is too packed with really good guys who do it
08:17the way Udoka wants it to do, wants them to do it, to work on a, like a rehab project
08:23or some kind of, you know, trying to get a guy's mind right, all of that.
08:28It just, it wasn't going to work.
08:29Yeah.
08:29It's the, Stone put it yesterday, the way he put it, and I don't know if we have this
08:33cut or not.
08:34We're going to play another cut from here in a second.
08:36Maybe it's part of this.
08:37But he said, when he was asked about Whitmore, he said, we're not a developmental team anymore.
08:42You know, we're not, we're, we're, we're not a team where guys are going to get 30 minutes
08:46just so they can become better young basketball players.
08:49We, we are, it's winning time, you know, like there's, so there was a time, I mean, the Rockets
08:55lived through a time where it was all developmental.
08:57We're going to win 20 games, but Jalen Green and Alperin Shengun and Tari Yiesin and Jabari
09:02Smith Jr.
09:03and Alman Thompson are all going to become better basketball players for it, for the
09:07losing.
09:07So yeah, they're not, that's not the team they are anymore.
09:10Yeah.
09:10And with Whitmore, like, I don't know anything about him personally, and obviously I'm not
09:13at practices or anything, but it, from the outside looking in with the things that have
09:18been reported about it and with the way Cam Whitmore has talked about it himself openly,
09:22you know, kind of airing a lot of stuff that should be kept in-house and making it public
09:26drama.
09:27There's an element sometimes with players where they keep looking at the coach like, Hey, how
09:31come I'm not getting this chance?
09:32How come I'm not getting this chance?
09:33The coach is telling him, this is, look, you're competing against these guys on your team.
09:38I need to see you do this better.
09:40I need to see you do that better.
09:41And in the player's brain, they just can't get it out of their head.
09:46Instead of like really just turning it into the challenge that it is and figuring out a
09:51way to earn your way onto the floor.
09:52That's what it looks like to me from the outside looking in.
09:55And it's hard when you're a, when you're a culture guy, Luke, like Udoka, that is, is
10:00one of the very few coaches that seems to be competent at actually building a culture.
10:03You can't just sacrifice everything that you do to build a culture for that one guy.
10:08Yeah.
10:08It's, it's tough.
10:09Like I'm trying to, I'm trying to really figure out where the fans are and like at what,
10:14at what point in the chain here with Cam Whitmore are they angry with?
10:17Are you angry that they only got two second round picks back?
10:20Cause that's, that's the league speaking on Cam Whitmore.
10:23You know, like that's what he is.
10:25If you're mad that they drafted him with the 20th pick, knowing that there was this baggage,
10:29that's the reason he was at 20 Seth.
10:31Like they, he was supposed to be a top five pick.
10:33He's at 20 because of the attitude issues.
10:36I don't have an issue with this.
10:38I, you take a swing, you get the guy in the building.
10:40You hope that maybe he matures.
10:42I mean, this is a sport where they're drafting guys at 18 and 19 years old.
10:46You do a lot of maturing from the age of 18 to 22.
10:49You hope that maybe he gets in, he matures a little bit.
10:51And it didn't happen with him.
10:53So be it, you know, that's, that's, that's why you have seven first round picks through
10:57a four year period.
10:58I mean, it's like, I've never been mad at the Astros for drafting Royce White back in
11:03the day.
11:03Royce White had issues.
11:04Yeah.
11:05Yeah.
11:05What did I say?
11:06Astros.
11:06Oh, they didn't do it at all.
11:08Credit to the Astros.
11:09That was when they started turning things around.
11:11I said, you know what?
11:12No, that's not the guy for us right now.
11:15We're not going to take Royce White.
11:16We knew it.
11:17So, um, but Royce White back in 2012, 13, whenever he got drafted, that was a guy that
11:22physically was better than a 16 overall on it.
11:27It didn't work out like, all right, it was, it's just 16th overall pick.
11:30It's not a lottery.
11:31And you can say, and in that particular draft, they had three first round picks that Royce
11:35White tried.
11:36That was a draft where they drafted Jeremy Lamb.
11:38I forget who they drafted.
11:39They had like 12, 14 and 16 in that draft.
11:42And they drafted Jeremy Lamb.
11:43I remember that they, and they drafted one other guy.
11:45I can't remember who it was.
11:47When you have that plethora of picks, you can take swings like that.
11:50If that's the only first round pick, if Cam Whitmore were the only first round pick that
11:54they had that year and they didn't have one the year before, and they don't have one the
11:57year after, that's the only first, that's the only bite at the apple you get.
12:01And you take a chance on an attitude guy and it doesn't work out.
12:04And they're drafting him in a three-year period where they're drafting five other guys in
12:09the first round.
12:10You know, so I don't, I don't have a big, I don't have a big issue with that either.
12:13The, uh, the objectively, the biggest thing to worry about right now with the Rockets
12:19is because everything looks great about it other than the whole injury dynamic.
12:23Yeah.
12:23That's where I'm, I'm really intrigued by the way that I think the Rockets have behaved
12:27in such a way that, yeah, we realize there are some potential injury issues or age issues.
12:32Yep.
12:32So they bring in Capella to the, like, it's not like they're going to try to get three big
12:37men on the floor.
12:37They bring in Capella, who's a perfect compliment to a guy like Steven Adams, who you're going
12:44to try to load manage throughout the season.
12:46So you can still play with your two big men lineup plus seven foot tall Kevin Durant.
12:49Hey man, I, you know, that would be fun though, if they trotted.
12:52Actually three big men plus Kevin Durant.
12:54Yes.
12:55Yeah.
12:55I saw Al P working on his three point shot.
12:58I saw some footage.
12:59Al P plays at the, he plays at the small forward for you and then you throw Adams and Capella
13:04just as a, just as how it works.
13:07I think they kind of stumbled into this Adams and Shangoon thing a little bit last year.
13:11I don't know that they were planning on that being an outstanding lineup for them last
13:15year.
13:15You know, it's victory through geometry, right?
13:18That's what it is.
13:18You know, we're going to play the game.
13:20Uh, I don't know how tall, if you're seven foot tall and you got your hands over your head,
13:23what is that at nine feet or so, uh, yeah, we're going to play the game at nine feet above
13:27the ground surface.
13:28Yes.
13:28Go ahead.
13:28We're just going to pass.
13:29You want ball movement?
13:31We're just going to have four, seven footers out there tossing the ball around.
13:35It's like Capella, the shortest, I believe, uh, above their heads.
13:40We try to get us shorties.
13:41We are redefining the phrase, get on our level.
13:44Our level is right up here at nine and a half.
13:46This is a team of Euclidean, Euclidean geometry.
13:49That's right.
13:50That's right.
13:50Here's Raphael Stone.
13:51He was asked, does the Capella signing show a bigger willingness to go with big lineups?
13:56The Clint Capella signing, does that sort of signal a willingness to go more double big
14:00next year?
14:01For sure.
14:02We, we, we love that lineup, uh, once we discovered it last year, we thought it was really, really
14:06effective for us.
14:08Um, also Clint just adds something we don't have, um, uh, in terms of being kind of, uh,
14:15a center who can move a little bit easier on the perimeter also as a lob threat.
14:19But finally, we just think depth is super important.
14:22And as we're trying to make it through the season, we don't want there to be huge drop
14:27off.
14:27So we did not anticipate going into free agency that we would be able to get Clint, but we're
14:33ecstatic when, when that materialized.
14:35I, I love his use of the word discover for the Adams shingun lineup.
14:40Like it was like, like it was plutonium or something like, or gravity or like, we discovered
14:47because it does feel like they kind of stumbled upon it a little bit.
14:50Like, wow, this is, you know, like champagne was not a thing that was the person who invented
14:55champagne, what didn't set out to invent champagne.
14:57They did some sort of mix and like, oh, wow, this is carbonated and it's pretty good.
15:01I like it.
15:02For some reason, I can't remember.
15:05There was some conversation I had long ago about like Clint Capella, if he could develop
15:09a three point shot, this can't be correct.
15:11I hope you weren't initiating that conversation.
15:14No, no, no, no.
15:15It was the, we were just messing around with it.
15:18I think it was something I had a cook about it improved his shooting in some regards.
15:22So it was free throw shooting.
15:23So like, yeah, but just imagine if he's taken zero three point attempts in his career.
15:27Yeah.
15:27That's a, that is good for you.
15:29Now that you, now that you mentioned it, there was a, there was a time where hackapella was
15:33a thing and him working on his free throws would get a ton of people who were at practice.
15:40That was a big iPhone thing, man.
15:42Let's get out the iPhone and video Clint shooting his free throws.
15:45Yeah, it was in his second season when he had 35 starts, that was the first time he had
15:50any starts.
15:51He shot 37.9% from the free throw, the free throw line.
15:55And he worked it all the way up.
15:57That's what that, that was the discussion because we had worked, he had worked it all the
16:00way up to a 63 per 64% and 2018, 19.
16:05I think that was when I said, I started wondering like, Hey, all right, now let's keep going.
16:09Let's stretch it out.
16:10Let's keep going.
16:11Like Felman, he's holding hands together, driving off the cliff.
16:14Let's go.
16:15The ultimate weapon.
16:16Yeah.
16:17Yeah.
16:18Hey man, if the new bowl can develop a three point shot, so could Clint Capella.
16:21The new bowl was shooting threes by the end of his career.
16:23He has seasons of 50% from the three point line.
16:28He was 60% from the free throw line.
16:34Free throw line.
16:34Yeah.
16:35You said three point line.
16:36Okay.
16:36So I did.
16:37Yes.
16:37Free throw line.
16:38Free throw line.
16:40So two years ago, he was 60% or three years ago.
16:44He's 60%.
16:45Two years ago, he was 63% reverted to 53% last year, but yeah, he's gotten that in order.
16:50It's all right.
16:51And, and he's not, look, he's, he is souped up Jock Lawndale on this team.
16:56That's, that's his role.
16:57Like he's big man coming in for 15, 20 minutes.
17:00If I had to guess.
17:00And, and to your point, Steven Adams insurance.
17:03Uh, all right.
17:04Um, I just want to get him a three point.
17:06It's I do too.
17:07Now you've got me a blowout win or something.
17:10You know, dish it out.
17:11He'll be wide open at the arc.
17:12Oh yeah.
17:13Nobody's checking him.
17:14Yeah.
17:14Nobody's getting into his landing space.
17:17Um,
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