drosestruts wrote:DASMACKDOWN wrote:I get so irritated as a Bulls fan when you have just about every other team go on at least a 5 game win streak. Even the bad ones in the past 2 seasons.
The Rockets who were terribly bad last season, have turned it around and now on an 11 game win streak.
It took us 2+ seasons of continuity to bust out a 4 game win streak.
This team has no consistency. Its also not built to sustain it either.
The Rockets kind of followed a similar playbook to us - acquired young talent and then quickly added multiple veterans (FVV, Brooks, Jeff Green, Steven Adams).
No. They did the opposite. The actually did a rebuild. They did what you don't want the Bulls to do now, because as you keep saying there are "no guarantees that rebuilding will work." Which is true, of course, but irrelevant because what we are doing instead certainly didn't work and has no upside to work better later.
Lets break down what Houston did.
1. From 2012-2020 the Rockets reached the postseason (the real postseason, not the pretend one we call the play in).
2. During the last year of that, they were led by James Harden (30), Russell Westbrook (31), PJ Tucker (34), Clint Capela (25) and Eric Gordon (31). They won 44 games and reached the WC Semi-Finals, but the team had reached its peak, was aging, and no longer had a contending ceiling.
3. They then completely gutted the team. They traded Harden for draft picks. They traded Westbrook to eat Wall's deal because they got a first round pick with it. They even traded Capela at age 25, nearly giving him away so they could free up cap space for the future. They turned over the core of a playoff roster (from a much better team than ours) in exchange for win later, future assets.
4. And got bad quick. Intentionally. Enduring three straight years with a total of 59 wins. Just 14 wins more in three years than in the one year prior to the blow-up.
5. Due to these moves, and the willingness to gut the team of veterans to completely bottom out, they then drafted Jalen Green, Jabari Smith, Cam Whitmore, Tari Eason, Amen Thompson and used picks to trade for Sengun on draft day.
6. Then, only after being sufficiently bad for enough time (3 years) to have loaded up a nice young roster and dramatically reduced their salary, then went out and spent big money on specific vets they felt would elevate their young studs to hasten the rebuild.
This is not at all what the Bulls did. AKME TRADED AWAY young players and future draft picks to get older and "better" as quickly as possible. And not to elevate cultivated youth, but to replace youth completely as the core of the team. Then they repeatedly passed up on opportunities to trade away their vets for future assets like Houston did to effect a classic rebuild.
NOTE: One might say that Harden forced their hand. And he did. But the motive is irrelevant to the conduct. They still did what they did, and I'd bet you my house there isn't a single Rockets fan in existence today who doesn't love that they did it.