Sengun hype, Carlos Correa, a new home for Gordon
Unreasonable Expectations
I'll be honest. I've been holding back on my excitement just because I don't want to seem like even more of a homer than I already do on the timeline. But I find myself just sitting back in absolute amazement over where the franchise sits right now. I feel like a lot of younger folks who haven't been through a rebuilding perhaps might not be grasping the irregularity of the current position.
I remember after the 1996-1997 season was ended by John Stockton's buzzer beating three pointer in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, a 12-year-old Rahat consoled himself by looking forward to the title run the next season. Of course, the Rockets didn't get anywhere close to true title contention for 20 more years. I had started watching basketball in 1993 and thus, at the time, I just thought it was normal for one's own team to compete for titles.
Rebuilding is a grueling process that takes an inordinate amount of luck. You could be the worst team in the league and come away with like the sixth pick in a three-player draft. Having this many enticing cornerstone prospects not even one calendar year into a rebuilding project just isn't normal. Even setting aside guys like Josh Christopher, Usman Garuba, and KJ Martin, the Rockets already have three potential cornerstones in Kevin Porter Jr., Jalen Green, and Alperen Sengun. That just feels unthinkable.
Find Eric Gordon a new home
(Tuesday, 10/19/21, 7:35 AM): I was writing a piece earlier last week about Eric Gordon's future with the Rockets, and it wasn't until I had really dug in that I realized that there aren't too many potential new homes for him if Rafael Stone decides to scour the trade market. This is because amongst contenders and teams on the hot seat anxious to make a playoff push (i.e. the teams that would actually have interest in Gordon's services), not many have much in the way of the appropriate size of Gordon's contract for a cap match. We obviously knew this would be the case for John Wall and his gargantuan $44 million contract. But in some ways, you might even be able to argue that matching a contract that size is actually easier than cleanly matching Gordon's $18 million without taking back too much long-term waste.
Scouring the league, here is how I would classify every team:
Contenders: Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Miami, Utah, Phoenix, Denver, LAC, Dallas, Portland, LAL, and Golden State.
Content playoff teams: Atlanta.
Possibly anxious playoff teams: New York, Boston, Indiana, Chicago, Portland, Memphis.
Who knows what their plans are: Charlotte, San Antonio.
Cellar: Toronto, Cleveland, Orlando, Detroit, New Orleans, Minnesota, Sacramento, Oklahoma City.
I think any of the teams in the contender group would love to have Gordon, if they could. And I also think the anxious teams would do something stupid, against their long-term interests if they thought a veteran acquisition could help them with seeding or push their odds for advancing out of the first round. Out of the teams in the cellar, I could also see New Orleans, Minnesota, or Sacramento pushing chips in for a veteran if they got off to an unexpected hot start and looked to be in the playoff picture.
The need for veterans
After the loss to the Raptors the other night, Stephen Silas said, "[o]ne thing I talked about prior to the game with the group was the physicality, and teams are going to be going at us. It is up to us to stand up to it and not back down."
I questioned the signing of Daniel Theis during the off-season, wondering why the team would commit resources to veterans that might impact the standings (and thus harm draft position). However, one reason to have guys like Theis and David Nwaba is to simply enable yourself to compete physically. Even if you aren't looking to win games and harm your draft position, you don't want your young players to become completely demoralized by being unable to even compete physically. That's where blue-collar veterans like Theis and Nwaba can help.
The other reason to have Theis, of course, is to essentially rent out cap space for a player who can be flipped at the deadline to a contender. The risk here though is that if agents get a sense that this is the team’s MO, they may steer their clients away from the organization in the future.
Sengun Hype
I didn't realize until just the other day that Alperen Sengun actually has the sixth lowest odds, currently, to win Rookie of the Year. I know there were league wide raves following summer league, but I didn't realize the hype was this real. Based off of just how awkward the Daniel Theis and Christian Wood pairing has looked so far, I think Sengun is going to crack the starting lineup by January. That's my prediction.
The reason for bringing him off the bench obviously are the concerns regarding his foot speed defensively. I'm not sure it really even matters given how bad the team projects to be overall regardless. Maybe Stephen Silas should just give the 19-year-old all the minutes he can handle? The team is going to have to figure out eventually whether the Wood and Sengun pairing can work, as a long-term decision.
Pay Carlos Correa
I wrote a few weeks ago that a franchise wouldn't lose revenue by letting a fan favorite go assuming that some amount of the salary expense was properly allocated to recreating the lost production. (For example, if Correa leaves for $35 million somewhere, and you spend $20 million, rather than the counterfactual where he leaves for $35 million and ownership pockets the savings entirely.) But I want to dive into the economics of this decision more closely.
Setting aside the on-field production, which very easily in baseball can be quantified, Correa is very easily the leader of this team, a team which has been one of the most successful in the modern history of the sport. How do you quantify leadership in a sport which, unlike basketball, is really a series of individual micro-encounters strung together? You could argue that given how much nerves play a part in performance, particularly in the playoffs, that leadership can alleviate that pressure and have trickle down effects.
What is the value of building goodwill with a fanbase? I really don’t know the answer to that question. Take George Springer, for example. While everyone is sad that he’s gone, and emotions are evoked every time a graphic is shared depicting his playoff heroics, Kyle Tucker has largely replaced Springer’s overall production. Are we supporting the team any less?