Stone, Silas aiming to build versatile roster
The greatest change, Rockets general manager Rafael Stone said only semi-facetiously, is that when he drives to work in the morning, Daryl Morey is no longer sitting in his passenger seat.
After so many years as a righthand man for Morey in the conference rooms and left hand on their commute to Toyota Center, Stone said the aggressive mentality that marked Morey’s 13 years as general manager will not change. Neither will the championship aspirations that he said come with building a team around James Harden.
“We’re going to continue to be extraordinarily aggressive,” Stone said in the Thursday news conference introducing Stephen Silas as coach. “We’re going to shoot for it. Whether we get there or not, I don’t know, but I can guarantee you we’re going to shoot for it, and I’m really, really looking forward to it.
“We still have James Harden. Our goal is still to win a championship. And if you’ve got him, you know you’re halfway there. It’s incumbent on me, Stephen and the whole team to figure out the rest of the whole. But the key piece is there.”
The Rockets have no picks in the Nov. 18 draft and are over the salary cap as they head to free agency, expected to begin days later. But Stone said he expects to add a few players to the returning core, and he and Silas strongly suggested they will seek a more traditional center.
“We’re definitely not going into this offseason saying, ‘You know, we don’t want anyone over 6-7,’ ” Stone said. “Wewant really good basketball players. We’re definitely not wedded to anything. One of the things that Stephen and I have talked about a lot is the ability to throw different things at different teams. I would anticipate that we’ll probably … provide Stephen with a little bit more optionality in terms of being able to go big or go small.”
Silas indicated he would be all for that. Though he has no objection to using small lineups and cited his time working with one of the small-ball innovators, Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson, Silas spoke of the benefits of having the traditional option.
“In today’s NBA, you cannot play just one way,” Silas said. “You have to have multiple ways of playing. Small ball can be part of it, but also having a bigger guy, a traditional-type center where you can roll to the rim or duck in or do some different things to where the matchups will be a little better.
“On the offensive end, being a little bit less predictable I would say is what I’m looking to do. And then on the defensive end, the same thing, being a little less predictable as far as somuch switching and get into maybe play a little bit of zone. I want to be the team you have to spend a day preparing to play the Houston Rockets.”
Stone pushed back on the assumption he will be instructed to keep the Rockets’ payroll under the luxury tax or that he and Morey had ever been directed by owner Tilman Fertitta to make deals with that in mind. He did say avoiding the luxury tax has been important to maintaining flexibility to make deals not permissible when designated a “repeater” tax team.
“This entire time, I’ve been in on every conversation that’s been had between Tillman and Daryl or Tilman and Tad (Brown, the Rockets CEO),” Stone said. “Tilman has never once said that he’s not willing to spend if spending results in winning. So, you know, that’s consistent. And, you know, he reiterated tome… what his priorities were. They’re winning first, second and ad nauseum. And money, not somuch.”
Still, therewas an introductory press conference because there was new leadership to introduce. More than Stone’s carpool had changed, even if much, he said, will remain the same.
“I feel like we’ve built something really, really special in the last 15 years,” Stone said. “Tad and I worked super closely together, and it’s awesome that I’m still going to have him to lean on. And just the entire team that’s here — Eli (Witus), Jimmy (Paulis), Ed (Pinckney) — we built this really, really cool thing.
“We have this immensely talented roster. The goal is to bring in another guy or two who can really complement these guys. There are a variety of mechanisms we can use to do it. And we’ll be just incredibly aggressive about making that happen.”