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Rockets GM Rafael Stone has no regrets over James Harden trade

Ben DuBose
·3 min read

In a Monday press conference to recap the NBA’s recently completed trade season, Houston Rockets GM Rafael Stone said he had no regrets regarding January’s trade sending James Harden to Brooklyn.

The most marquee name received by the Rockets in the blockbuster deal was two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo, who was later deemed a sub-optimal fit and traded to Miami. Nonetheless, from Houston’s view, the biggest incentive to the Harden trade was the historic haul of four future first-round draft picks and pick-swap rights for other years.

That’s why, even without much to show for it at the moment, Stone says he remains confident in the return he received. In particular, the Rockets have expressed a belief that their abundance of future picks will give them opportunities to be aggressive on the trade market.

When asked by ESPN’s Tim MacMahon about his view of the Harden trade, more than two months since its execution, Stone replied:

One of your colleagues texted me the day after the trade, and they said they would evaluate me in 2027. I told them that that was too early; they should do it in 2030. I think we felt at the time that we did the best deal for the franchise possible. Obviously, that’s my job, so I did it. Particularly given the types of things we got back, yeah, it feels like you can’t possibly know how you did for multiple years — like three, five, something like that. But I feel good about it.

I would for sure, 100 percent, do that deal again. Again, you guys don’t have the advantages of knowing everything I know, but literally no part of me regrets doing that deal. I have not second-guessed it for a moment.

A lot of what I said about being in a position maybe not to have to be bad [to rebuild], there’s some other things that we’ve done, too. But it’s primarily that deal that’s allowed us to say, ‘Hey, we want to compete on a slightly quicker timeframe. We’re not going to go down this path of intentionally trying to lose games for years on end.

The Rockets didn’t want to trade Harden at all, of course. Their preference was to continue trying to pursue a championship each year, with the perennial All-Star and MVP frontrunner as their focal point.

But the 31-year-old, whose prime years are likely starting to run out, informed Houston’s front office before the season that he wanted a trade elsewhere, in hopes of a better opportunity to pursue a title, From there, Stone determined that a trade was a better outcome for the franchise than keeping an unhappy Harden and running the risk of him leaving for no compensation as early as 2022 free agency. Since the deal, the Rockets (13-32) have endured a historic 20-game losing streak and entered Monday with the Western Conference’s second-worst record.

Nonetheless, the motivation for selecting the trade they did was about much more than solely the 2020-21 season. That’s where Stone wants the focus to be, as the Rockets wind down a disappointing campaign.

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