Rafael Stone has been with the Rockets since 2005, serving primarily as the team’s general counsel until 2019. In that role, Stone focused on legal matters for the Toyota Center, television and radio agreements, community relations, sponsorship agreements, intellectual property, human resources, risk management, and compliance with league rules. Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle wrote a great piece about his background with the organization when he first got the job.
Some fans may need that introduction because until his promotion to Rockets vice president of basketball operations in 2019, Stone was an unknown figure to the outside world. Even after former Rockets GM Daryl Morey stepped down in 2020 and Stone was tasked with filling his shoes, he was still kind of a shadowy figure to most. A lot of people had questions, including.
How prepared was he to take on this job?
How long had he been working with the basketball operations team?
How did Stone think about the game of basketball
Was he analytics-friendly?
How do you pronounce his first name? (that could’ve just been me)
But the most important question many had at the time was: Would there be a notable drop-off from Morey?
Morey is a polarizing figure in the NBA, but if you’re still doubting his prowess for the job in 2024, you’re just being willfully ignorant. Stone had never been a general manager before. Even if he’d assisted Morey in the front office for over a decade, that’s entirely different than making the final calls yourself. This was an organization that had been on the cutting edge since Morey first took over.
Was Stone capable of filling those shoes?
Year 1:
The very first decision Stone made as president of basketball operations was hiring Stephen Silas to be the head coach. Clearly this had been a mistake, but it was one they were able to get out from under due to the team option placed in Year 4 of Silas’ contract.
The next step was monumentally important: trading the 2019-20 Rockets for as much value as Stone could extract. That first year was a master-class.
Then Stone managed to nab a 1st round pick for a severely distressed asset in Russell Westbrook:
And in perhaps the most important move Stone has made to-date, the Rockets traded James Harden for an unexpected draft haul from the Brooklyn Nets.
It’s important to remember that:
A. At 32-years-old, Harden was no spring chicken when he made this request.
B. Whether it was skipping training camp practices or playing at half speed when the season finally started, Harden was doing everything he could to display his displeasure with team. This put Houston on their heels from a leveraging position.
But Stone held his ground, ignoring Harden’s shenanigans through all of preseason and 8 games of the regular season. The front office repeatedly maintained publicly that they “were willing to get uncomfortable” and wait for the best possible trade. And that’s essentially what they did. This trade set the organization up very nicely for a proper rebuild with loads of resources and flexibility.
Was this a perfect trade? No.
The Rockets would probably admit that re-routing Caris LaVert for Victor Oladipo was a mistake. Oladipo was dispensed with fairly quickly by Houston and they received no compensation at the end of his chain of trades. Theoretically, they could have made the same trade that Indiana ended up making and drafted both Leonard Miller and Andrew Nembhard while still having an additional 2027 second round pick available.
(Obviously those are best case scenarios. They could’ve missed on one or both of those picks, but the point remains - Oladipo was a whiff.)
Aside from the Oladipo of it all, this was an excellent trade. Houston drafted Tari Eason with the 2022 Nets pick, traded for Cam Whitmore with the 2023 Bucks pick (along with Eric Gordon), and still theoretically have four more bites at the apple. Along with restocking their cupboards with draft capital, they maintained the flexibility to have a massive amount of cap room in 2023 (more on that later).
The PJ Tucker trade was the cherry on top of it all:
This was a fascinating trade because Stone’s front office essentially pioneered a new way to receive value for veteran players:
Instead of receiving multiple second round picks for Tucker, Houston chose to upgrade their second round pick to a late first round pick and push Milwaukee’s pick obligation from 2022 to 2023.
The 2021 Draft was a mixed bag for Stone.
Houston swung for the fences by selecting Jalen Green 2nd overall over the consensus pick in Evan Mobley and it looks like they missed. Even if Green becomes an All-Star someday, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll ever be the same two-way force that Mobley looks primed to be. This was the front office’s biggest mistake of the rebuild and Stone will now be judged on how he responds to it. Will he eventually double down on Green or will he pivot if it becomes necessary?
As a side note, anyone criticizing Stone for picking Green over Franz Wagner and Scottie Barnes is engaging in bad faith revisionism. Barnes and Wagner were never in contention to go 2nd in this draft. This was seen as a four man draft: Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green, and Jalen Suggs. Masai Ujiri went out on a limb by selecting Scottie Barnes over Jalen Suggs and while it was clearly the right decision in retrospect, it was a ballsy call in the moment. The Rockets shouldn’t be dinged for not making some ballsy reach like that.
Besides, selecting Green at number two was ballsy enough already.
It’s also true that Houston’s selections at number 23 and 24 (Josh Christopher and Usman Garuba) did not pan out for them. The Garuba selection was defensible as he was a player consistently mocked in the top 20 before falling to number 24. Christopher at number 23, much like Green at number two, was a swing for the fences. Although he possessed some interesting defensive potential on the perimeter with some off-the-dribble shake, Christopher’s inefficiencies as an isolation scorer left him mocked in the early 30s on most boards.
The Rockets, burdened by a roster crunch a few years later, would eventually dump both players. Christopher is fighting for his NBA life right now and Usman Garuba is on a two-way contract with the Golden State Warriors. The alternative selection in this range of the draft was University of Houston’s own Quintin Grimes, who eventually got drafted by the Knicks at number 25. Grimes was a much safer wing prospect than Christopher and would’ve been a stellar selection at 23.
The Rockets decision to acquire Alperen Şengün from the Oklahoma City Thunder is really their saving grace from this draft. Sengun looks like a bonafide franchise cornerstone talent and Stone deserves credit for making this trade. As many mistakes as the organization made with Sengun, you simply cannot take this initial trade away from them. Houston traded two heavily protected first round picks for a player that appears to be a future multi-time All-Star. The Rockets effectively got one over on one of the best front offices in basketball.
Stone may have missed on two huge swings that night in Green and Christopher, but Sengun was an absolute home run that one could say justified the strategy as a whole.
2021-22 was a relatively quiet, but effective year for the Stone regime.
Houston signed (then traded) center Daniel Theis, scooped Garrison Matthews off the scrap heap, traded Christian Wood, and drafted high again in 2022.
Their 2022 draft was also perfectly respectable:
Jabari Smith Jr. at number 3 was the obvious pick and he’s already showed great promise in his second season. Tari Eason at number 17 was an absolute steal and has made an immediate impact on Houston’s defense. TyTy Washington isn’t on the roster anymore, but the logic behind his selection at 29 is still defensible. This was just an all in all good calendar year for the Rockets.
And 2022-23 was even better.
To start, Jae’Sean Tate was signed to an excellent value contract at the start of free agency. Tate, a valuable wing defender that the Rockets pulled out of the NBL in 2020, remains one of the best dollar-for-dollar contracts in basketball. To this day, Houston has been reticent to move him because they view the structure of his deal to be extremely favorable to the organization. If Houston makes a star trade in the next calendar year, it’s likely going going to involve this contract.
Houston then acquired a second round pick from Oklahoma City in exchange for an additional $7 million in salary on their books. They also got two more second round picks in exchange for Garrison Matthews and Bruno Fernando. These two moves are small, but they end up mattering a lot considering the second round capital the organization ends up having to burn later.
None of these moves are why this was an excellent year for Stone though. That honor belongs to the Eric Gordon trade that the Rockets made with the Clippers in exchange for a first round pick swap that ended up boosting Houston’s second 2023 first round pick from 30th to 20th in the draft. This put Houston in position to select both Overtime Elite’s Amen Thompson and Villanova’s Cam Whitmore in the same draft.
Even though they didn’t win the prize of that class in Victor Wembanyama, the organization had arguably the 2nd best draft night in 2023. Houston was sitting in an excellent position heading into 2023-24. To top it off, Stone wisely pivoted from Stephen Silas at the end of the regular season and hired former Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, another move that’s paying great dividends right now.
And then there was the mixed bag of 2023-24.
If you put Houston’s 2023 offseason on paper, it looks pretty damn great:
It’s the knowledge of what actually happened to get to this endpoint that ends up dinging them.
In an ill-advised move, Houston pursued 35-year-old center Brook Lopez
Lopez turned them down, but Houston had already put things in motion
They had to pay Dillon Brooks more originally agreed on as a result
Houston could’ve landed James Harden, but chose not to
Those last two bullet points are difficult to hold against the Rockets. Their preference for VanVleet is certainly understandable considering Udoka’s vision for the team and Harden’s conflicting objectives. And Dillon Brooks is probably making a hair above his annual market value. But the first two are kind of hard to not ding Houston for. The Rockets were preparing to bury Alperen Şengün on the bench and if not for Lopez saving their ass by turning them down, it might’ve happened.
That lack of confidence in Sengun’s ability has been a theme of Stone’s tenure. The team signed and traded for Daniel Theis before Sengun’s rookie year, they had not anticipated Sengun being good enough to be in the rotation, and they were reluctant to award him the starting spot his second and third seasons in the NBA. Whatever Stone’s priors were with Sengun, he had been too slow to adjust them. Minute-for-minute, it was clear that he was the best player on the team to anyone who watched.
Then there was the Kevin Porter Jr. incident:
Let me be clear:
I’m a big believer in trades like the one Houston made to acquire Porter Jr. from the Cavaliers. Players that young are deserving of second chances. And the Rockets shouldn’t be blamed for Porter’s callous actions in this particular incident. However, it’s kind of hard to dispute that the Rockets gave Porter far too much rope on and off the court.
One can reasonably make the argument that Houston should’ve given Porter the axe long before this point. And you can certainly make the point that Houston shouldn’t have done so much of their financial planning around the notion of Porter staying with the team long-term. That carelessness cost the organization five 2nd round picks.
It’s inexcusable that Porter was so central to their long-term vision of the team. Along with the Brook Lopez pursuit, the Stephen Silas saga, and the Jalen Green selection, this is a fair criticism of Stone’s tenure.
But when you step back and look at what the Stone regime was able to accomplish in just four years, including:
A restocked draft pick cupboard
Six highly intriguing prospects with a ton of upside in Alperen Şengün, Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson, Cam Whitmore, Tari Eason, and Jalen Green.
Loads of financial flexibility, specifically in their ability to trade for a star
It’s hard to dispute that Stone accomplished quite a lot and left the franchise in much better shape than when he was first handed the keys. Contrary to a lot of angry Rockets fans right now, I’m of the belief that Stone deserves a modest contract extension this summer to see more of this rebuild through. Houston’s obviously made mistakes, but so do all front offices. From my vantage point, Stone’s done a decent job of pivoting from those mistakes and given the fans a bright future to look forward to.
Final Grade: B+