Paulo Alves

And then it's also a bit uncomfortable because, well, he's playing so poorly and he's coming off a pretty massive injury that took him out for a pretty long amount of time.

How much of this is still rust?

Like we saw, we've seen guys come off of injury and take some time to get carrying along, so to speak.

And so, well, yes, if you're giving up Torin Finney-Smith, but if you look at what Torin Finney-Smith has been the last couple of years, while playing through the injury that sidelined him, that's a very useful player.

That's a player that's worth assets, and that's a player that's under very good contract value-wise if he comes anywhere close to what that player was back then.

so it's not prohibitive it's not a terrible bet to make that he's not going to get back to that level but it's also uncomfortable because he might and you might look like an idiot for trading him after getting him on that contract and you know turns out you might need someone like him next season as well once again he was supposed to be kind of the Dylan Brooks replacement on defense has not materialized once again

All of these small moves have uncomfortable sides to them.

Let me say, not prohibitive, not the types of things that I would be like, oh my god, we're such idiots that we made a move like this.

Don't feel like that.

I feel like there's a reasonable argument to make a move like that.

Just doesn't... I'm not up in arms if nothing gets done, because if I were in Stone's place, depending on what's reaching my desk, I might do the same thing.

Because, you know,

at the very least it's also uncomfortable to trade for a guy that's going to take minutes away from reed shepherd if he's not going to move the needle because you might as well give give reed those reps and having have him be a stronger player going into next season if you know the difference is going to be winning an extra game in a playoff series that doesn't get you across the line when you're sort of doomed to lose to the thunder anyways because you're just not that caliber of team

when you don't have the massive offensive rebounding edge that Steven Adams gives you, and you don't have the massive turnover differential edge that Fredenwick gives you as well, and you are that volatile shooting-wise, which is what the Rockets are right now, and you have a star in Shang-Goon that just had a really great game, but at the same time is kind of slumping.

So, you know, with all of those things, if you have all of those ifs, it might be better to stay the course.

Well, as I asked for no question, yes, I would agree with it.

Just because with these all-time greats, right, they're going to be great until they aren't.

And then a lot of times you don't have kind of a clue of them slowing down.

But I just think that KD is going to be just as good as he is this year, next year.

So I don't think there's going to be any regression there.