The Ryen Russillo Show
The Pistons’ Big Problem, Warriors Exec Revisits Drafting Steph & Finding Another Star, Plus Rockets GM Rafael Stone
14 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What major problems are the Pistons facing in the playoffs?
Hey, Priscilla listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. The Ryan Rosillo Show is presented by DraftKings. We have Assistant GM of the Warriors, Larry Harris, on a future built-around step.
We have the General Manager of the Houston Rockets, Rafael Stone, who is going to talk about his to-do list this offseason for Rockets season, which, again, I think they had all said collectively was disappointing at the end. Disappointing if you're a Pistons fan. Thrilled if you're hardened and you enjoy free throws. I couldn't help myself once again. All right, life advice.
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Chapter 2: How did the Warriors approach drafting Steph Curry?
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Chapter 3: What strategies did the Warriors use to court Kevin Durant?
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A lot of basketball to get to. We'll get to life advice, obviously, a little bit later, live from our Chicago Combine studio the last day here. But we start with Game 5. The Cavs come back down 15 in the first half to win it in overtime and now take a 3-2 series lead against Detroit. We'll get to Detroit's offense, Cade's night, Harden's night.
But really the headline, if it ends up going Cleveland's way and they move on to the Eastern Conference Finals, the headline for at least Detroit is that Jalen Dern is killing this Pistons team. He has gotten worse basically every single game. I talked about his game one performance where he was 4-11. I said, don't let that get in the way of the fact that this guy was a beast in some huge spots.
He had 11-12, but the 12 rebounds matched what Evan Movey and Jared Allen were doing as far as the total. And... Now, if you look at like five straight games, it's been getting worse every single time. He's also declining minutes in five straight games. And this series has kind of turned.
I mean, there's a bunch of different things you could point to, but I think the Mobley primary assignment being on a star Thompson, something we talked about on a 10 good minutes on Tuesday for the show.
that now deciding like, hey, this Harden-Assar thing is just done and that it's Mobley on Assar, and now it's going to make everything so much tougher because Assar is just now on the ignore list. Even if he has the ball, even if he gets a couple looks, I'd say there was a couple plays in game four where he got the ball and he was hesitant to even do anything with it once he was close.
So I think the whole thing's messed up Assar, which then has freed up Mobley, and then it's made it even worse for Durant. So I'm somewhat sympathetic to it because, I mean, we could look at it and say, hey, look, he's 22 years old. he's probably going to be all NBA. Who knows what that extension is going to look like.
This is not a Jalen Duren, bigger picture examination, but for this series and going back to the Orlando series where it's like Wendell Carter is going to outplay you. like this many games. And that was kind of like the litmus test for the magic piston series until Franz was hurt was who won the during Wendell matchup.
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Chapter 4: What does Rockets GM Rafael Stone say about the impact of injuries on the team?
And to this point, I do think his game one is better than the box score. We'll, we'll say historically, but two, three, four, and five. And last night was a fucking disaster. So let's go through some of this because it led to B ball, Paul Reed playing the entire fourth quarter and all five minutes of overtime. Detroit gets up 15 in the first half. It's 60-52 at the half. Hey, good news, right?
You're up eight. You're at home, hoping to take a 3-2 series lead. There was a very alarming stat that was like, you know what? This might be bad for Detroit. They were up 20 points to two points on points off of turnovers, a 20-2 advantage, and you're only up eight.
So that was alarming because I don't know what was going on with Cleveland, specifically Harden on some of the entry passes early where you're like, hey, you know it's the playoffs, right, man? See the logos? See the broadcast, the national guys? Like this is not summer league. These entry passes are terrible. But that's a different topic altogether.
I don't think the refs did the Pistons any favor in this game. I was looking at it and there was 17 team fouls on Detroit, eight on Cleveland. It was a very physical game. So why did it favor them? Why did it favor the Cavs so much? It's because all the officials last night decided to let James Harden embarrass the fuck out of them for two and a half hours.
And look, I know you've all heard it before. But I'm not going to stop doing it. I'm not going to stop doing it when these guys are the best officials in the world and they're going to let somebody do this to him. He had eight fouls drawn last night. Six were total bullshit. I'd say two. There was one drive. I'll give it to him.
And then, of course, they had to foul him after he'd missed the free throw. But Cade forgot to box him out or they just figured there's no way Harden is actually going to go after his own rebound. And he kind of didn't. And the ball bounced right back to him. But they were down 15 and Harden gets a rip through and then gets three free throws. You want to call the foul? Fine.
I don't know why it wouldn't be on the floor. Then he decides on a drive that he's going to hook into the player. He gets the call. He then gets a call on, I think it's Levert that he switches into. It's the left side. It's the one that Bickerstaff challenged.
He shoves the defender away from him and then goes Philip Seymour Hoffman sweaty chest right into his grill with the way that he lands and gets the end one. They challenge it. They also lose the challenge.
He bends in half against Tobias Harris and gets the call, and then you could see that he went to go ahead and do it again when he got stuck because if it's four seconds left in the shot clock and you know he doesn't have enough time or he doesn't think he can get past the defender or he's not close enough to the defender to hook his arms and get some other kind of call, he tried to bend again and flails into the player defensively and then asks for the challenge, and then they lost that challenge, which was a horrible challenge by Atkinson.
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Chapter 5: What are the Pistons' major problems after the playoffs?
And then I think actually it'll make the second round better because, um, because people will be older, more prepared and everything else. But, but we're in a little bit of a, of a weird, weird spot time-wise right now.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's that's been one of the consensus things. So let's take a look at this season. You know, I was watching some of the exit stuff that you did with EMA. And, you know, the message is pretty clear in the beginning of it's like, hey, we expected to do better. We expected more wins, expected more in the playoffs.
How do you get out of kind of the emotional phase of maybe being disappointed by a season to then transitioning to now? I cannot be emotional as I prepare the rest of the offseason.
Yeah, I definitely wasn't over it then. I'm over it now.
Chapter 6: How did the Warriors draft Steph Curry and approach free agency?
I mean, it's tough. At the end of the day, in my head, it all falls on me, right? So if we're not successful or if we don't meet what I view as success, then at some level, I view it as my failure, right? Right. And then you take it. And I think he is very similar. So it's like, what do I need to do better? That's kind of like always the starting spot.
So it's so it's really raw when you don't hit your own expectations. But, you know, I have a great job. I have a great life. You get over it. And now you're like and now you get excited about about the the things that did go well and and the opportunities looking forward. And so I'm firmly there already. How different is the season with a healthy Fred? Oh, I mean, it's enormously different.
In some ways, guys got awesome opportunities. They're for sure silver linings. But yeah, I mean, Fred is, I think, one of the best point guards in the NBA. And he's won a championship. And he's been an all-star. And And just look at our record, the prior two years when he didn't play, we weren't a very good team. So one positive from last year, Fred didn't play. We were still a very good team.
And so that required everybody from top to bottom on our roster to take more load on. And so that's great. But I do think, yeah, Fred's a very, very important player for us and not someone you can just replace.
I'm going to give you a lot of credit here. We don't have any kind of relationship, so I remember like, hey, you're a new guy and you know how the NBA world is. It's like, oh, he came in working on the legal team of the Rockets and now he's running the basketball ops, right?
And then it's like you have these two deals, the Van Vliet deal, which is a big number, and then it's the Brooks deal coming off a playoff series where it seemed like the NBA world was like just hating on him so much. And when I looked at the prices, I was like, damn, I'm like, they're not messing around.
And I think part of it was, hey, there's very little now in free agency with the way guys are doing extensions. So you've got to make sure if you're serious about bidding on somebody, you have to throw them that kind of number. And like the Brooks contract in particular, I think a lot of people are like, what are they doing?
And then it completely like shows this is why Brooks is still valuable because of the culture and what he's able to do.
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Chapter 7: What changes does Rockets GM Rafael Stone see for next season?
And Fred settling everybody down offensively. When you're mapping out something that maybe no one else is understanding, what is that like for you where you're going like, hey, this might actually not go over well, but I know I'm doing the right thing.
That seems like it's every deal I do in my head. I don't think that's it. The Brooks one was like, what are they doing? I mean, when we traded James, lots of people didn't get it. Last year, we did kind of a pick for pick deal with Brooklyn that lots of people didn't think was a good deal. I just, I think I try very hard to not, I try to take a very long view on everything.
I think that that's like, that's the difference between a GM and a coach. A coach is like grinding hourly, daily. A GM has to like always be thinking about like the very, the long-term. And so I do. And then I think it's just like, you talked about the emotions and like, yeah, like, and that definitely affects me too.
But like, yeah, I think maybe just naturally I bounce out of that quicker more than most people or whatever, but like, Dylan's, I mean, I don't want to talk about another team's player, but it's like, I love Dylan and I will forever. And the way he plays basketball, anybody who plays with that amount of intensity and aggression and kind of constant focus can be on a team I'm on for eternity.
And I saw that before we got him and then we got him and we were super happy. And I've seen that afterwards and he's, yeah, I have nothing but positives to say there.
Do you feel like you've already gone through like some massive pivots in a shorter amount of time than normal where, you know, you're gearing up for the hardened season and it's like, OK, wait a minute. Now we're we're out. And then it's like, OK, now we're young. but now I'm going to spend in free agency, but I've had all these draft picks, but now then we're going to go into the Durant thing.
Like it feels like a lot has happened.
So I, to me, we just won. I do think, I think the James trade was a big pivot because as so long as you have him on your team and he was at the time worse, the second best player in the world, he was so good and still very good. But, but we were just win, win, win, constantly trying to churn through it.
And obviously that was my first year as a GM and the organization was going through enormous changes. It wasn't, you know, new GM, new coach. Right before we traded James, we traded Russ. So that was an enormous pivot.
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Chapter 8: What life advice is shared about relationships and moving?
And I think it's why he really wanted to come and, and, and, and they have to figure each other out that group, which is very young, has to get better. And that's kind of, I think where we're at, but like, yeah. So to me, it's like, it's to me, it's like, I mean, it's been done in the NBA where people kind of like, they do a rental that they know they're not going to get.
They hit, they hit lightning in a bottle and they win in one year, but that's really hard to do. And it's almost impossible.
And we can look at Kawhi like, all right, whatever.
Yeah. But that's, that's not our goal. Right. And, and so, and so that wasn't our goal with Kevin either. It was like, like, and it's not his goal. Like he's like, like, and not just him, but like NBA vets in general, one thing they all understand is just how hard it is to win a title. Right. So everybody's like, I know there's no guarantee. I want to be in the mix.
I want to be in a situation where the people around me, if things go well, can improve and we can improve together. And Kevin's still trying to become a better basketball player. He's a true hooper. That's one of my favorite things about him. And, and so he has to, he has to improve his game to fit better with his teammates.
They have to improve their games kind of overall and not just to fit better with him. They have to become better NBA players. And, and then hopefully like we, we have, you know, we get healthy and, and, and we'll, we'll work really hard this summer at bolstering the roster.
Maybe there's, there's things we can do that, that help us a little bit and, and then come back next year and hopefully we're a much better team. That's, that's the goal.
I think part of my frustration watching the team was as the season kept going and maybe the defenses cranked up, I still wasn't quite sure what your best option was after Durant would get double teamed. And there were stretches where I'd see like... I don't know if it was confusion.
I didn't know if, and I'm not one that wants to sit here and be super critical of coaches when I didn't play at a level high enough to warrant that kind of stuff. But were there moments where you were like, hey, we're into March and we're into April and we need to figure out how to solve some of our offensive problems, whether it's lineups or just getting maybe Kevin off the ball?
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