Steven Adams

Not just because guys were hurt, but it was because guys didn't play together as much.

Even if you want to go all the way back to the Steven Adams stuff and Ja Morant with Desmond Bane, Dillon Brooks, and those guys.

Even if you want to go more recently, do you remember when the Grizzlies drafted Zach Edey? And we spent so much time talking about, oh, man, Ja Morant and Zach Edey are going to be playing together and what's it going to look like? And you got a little tease the rookie year.

But year two, this was supposed to be the year.

But Ja is the guy that you're building around.

You need Ja to be out there so you can have a better idea of how to put this thing around him.

Then the Steven Adams injury happened.

Then Brandon Clark's injuries happened.

14 and a half million.

Steven Adams, 13 million.

Mark Williams, who you just mentioned- Oh, no wait, that's actually probably his range ... 12.7 million.

And then you get to, like, Jusuf Nurkic at 11, Luke Kornet for 10.

I'm ready to put the sour taste, I'm ready to get rid of the sour taste of the end of last year and look forward to a new beginning, so let's get it done.

So I do think when you, when you look at last season for KD, right, his first year in Houston, first year in a Rockets jersey, I think that by and large, I think the season itself, uh, I, I think if you look at Kevin Durant's play, his production in a vacuum, you're like, "Kevin Durant was awesome," right? And, and, and even kind of zooming out and looking at the entire body of work, the 52 t- the 52 wins that the team accumulated despite all the adversity, despite losing Fred before the season even started, then you lose Steven Adams like a month and a half into the year, Kevin Durant kind of helped offset those losses, right? Because his individual impact was so great last season.

Like, there were a lot of games that the Rockets just simply won because KD was being Kevin Durant, right? And he carried that squad through a lot of turmoil last season.

Now that being said, he also contributed, at times, to some of the turmoil with some of his, you know, on-ball issues, some of the turnovers, what have you.

Now, here's how I would characterize it.

I thought Kevin Durant was as advertised for the most part for the Rockets in his first season here.

But I also thought that some of the roster issues a- and of course the health issues that they ran into, well, before the season started, uh, namely with, with Fred VanVleet going out for the season, and of course Steven Adams goes out during the season, early on in the season.

But I thought the roster exposed a little bit of Kevin Durant's weaknesses that I think they could have masked better had those rosters, roster issues had not come up.

Uh, yeah, I think there'll be pretty good.

Steven Adams should be back.

This team does have a straight-up move you forgot.

For me, Bogdan Bogdanovich.

No. Tari Eason for...

I feel like the team still needs a guard.

I feel like still having Steven Adams, Clint Capella, Tari Eason, Jabari, Kevin Durant, and then Amin.

Like, let Amin go back to the three or the four, I feel like

Chet and Hartenstein would help.

Alperen Sengun, Steven Adams, Clint Capela would help.

Who else are we looking at here? Clingan would help.

Kessler would help.

It's not like it was a fluke 52 games.

They're getting back major, uh, injury returns in VanVleet and Steven Adams.

And really that's, they were doing even better than that when Adams was healthy, 'cause they were a really historic offensive rebounding team.

Just him being available would be a huge win for them.

Um, as long as they have Durant, I feel pretty good about them going this over.

If he lo- if he misses a big chunk of time, I do wonder about their half court offense.

But then again, their best half court offense in those instances is just missing shots and having Steven Adams or those other guys-

Right

[laughs]

... that changes them offensively, and Steven Adams to come back healthy this year, too.

Oh, yeah, forgot about that.

You know?

All right.

Do you remember last week when we had the listener who were talking about, hey, if you see someone famous in public and he had this story about Steven Adams? You remember that? Yep, of

course.

So Dale is a listener.

i'm from new

zealand

and off he went anyway yo this picture of steven adams and me the schmohawk oh oh my god you can pull up the wikipedia real quick That's hilarious.

How many people? But my question is, how many people in our audience are running into Steven Adams? That man seems to be outside, Cliff.