The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets General Manager Rafael Stone Joins The Show To Talk Recent Trade Moves

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Rockets General Manager Rafael Stone Joins The Show To Talk Recent Trade Moves

11 o'clock sports talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross, and we are very happy to be joined by a man who has given a lot of energy to the city the last handful of days, the last couple of weeks. In fact, with the acquisitions of Kevin Durant, Doreen Phenny Smith, my friend to Clint Capella, all back in town. Rafael Stone, the Rockets General Manager with us here on 790. Refel, when I sit with my family at the end of the season, they're like, Dad, it's good to have you home. You've been gone a lot. Wife's like, now you can do the honey-do list. I have never been more excited.

This is, God's honest truth. Excited about a schedule release and the start of this season as we have right now. I'm sure you feel the exact same way. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely looking forward to next year. I'm really excited for Summer League in like a month off. Okay, I get it. I get it. But having said that, yeah, no, I think, you know, I think it will when we all get back together kind of,

I don't know, probably end up happening end of August, beginning of September. It'll be fun. And by that time, I'll definitely be recharged. So is it like, you know, look, I could ask you, hey, how's cool it to have Kevin Durant? Everybody knows. He's great. He's one of the all-time grades. So was it like in previous years, more so the texting, the phone calls?

You couldn't leave your cell phone beside. I mean, how rigid was this process? Or were there days in between that you could kind of let both sides, whether it's the sun's breathe, your self-breathed, the agents. Where was it in terms of the intensity of just having to be a part of every single decision that was being made along the way? No, like, you know, it was, you're talking about specifically the trade with Phoenix for Katie. Yeah, any of the prior.

I'm just because you did so much, and I'm always curious about, you know, I always like to know how the sausage made when it comes to this kind of stuff. So was it just you hear from them, they hear from you, you take a, couple days off. They want more. You give them more. Do you want less? They want less? Where was that in terms of communication process? Yeah, no. I mean, first, Phoenix was great to work with. Second, I think, you know, I think we, very early on, we kind of decided that the deal kind of had to look a certain way. And so we articulated that. And then I don't want to say we were kind of done, but to a certain degree, that's kind of where we were.

And if that ended up being something that they wanted to pursue great, and if not, then we understood. And so there wasn't a ton of back and forth. I don't know what it was like on their end, but from ours, yeah, it was just kind of, you know, making money work in the NBA is hard. And so there are kind of very limited ways to do it. And so kind of once we figured that piece of it out, I think we knew from a value position that we were giving what we thought was a lot.

We thought, I think they did great the trade. I mean, we gave them a tremendous amount of value. And so that was kind of it from our perspective. And then, you know, like they had to canvas the mark. They had to do whatever they did on their end to get comfortable. And eventually they did. And then the kind of deal happened. But it wasn't one of those like, you know, three weeks of negotiations or anything like that.

Yeah, it was not from my perspective, at least. You re-sign, Stephen, you get a new contract for Jabari. You bring in to Doreen, Finney Smith, who was a rocket killer. It felt like the last couple times you faced him. You bring back Clint Capella. Were those easy fitting pieces because of the fact that you had some money to spend, you weren't having to give up a whole lot in terms of a little bit of salary flexibility? was that as easy as it came across or was there a lot of puzzle fitting together to make all those things work together at one time?

A puzzle fitting together. Yeah. And just because you have no idea going into free agency, who's going to end up doing what. And so we had a lot of irons in the fire. And then you've also got your priorities of like, okay, this is the thing we're most worried about. So maybe that's the first meeting, you know, at, I don't know, whatever time it was, 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock. I don't remember what time you can, the first meeting is, but you've got that. And then you've got to wait for an answer.

And as much as you might tell somebody, we need an answer very quickly, they don't always give that to you. In this case, we were lucky. We got it, which then allowed us to flip immediately to the next guy. And it just kind of worked out that way. But, you know, but, yeah, so it, yeah, things fell in the first. place a little bit for us for us this year but obviously you have to be you have to be ready for 35 different scenarios and we were Ross with you as well here uh real fell stone rockets GM with us here on sports talk 790 and you mentioned you gave up a lot and I agree there are a lot of people saying

oh it didn't cost you anything but what was it like for you balancing what you did give up the the value of 82 games of jaylon green and 75 games of Dylan Brooks and getting back what you did but knowing And to succeed in the playoffs, you need somebody like Kevin Durant who can beat great NBA defenses. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're extremely fond of Jalen and Dylan, and they were an enormous, yeah, you pointed out, Jaylon played 82 this year, played 82 last year. Dylan plays every game that he possibly can, like, set foot on the court on. And so we were coming off two very good years. And so, yeah, so, you know, we, we didn't give those, you know, in a vacuum, we would have never given

those guys up. It was only the opportunity to add somebody like Kevin with his super unique skill set that, you know, that made us even consider it. And obviously we did it, so we wanted to do it. And, you know, and we're happy about it. But it's always hard when really quality people and really good players are. part of it. You know, it's part of this business. And it's not even a bad part because hopefully they go on to great opportunities too. But it, but it's not easy is what I would say.

What was the feeling for you when the deal was done and you made it? Was it just, were you relieved? Were you excited, anxious, a little bit, all of that? And now that it's kind of been done for a little bit, how are you feeling now? Yeah, a little bit of all of that. But then it's like, okay, well, yeah, we need to backfill. like you pointed out, Jalen plays every game, Dylan plays virtually every game. And we want Kevin to play as much as he's able, but we also want to make sure that we don't run them into the ground. Plus, it's just we gave up two guys and we only got one back. So, you know, immediately after it's like, you know, you're excited about it, you're excited about the possibilities, but then it's also like, okay, how are we going to back?

You know, now all of a sudden we've got these other things we want to accomplish that are, that are, you know, that are brand new. And so, so it's, you know, it's a little bit of, it's a little bit of all of it. Please never ask me, Raffell, to try to quiz me on the seven teams that were involved in the trade. How did that come about? What got into the thoughts that we need to make this the biggest trade, literally in NBA history? Oh, you know, well, the vast bulk of that was Phoenix, because they, they reflipped all those second round picks. And so, yeah, I mean, it definitely wasn't, yeah, I mean, from my perspective, it was just a three-team trade.

But, you know, one of the things about doing deals this way is that we kind of had two weeks before the deal could get consummated. And so it did give, it gave everybody time to explore possibly expanding the trade, which is what happened. Forlitt, your run, you're going to be headed to Vegas here shortly for a camp. The most recognizable name, obviously, is Reed Shepard. Assess what you thought of year one, and not that anything is going to get accomplished in Vegas, but more importantly, there's a lot of folks that are very bullish on Reed. I'd be one of them.

You certainly were. I know that his name was being banquited about in potential trades and whatnot, whether that's true or not, who knows. But the point being is that he is being given an opportunity to kind of say, hey, let's do a read, not necessarily a redraft, but, hey, we're going to give you a spot here to get some serious minutes in 2025, 26. Yeah, no, I think Reed, you know, he came into a very fully formed team and a super deep team last year. And we were able to like kind of carve out a little niche for him the first two-thirds of the season.

But, you know, and just when we start playing great, we focused on. But yeah, no, I mean, I just think Reed's going to have to be really good for us. He's, we've penciled him into a big role. And everything we've seen kind of in practice and everything else is he's going to be. ready for it but but you know practice aren't you know practices aren't games and he's going to have to transfer it and you know he's really working on his physicality which i love and um and you know and we'll see and summer league you know the great thing about summer league is you just get games it's it's kind of hard to um to find NBA quality games and they're and they're not actually

NBA quality games but they're but it's the closest thing you can kind of find so so he'll get a few games in, which is great. And then, you know, kind of it'll be a little bit of a barometer where he's at and, and give him a chance to get going, going into the kind of, you know, second half of the summer. But he's been in the gym every day. He works really hard. He's really smart. And I do think he's absurdly talented. His name was being bandied about the summer, not because of us, but because other teams wanted him. We were not very interested. We definitely want to want to play this out and get it. have read a chance to develop.

As compared to previous years, final question, you're going to go to Vegas. A general manager will pull you aside, say, hey, let's have a visit. With it being as active as this offseason was, do you think you'll get a lot of those kind of side visits this upcoming next couple weeks, or do you think things that will have cooled off a little bit? You know, Vegas tends to be pretty low-key on that front, just because so many deals get done around the draft that have to. league at that point is not tradable or three-quarters of it isn't tradable because because,

because, just because of the way the rules work, when you kind of acquire people in late June, there's, there's, you can't reflip them or re-aggregate them. I'll definitely talk to, to other GMs and other owners or not other owners, but to owners and coaches and everybody. It's, it's kind of like a big convention, but it's more of a setting up the setup. Like, you know, it's more kind of, hey, you know, it's more kind of, hey, direction where you guys going oh we'll keep our eye on you and sometimes those conversations lead to things in february or the next summer but but rarely is it as immediate as uh as like um you know some you know as kind of a this summer type thing and and for us given what what we've done i think

like i said you know we we we have maybe a tiny bit of flexibility with with our 14th and 15th roster spots but for the most part i think we're just going to gonna gonna play it out for a bit see how this team can gel and hopefully, you know, hopefully things turn out pretty good. And, you know, we have a successful season. Sounds awesome. Raffel, thank you for the time. We appreciate you coming on and safe travels of Las Vegas. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, guys. You got Raffel Stone joining us Rockets General Manager here on the radio program. I'm serious. I cannot wait.