The offseason philosophy just turned out to be wrong. Last year the Rockets mostly played a normal lineup. Sengun/Jabari/Brooks/FVV/Jalen had the normal PG/SG/SF/PF/C role distribution. Amen kind of just slotted at a bit of every position. That team despite Jalen was 4th on defense. Then they decided that they wanted to go super big in the offseason. I remember when Rockets fans were clowning on Hollinger for saying the Rockets roster is filled with PFs and centers, but even back then I was also a bit skeptical of the shape of the roster. And it turned out Hollinger was unfortunately on point. You can't just play big forwards and centers as the mainstay of your rotation. The Rockets offseason bucked a lot of modern NBA trends. If they ended up being successful, then people would hail them for playing 4D chess. But now that their offseason looks like a dud, it just look like they were clowns.
The moment they signed DFS instead of another guard, they shot themselves in the foot. The moment FVV was injured the title hopes were dead. The idea of getting help via trade when they had crap to offer like DFS contract or an injured Adams .... or FVV and his NTC, that was dead on arrival. They were going to have to pay just to unload those contracts and they likely get in the way of Reed getting any minutes - which do you want? Develop Reed or not? As for KD, he's been pretty damn good .... I hate to imagine what this team looks like without him. They might lose by 50 every night.
I remember a while back the sixers had a very similar kind of lineup to what we have now with simmons, horford, embiid. I remember thinking damn they would be good and that they would just bully everyone. Turns out that **** was ass We knew going into this season this team was horribly constructed. We were already bad at guard depth even with fvv and jalen green. We could have acknowledged it at any point throughout the season but just didnt
There's a 100% chance you will die and a 96.67% chance that at some point in the season you will realize you're one of the other 29 teams. But life is great. Enjoy it.
I don't think the season is lost. It's hard to win a championship. Only one team gets to do it each season. Short of that ultimate goal I want to know that our future is in good hands. I would consider the following outcomes a successful season: 1) A WCF appearance under any circumstance 2) First round win with 2 of Amen, Reed, or Sengun being significant contributors. If we were to win with a KD carry-job that would be extremely depressing. We need to understand which of our under-25 year olds are actually fit to build around. Who can still perform when the defense is scheming against them specifically 3) Signing Amen and Tari to below market extensions. This is maybe the one silver lining to a crap season. I we can get Amen on an extension in the $20s and Tari on something in the $10s the would be a big win in terms of being able to manage roster construction going forward.
I voted for Adams injury.... He was pretty important on both sides of the ball. He is a very large man that sets hard screens that open up a lot of space for players like Reed and Durant. So he is an elite screener and offensive rebounder. He's still an elite defensive rebounder (him boxing out just helps the overall team's rebounding rate) and he's still a pretty good rim protector. We were having players (like Reed) funnel defenders towards Adams near the top of the paint.
I'm not ready to throw in the towel and straight up admit that "its not our year..." - but the odds are growing increasingly slim... We were probably done when we lost FVV... but there was a possibility that Amen and Reed could fill the role... Losing Adams has been prob the biggest hurdle... even beyond the boards and rim projection, I really feel like he was able to rally and push our guys... Once we lost him - we lost most of our heart...
Surprisingly, Rockets are still in line with preseason Vegas predictions, even slightly ahead of revised projections after VanVleet injury. Lot of analysts actually appropriately, didn't think the Rockets were much improved. In past years itd be seen as "media DISRESPECT", but lot of them were right this time What people didn't perceive was how volatile UGLY that the product looks game to game. What is arguably a team within expectations still looks and feels the exact opposite Adams injury was a revealer of everything. Adams is a gimmick, sure. But a very good gimmick. Though when Adams went out, it showed how the team had no urgency before the season and during the season, to address need issues at guard. Or make any real adaptations past that. They're riding it out as-is, sink or swim with an already flawed roster.
It was never gonna happen with or without KD Coach too sh*tty, pieces don't fit, no "best player on a championship team" I told y'all this when everyone was pushing to trade for him in the first place. We needed to be looking at young guys we could trade for and slowly developing our young guys, not making a play for any of the aging stars. The only good thing is we paid a very low price for him, and it kind of made sense just to get off of Jalen Green's salary--but then we extended KD, so now we have to hope we can trade him before he has a career-ending injury.
