This. We should be spamming Amen, Reed, and Jabari the rest of the year. Amen and Reed have to make it so hard on Stone and Ime to revert back to the walk it up, chunk it up offense of last year. Chasing the 3rd seed just to be an also ran is counter-productive to this team’s future. We’ve not just wasted one of KD’s last years, we have already wasted next year as well. There is little doubt in my mind that we are either going to devastate our team with a stupid Giannis trade or run it back with the heralded return of FVV and Adams.
i think those two outcomes are almost a certainty, which is really hard to swallow. but I’ve come to understand that fans all fan differently. Here in Portland, the fans are just happy if the team is good. They just want to be competitive. They don’t think they are ever going to contend, but they don’t want to be bad, and they are just happy if the team is good enough to make the playoffs. I can’t be that way. I don’t mind the process of building something good, and the struggles along the way, but we have to be building towards a chip. I’d rather extend a rebuild in the service of becoming a real contender than just be a good team. I get that after many yrs of watching bad basketball one is happy just to be competitive, but I can’t be happy without eventually giving ourselves a legit shot at a chip, even if it takes longer than we’d like. I can understand getting our young guys more playoff experience; that's valuable. But let’s not waste KD pretending. That I cannot abide. And that what it looks like we are setting up to do. That desperate team that chases over the hill stars and never wins, but empties their coffers on a fools errand, or that team that willingly overlooks their own flaws and deludes themselves that they are good enough, and when things ultimately don’t work out, well…”it’s just not our yr” if we are not willing to go out and find that franchise guy, we’re not building a true contender. We’re settling. This is the first true rebuild from the ground up I can remember as a rockets fan in a very long time. I want to get this right. No short cuts.
We may have won last night but Ime Udoka basketball is unwatchable. Winning or losing is based entirely on if guys happen to be hot, not anything structurally competent about the way the team is meant to operate.
The Rockets can be boring to watch sometimes, but if you aren't excited about the playoffs then why even continue watching the regular season. Ime is not going to change the style of how this team plays so either you learn to enjoy it and come complain on Clutchfans/Social Media to get **** off your chest or you stop watching them. I always remind myself. At least we are not the Kings, or the Hornets (I'm sure they will screw up the Kneuppel era somehow), or the Wizards. Things are pretty damn good when we are back in the playoff picture rather than in an infinite rebuild.
If we had leaned into Reed more heavily I could easily see 5+ more wins at this stage....many of those late game collapses would not have happened. DD
Well, it also depends on how they're defending. They weren't even that good offensively vs the Raptors, but they had one of their better defensive performances in a while.
