If Ime wants to get serious on offense it is time to give Cam more minutes. This team lacks shooters yet lme keeps trotting out the worst as a starter while giving one of the best a limited minute backup role. The play-in dream is all but gone. It is time to use the remaining games for development giving Cam and Amen lots of minutes. They should get all of Jalen's minutes except garbage time. This draft and offseason targets need to be 3 & D players to surround Sengun.
The offensive woes are bad but it' s not just that. Season start to Christmas - the Rockets were 2nd in Defense and 21st in Offense. Since Dec. 26 the Rockets have been 15th on Defense and 22nd in Offense. You can put a lot of that on abnormally lucky 3 point shooting by opponents to start the year, but also, defense is not where they need it to be if they're going to grind out slow paced wins.
Been saying this since December. It’s no better than a Silas, just more vets. I’ve said for months now that Ime needs to hire a offensive coach to implement an offensive system
That is also close to the time Tari went out with the mystery injury. I am not sure of the exact date but it was sometime in December.
Like many people have mentioned already ... just having 1-2 competent 3pt shooters in the starting line up would make our offense look way better. Offense was cooking early last night, but we all knew the shooting was not sustainable. We don't have the shooting to compete with better teams.
is the coach gonna be a knock down shooter? if yes, that could work! your idea has me intrigued, well done!
One thing I think we haven't taken into account yet is that this whole team is essentially brand new together with very few players having more than a year of experience together. Here's a list of all the NEW on this team. New Coaching Staff Fred VanVleet (Starter) Dillon Brooks (Starter) Jeff Green Aaron Holiday Jock Landale Reggie Bullock Amen Thompson (Rookie) Can Whitmore (Rookie) Nate Hinton (Rookie) Nate Williams (Rookie) Players who have played a year or more together: Jae'Sean Tate Alperen Sengun (Year 3) Starter Jalen Green (Year 3) Starter Jabari Smith Jr. (year 2) Starter Tari Eason (Year 2) injured Boban Marjanovic Essentially, this is a very young team and very new team top to bottom.
As you know I’ve harped on this the last couple months - we don’t place players in the corners and when we do the person on Wing .. isn’t making the extra pass or drive and kick to corner…. They are taking the shot which is the lowest % 3 on our team it’s why I said move Jalen and Bari to corners - let Dillion be on wing and FVV at top of arc If people go back and watch the 9-0 run last night .. Jalen corner 3 .. Bari corner 3 … then Fred for 3!!
Ime reminds me a lot of JVG.. The difference is JVG had T-Mac and Yao. We have these dudes who can't shoot. Sengun has a nice skill set, but once the defense collapses on him, he is passing out to a bunch of unreliable shooters. He's also been turning the ball over a lot lately as well. Brooks is having a career year from 3, but I wouldn't consider him a great shooter. Our best 3 point shooters this season would lead to this lineup (around Alpi): Holiday Bullock Cam Brooks That would be an odd lineup, but shoot... why not give it a chance. If you are going through Alpi, you have to have guys around who can shoot. Otherwise, this happens. They catch fire for a little while and grind out some wins, but unfortunately they don't have the talent to compete regularly. But, at least they are better than last year! That was painful
https://theathletic.com/5315924/2024/03/05/ime-udoka-rockets-interview-jalen-green/ What would you attribute as the biggest reason for Houston’s offensive inconsistency? A lack of practice time, poor starts, a new system being implemented or something else? Udoka: The easy thing you can point to is our struggles shooting. And that’s been documented, especially in the second half of the season. We started shooting it well to start the season and we have better shooters than it’s showing, especially lately. If we shot at the same clip we did during the first half of the season, you’d have a handful more wins. The second piece is guys playing different roles than what they’re accustomed to. That’s one thing guys have to adjust to — grow and learn from playing with better or veteran players or different types of players. Whether it’s Alpi (Şengün) growing into his post role, understanding how well he was doing, adjusting to how other teams are defending him lately, or Jalen (Green), who had the ball a lot more in the past and now you’re playing with a true point guard. You have to adjust and adapt your role and we use them differently. So, that’s going to take some time for guys who’ve done things a certain way for a few years. How much of what you ran in Boston have you been able to bring over to this team? Are there certain elements of offensive principles you’ve used in Houston? Or is it completely brand new? Udoka: There are certain sets I like to run, but it’s only a small portion of what I did in Boston due to the personnel. We have a true low-post scorer now, our low-post scorers in Boston were Jayson (Tatum) and Jaylen (Brown), sometimes Marcus (Smart). It was flipped, it wasn’t the bigs. The main thing we had was bigger wings and a lot more guys who could probably initiate offense and be the recipient of offense. With those two things, the playbook grows exponentially. With us a lot of times, young guys are struggling to do both. At times, you want to rely on Fred (VanVleet) to get us into certain sets but you also want to get him shots as well. Our execution and other things have been a little bit slower than Boston, for sure. I could have Jayson run anything or have him be the recipient. The second piece, when you have the lob threat like a Rob Williams, it changes your offense dramatically. And so with those two things, you have a much smaller playbook. But at the same time, I’ve minimized what I have done offensively while our guys are catching up. So you don’t want to install too much or have guys overwhelmed. More so thinking, reacting and playing, and growing in the sets we put in until we can move on and do more. What is your philosophy on spacing as it pertains to pace and what has that battle been like? One guard who wants to slow things down and another who wants to push the tempo? How do you balance all of that together? Udoka: This goes into what I said about different skill sets. I took a deep dive into all the numbers (from last season) and the areas we struggled in on both sides of the ball and wanted to avoid a lot of those. We were a high turnover team, 29th last year. A lot of those came in transition, playing too fast or guys going one-on-one. So our biggest thing was executing in the half court and limiting those turnovers, which turned into the fast break points and being 29th in that area and defensive transition as well. So, putting emphasis on certain things, we did good at those. But we do want to increase the pace, especially with all these young guys now. Amen’s going to play at a different pace than Fred but once we solidify certain areas, get those down and get our turnovers and shot selection under control, we want to build the pace. That was a big emphasis coming out of the break. In the last few games, you’ve seen that. At times we’ve had those opportunities and haven’t been good in transition. We want to improve that area as well so we can have some balance. We talk about transition, but our pace in the half-court is just as important. We can see and feel it when we play at a certain pace and are making the right cuts, setting screens, executing and making teams work in the half court. So it works both ways as far as that.
As he should. Rob Williams, LOL. Run a D-Ho my guy. Denver and Sacramento don’t have lob threats either. Invert the play and let Amen go get it.
I would guess Aaron Gordon is high on the list for most lob dunks this season. He’s 4th in dunks overall this year.
Biggest issue is the predictability of the offense and the inability to use all areas of the court particularly elbow action and baseline 3 point shooting with the personnel we have. This team has only a few guys who can create their own offense let alone for others. Not sure why Jabari couldnt be the lob threat as a two man game with Sengun should be money several times a game not only with lob passing, but with pick and pop for both guys while alternating roles. Alpy and Jabari dont have good chemistry with one another on the interior yet. Manipulating pace with transition leak outs and fast breaks should also be a staple for a young team like ours. Udoka is not a very good offensive coach he needs help there - defensive gameplans have figured out the offense and we keep trying to do the same things over and over.
