This Is Going To Be An Interesting Summer

Here is our summer:

Trade up in the draft and get Kingston Flemings as our PG.

Done.

 

Yes I've been saying this for 3 years but people thought I was just covering for Jalen. I knew where this was headed and I knew everyone needed to see Amen and Durant struggle at getting to the rim in order to understand the problem is systemic.

Our paint has been clogged for 5 years and we have no idea how good Sengun or Amen really are. Both their ceilings are capped by Ime.

People were more focused on finger nail paint than the paint on the floor so here we are.

 

Which teams if they landed around number 5 or maybe 6 would even consider giving up their pick? Indiana is about the only one where I could see it since they have Haliburton and Nembhard already. We don't have a first round pick in this draft class by the way so it wouldn't be trading up, it would be trading in.

 

You're definitely not wrong on the paint being clogged. As much as people often blame the personnel, we have had 2 coaches back to back who run the most bare bones, minimalist offense that we've never really forced a defense to shift to guard us either. Both things are definitely pulling all of our prospects performance down. We've more than enough sample size now, there's no way every single draft pick we've had underwhelms, even the worst GM would strike gold on one out of all the picks we've had.

 

Honestly, I feel like Jabari is the one guy who fits with any of the others, he's no star but he's on a reasonable contract and plays both ends.

He takes a lot of heat here but a lot of that is he's the 4th option behind KD, Sengun and Amen and he relies upon them to get him the ball - they don't always do that.
His shooting seems to have stagnated, but I wonder if that's related to the quality of shots he's getting because of the terrible spacing caused by Amen and Sengun (Sengun suffers from this as well as teams can easily double him).
The lack of a point guard really doesn't help him either ...

He is probably near the top of the Rockets trade assets that other teams covet.

This year he has shot .341 on "open" shots and this accounts for 25.3% of his opportunities

Last year he shot .380 on "open" shots, accounting for 29.3% of his opportunities.

I think the eye test matches the stats in this instance, there are fewer opportunities and it's easier for defenders to close out on him with 2 non shooters on the floor.

 

The thing about Jabari is that he was one of the supposed prizes of a 3-year long tank. The Rockets put together the 3 worst seasons (17, 20, 22 wins) since the Sampson tank over 40 years ago. I am a middle-aged man and I wasn't even born when the Rockets won 17 games in 1981 to get Ralph Sampson. Those 3 seasons comprised of 3 of the 5 worst seasons in Rockets entire history including San Diego days. I guess some people are ok with watching absolute dog crap basketball, but I feel being subjected to such monstrosity and get a 4th option is probably not a trade off most fans want to go through. Especially since the much maligned Daryl Morey has gotten more from lower picks and trades while still allowing fans to watch decent basktball with the likes of Scola and Lowry in the process.

 

I'll definitely give him that. Morey rarely made us watch actually bad basketball. I think the only time I didn't like it was the very last Harden years where it was pretty much him 1 on 5 because we were just so min/maxed to try and solve the Warriors.

 

This is really the whole story.

The problem is extremely specific: no matter who you put outside this paint, if they try to penetrate a lot they will disappoint us either with their efficiency or turnovers.

The winners in this system are just those who grab offensive rebounds and those who can shoot over the defense. Everyone else suffers. The most statistically important shot in basketball suffers (drive for 2 points). You end up taking way more midrange shots than the roster's midrange skills permit. We were top 5 in taking midrange shots last season and near bottom at making them IIRC. That's not feasible.

It's been 5 years. For once I want to see these guys in a standard 4-out offense just to know what we f*cking have on our hands. Just so we don't have to trade potentially deflated assets that we tanked so hard to get. It's not that hard to stagger Amen and Sengun while surrounding them both with 4 shooters.

I'm also just tired of watching the games. It's like watching nails on a chalkboard. Teams have been packing the paint for half a decade. We either have to fight to the death for a 2 or take a shaky 3.

We really need another basketball mind in the front office or on the bench. A healthy challenge to Ime.

 

Statistically speaking, you've got 6 decent 3pt shooters on this team - 3 guards (Reed, Holiday, Okogie) and 3 forwards (KD, Bari, Tari). The obvious answer is to use Sengun and Amen at center, particularly since Amen spends almost all of his time in the dunker spot anyway, and surround them with shooters. But Sengun is an all-star and Amen has been anointed as if he is an all-star, so the team has to play them both 30+ minutes a game. The whole thing is just an ego trip.

 

I couldn't agree more with this. Every way I look at it, Amen's a 5 if he doesn't have a jump shot in the modern NBA. Which tranfsorms us from "stacked with big prospects" to "our 2 best prospects are small centers" which is not good.

 

You missed the entire point. The point is to see Amen as a wing surrounded by 4 shooters.

Moving Amen to C sounds like another one of Ime's bright ideas.

 

But he's not a wing. He can't shoot.

On this roster as it currently exists, if you say "Amen plus 4 shooters" then you're playing without a center, which is to say that Amen is actually the center by default.

On this roster in the future, if you say "Amen plus 4 shooters" then are you dumping Sengun, Adams, and Capela for some combination of... Myles Turner? Nikola Vucevic? Jock Landale? Quinten Post? I'm struggling to find available centers who qualify as "shooters".

The correct answer is to play Amen as a small-ball center like Draymond and Rodman, though maybe Steve Kerr, Phil Jackson, Chuck Daly, and Gregg Popovich would also be too stupid to see your point.

 

boy would that be a dream. watch the nets get him with the pick that was supposed to be ours.

 

Practically speaking I don't think the Rockets can play 4 shooters when their two best young players are Amen and Sengun. So unless one of them is traded, the offensive setup has to only include 3 shooters. Which I personally think is doable. The problem is that Stone and Ime compounds the problem by making sure the team has as little shooting as possible. DFS even in his best seasons was a PJ Tucker type "only shoot a few 3s a game" guy. Okogie is also low volume low percentage shooter. Jabari, despite people insisting how good he is as a role player, has never shot above average 3pt% in his entire career, and Reed Sheppard got drafted and basically red shirted.

Now, in an alternate universe in which Reed got more development, the Rockets sign Ty Jerome instead of DFS, you can run a lineup of Jerome/Reed/KD/Amen/Sengun to end games. That is IMO the most optimal realistic offensive setup possible for this team. Have KD and Sengun run pick and roll. Amen in the dunker's spot, and Reed/Jerome spreading the floor.

 

Good insight. It would be best to trade one, and I think we all know which one Ime would trade though I would disagree.

And yeah, maybe you could get by with 2 non-shooters playing together, but with this current roster to get there you would certainly have to abandon the Amen-as-PG adventure and use Reed & Holiday at that spot exclusively. Doing so probably forces DFS to the bench, which I have no problem with. Sounds like it's worth a shot, but in reality Ime isn't looking to give his small guards more minutes.

 

LOL.

 

Had to make sure this wasnt NBACentel.

 

...the problem with all of this is our GM waited too long to sell on these assets, make decisions on whether Ime is the right coach. I think we are going to find increasingly less desirable returns on guys like Sengun, Jabari and I have serious doubts that Stone is the right guy to get us there. I think he is a smart guy but he is the rare "too risk averse" GM.

The book is already out on Sengun - you didn't need some unfortunate tweets from KD to know that - the league already sees it and that's why we are struggling. The question is - can you get good value from a borderline all star because in a hard cap system(effectively what teams are operating as now), it would seem like those borderline all stars are the most polarizing ones. If I can realistically only afford two "max" guys on a team - I'm not so sure Sengun is worth a max if he's isn't a good defender and he can't shoot.

Personally I agree with the sentiment that Reed and Amen are the only guys worth keeping around and I'm a bit scared of what to offer Amen for his next contract - hopefully not a max. Still not sure why we collected "Best Player Available"(BPA) for YEARS and didn't make a single trade with any of those guys to try to turn them into a group of cohesive players who complement each other's skills(aside from trading Jalen for end of career KD which is a win now move). The reason why this team doesn't work isn't because Bari/Sengun/Tari/Amen/Reed are not talented players - they ALL are. It's because they have too many overlapping weaknesses and we have done nothing to address the lack of 3 level scorers in our "timeline". You can't ride into the future with these guys because there isn't the foundation of a cohesive team there - just useful basketball players perhaps for other teams...which is why I say - get out there and build an actual cohesive team and stop trying to act like your BPA choices was how you were going to build a team anyway because it's very clearly not.

 

He is a poor shooting Pg. If we had 4 shooters, he would be an elite non-shooting PG. Next year if Ime doesn’t stupidly move him back to the dunker spot (which is an imaginary position), he will be a decent shooting PG. This kid will turn it around shooting wise way quicker than people think.