Amen Thompson is the Rockets' REAL franchise player

The last ten games, Amen has averaged 20/8/5 on a .62 TS%. Pretty darn solid. He’s also shot .5 from 3, but only on one attempt per game.

 

What people don't understand about Amen is that if you surround him with 4 shooters, he'll get you 8-10 FTA and 6+ assists. Go look into what kind of players are capable of that.

 

Amen is my hero

 

I know this is small sample size and low volume

But for the last 15 games, Amen has 33.3% 3FG%

 

lol. Keep hope alive!

 

LOL keep betting against a true competitor / winner

you act like Amen is just a front running loser chucker like JG

 

Honestly, I don't really care since Amen isn't paying my bills. Also, no need to be offended since I've said Amen is probably my favorite player on this team and have loved the dude since before we drafted him. So you can proudly wave his flag and defend him from all arrows targeting him - even the imaginary ones! Nobody is "betting against a true competitor/winner". lol

I'm more apt to saying the dude's never been a shooter and him shooting 33% on 6 made shots (2 of which came in the most-recent game - lol) across 15 games isn't proving a damn thing to me. I hope he becomes at least a 36% 3-point shooter on more than 1 or 2 attempts per game, though, because he'd be even more valuable. To this point, he knows he's not hitting them and has limited those attempts, which is also good.

As for me acting like Amen is "just a front running loser chucker like JG"? No idea where you got that from since I didn't even mention Green. Quit making up stuff. lol.

 

it's funny that so just you won't proven wrong, you set the bar so high for Amen at 36% 3p%

so you're disappointed with Devin Bookler, Derrick White, Grayson Allen, Lauri Markkanen, and Payton Pritchard this season too?

I for one will be ecstatic if Amen ends up being a 30% point shooter on at least 2 attempts per game by the end of this season. That's already something he can build upon and improve on for the next season.

 

Yeah, Amen doesn't need to be respected from the 3P line like Ant Edwards is. With all of his other talents, if he's just at a Draymond, Jimmy Butler level of 3P threat, he's immediately a top 15 / All-NBA caliber player.

 

Who said I was disappointed in Amen? I love him as a basketball player even if his 3 point shot is putrid. I'm only disappointed in his 3 point shot which hasn't improved in years. You seem to create stories of your own to argue. lol.

FYI - I chose 36% because that's about league average. It's not "so high", it's more like "so average". And... proven wrong about what? Are you making up arguments to argue again?

Here are the players you mentioned and their career 3pt shooting %ages and volume of attempts - they shouldn't be in this discussion of 3-pt shooting because most of them are having off years and still blowing Amen's shooting out of the water :

Devin Booker - 35.2% on 6 attempts
Derrick White - 36.1% on 5.6 attempts
Grayson Allen - 40.4% on 5.5 attempts
Lauri Markkanen - 37.0% on 6.9 attempts
Payton Pritchard - 39.1% on 5.1 attempts

Amen Thompson - 22.2% on 1.3 attempts

Pick some better examples next time.

Seems like 36% would be a good target to shoot for since it's the league average, but just for you - I'd be ecstatic if he could shoot 30%. Better?

 

That amounts to 0.4 3pt make (or 1.2 points) per game.

 

I really don't see him even playing the point guard spot right now - unless you consider the fact that he brings the ball across the time line point guard.

What I see is attacking in transition, if nothing is there give it to X Y or Z.

Playing the point guard spot comes with the added duty of running the offense, I just don't see that happening much.

Most of his assists come in transition or as hockey assists where he's the middle man in the chain of events.

 

you are watching a different game then the rest of us. If you don’t think Amen was initiating the offense more than any other Rocket last game, you have blinders on. Ime has instructed Amen to take the gloves off over the last ten games or so and his play is trending up. He does still have to defer to Durant and Sengun way more than he should, but that is a coaching issue. He or Reed should be initiating every time down the floor. This team does have a point guards problem and their names are Durant and Sengun.

 

While I agree with your statement, it's very hard to find a stretch 5 who's good on defense so Amen can play a C role on offense. Building around that is insanely difficult. Remember Westbrick and Bob Covington at the 5?

I'm down for some scenarios but I think we are screwed either way. We got unlucky with the ping pong balls and there's nothing you can do about that.

 

One thing I've been thinking about is that I'm not sure how necessary it is for a stretch 5 to actually be good on defense with the team composition we have. A team with Amen, Jabari, and Tari can cover for a lot. Add a 3nD shooting guard, which is probably the easiest kind of a 3nD player to find, and your perimeter defense is solid. I don't know if you can get away with a total traffic cone like Vucevic, but could you compensate for an average defender like Jalen Smith or something? Maybe? Or just see if Jabari can bulk up and actually play the 5?

I mean, we already have the 8th ranked defense with Sengun at the 5 spot. There's been a lot of back and forth about how good or bad he is defensively, but I maintain that he's just somewhere in between on the balance; sometimes pretty good, sometimes disengaged and bad, rarely great.

I think the ideal thing for this team would be for Sengun to take a step back on his score-first mentality, take fewer midrange shots, pass out more often, learn to shoot the three ball, and use that energy to play harder on defense. If he could do those things this whole core works together. But barring that, I think you see what this offense looks like with a stretch 5, basically anybody who isn't a total joke as a starter. And if it looks good, you find a way to figure out the defensive aspect later. Unfortunately, Ime Udoka is the wrong coach for that approach.

 

It's honestly not that hard. Milwaukee found 3 (Lopez, Portis, Turner). Celtics found Horford, Porzingis. Heat used Bosh and Love out of position. None of these are perfect players for the role. We can find one. It doesn't have to be a Covington or PJ Tucker. It doesn’t have to be a superstar. Just a good role player there.

If the result is that Amen gets to the line 8+ times and gets tons of corner kick outs, that impact is so high that it justifies a decent price.

What’s harder to acquire is a guy who can get to the line that much plus assists plus all nba defense. In NBA history, that’s ALWAYS a superstar. We can engineer that if all it requires is a stretch 5. At worst we’ll have dramatically raised his trade value.

No matter how we build there comes a time where you have to acquire something difficult to acquire. I genuinely don’t understand the sentiment that since it’s kinda hard or a little pricey to do, we should give up before we’ve tried once.

We spend $50m+ at the C position and not a single one of them can catch a lob vertically or make a 3. We tied our own hands when this problem was obvious. To worsen the situation, we then went out and acquired Okogie and DFS rather than an extra guard or a C with a different skill set. The money and opportunity was available. The team actively worsened the situation in favor of a very very childish idea: what if we grab all the rebounds and improve our defense by 1-2 ranking spots?

 

A stretch 5 who is also a good defender (and not too old) is a rare and expensive commodity. People who want to get rid of Jabari don't see how valuable this kind of big man is. He needs more muscle to be an effective interior defender. But he is the kind of center we need if we are going to build around Amen-who-can't-shoot.

 

He's kind of an old-school slashing guard. I really want him to model Clyde Drexler. There's not a lot of guys you can put into that height/athleticism category anyway but Clyde was dynamic with the ball, even though he wasn't a great 3 point shooter.