Well, I still think Gordon will be traded before the season and Tate is likely to start at the 3 unless we can somehow dump him too.....though I think they want to keep him for whatever reason. As to the difference from last year, Wood and Sengun only shared the court for 323 total minutes...so less than 10% of the season the Rockets had 2 bigs and the remaining 90% of the time they were doing microball BS. This season Sengun and Smith should play something like 2000 minutes together and guys like Garuba (if he ever gets in shape) and Eason should help keep the Rockets MUCH bigger than they've been in many years. Also, Wood's mentality made him a liability despite his talent. His inconsistent effort on both ends is something that shouldn't be a problem with Smith. He's just a better fit overall.
Great post…..Wood is currently better than Smith and Sengun is really 6’9 and can’t jump and doesn’t have the athletism like Hakeem so the comparison is ludicrous. We need a big or get ready for another 25-30 win season and multiple 10+ game losing streaks. TIRED OF LOSING!!!!!
Tate, like House, has a 6'8 wingspan. Nwaba has 7'0 wingspan. Porter has 6'9 wingspan. Green with 6'7 wingspan.
We will see. My first inclination is to say look at other teams who are good without having real rim protectors but with the way this team is set up we need a shot blocker in the rotation. But regarding the team being the same except replacing wood with a rookie, I'd like to dive deeper into that. Just losing Wood alone could help, especially if Jabari fits into the offense better. But you're not really replacing Wood with Jabari. I think Sengun will be the starting center now so you're really replacing Wood and Gordon/Tate/Garry (depending on who the 5th starter is) with Sengun and Jabari. That is likely an upgrade overall. Plus kpj, green and Sengun could/should be better than last year.
Trading Wood is a huge bonus for us. Wood is a better player than Jabari on the offense side right now but Wood was a total liability on the defense side. I think Jabari will average 16 points and 8 rebounds a game if we can get a player to give him the ball and not be selfish. If you compare Wood vs Smith it’s a plus for the team because of his defense, toughness and working with the offense. I believe Jabari is going to have a great game against OKC. Jabari has elite talents because of his shooting and playing defense also think he can provide interior defense…he can block shots. Anyway, I do not trust Garuba and we do need more size to win games in this league. I believe our guards can play with anyone and Sengun is a handful for teams to match up with. Sengun has elite passing skills but we need another BIG MAN inside with length and size
The issue is that defensive schemes often shift drastically when a team has a good rim protector. I'm not sure that scheme works well with the NBA's movement to small ball and offensive versatility of bigs. To win a title, they probably need at least one guy on the roster to do it against certain match ups. But I think it is better for the team to base their scheme honed on help defense and on-ball defense. That way when you add that rim protector, they don't use that player as a crutch. That was one of the traps that Utah fell into. An example would be Boston. Timelord is a great rim protector, but that team is still a very very good defensive team without him because they don't gear their offense around funneling drivers to him. They let him be a rim protector off the ball. The issue against Golden state was that, they used their rules against them and Boston wasn't used to playing against that sort of spacing/motion system because only 1 team can run it at that level.
Do you think Wood and Smith could've played together? Silas said initially he's going to play Smith on the parameter more as a SF
We should replace the hoops with the ones from boardwalks that are like deceptively small. Our players will be used to it after practicing in a middle school gym, but the other teams will be fooled. It's genius really.
So you think rockets are just going to be like errrr we are so dumb let's intentionally suck even though we dont have a first round pick bc it's use
That’s a rational explanation and we do have better assistant coaches as well. Maybe we can avoid the 10+ game losing streaks that have been synonymous with Silas’ first two years.
My hunch is that it will be the KPJ show this year and Smith will struggle from not having plays drawn up for him….much like the summer league but replace Christopher with KPJ.
Agreed with all you said. My only issue is we played Wood as a 5. I just hope we don't play Smith as a 5.
