If you are rooting for a 20 win season, you are routing for all the players on the team to fail because that's the only way that happens.
we have a bunch of 19-20 year olds. If you put rookie jalen green, rookie cade, rookie durant, rookie steph all on the same team, that's a 25 win team. Guys that young don't win games. jalen can show plenty of growth, jabari can show plenty of potential and the team can win 20 games
where do you expect each of our starters to rank among the league? KPJ, jalen, jabari, sengun, tate (or whoever the 5th starter is). Not in terms of potential, but in terms of their actual impact to winning basketball next season
Only if we have terrible luck with injuries. With reasonable health, the talent-level and willingness to play hard by this group should get them to 30 wins. The play-in tournament is a reasonable goal for us, I think.
There's a huge disconnect for people when it comes to talent and winning games. Rookie durant was incredibly talented, but worthless when it came to winning games. Almost all players who are super young are not going to be winning players, that's the reality of the sport.
I would expect the Rockets to have one of, if not the best backcourts in the league. I expect, based on talent alone, the team wins at least 30 games.
That's the beauty of the contract that Stone created. If the Rockets or the Nets somehow land on a top pick (with the Nets' pick being swapped with the Rockets') that allows them to secure a very high calibre PG, they can at anytime use KPJ as an expiring contract. Or if they wanted KPJ to move to a different role, they can do so as well without worrying about a potential pushback. The Rockets basically crafted the best possible contract for a player like KPJ. I'm pretty sure a lot of teams in the past would have loved to have given a similar contract to their players with known attitude problems as well.
I get that, but I’m optimistic about these players. Jabari and Tari will play well above their age, given their activity on the defensive end. I think the team as a whole will be much improved in that end, again assuming relatively good health.
I asked you to rank the 5 players in the starting lineup relative to the league. You ranked none of them. You said you answered lol
What you asked is irrelevant when it comes to the team's record. They'll have a top tier backcourt and Smith should be one of the better defensive bigs in the game.
I get that he looks bad on the perimeter, but the advance stats actually have him as a plus defender - I think it was +0.6 in fact. So saying he sucks on defense seems a bit unfair. People keep forgetting one thing. He's 20 years old. The dude can't even buy a drink. You have to look at his potential and his growth arc over the current product. Yes he will always have trouble guarding perimeter players. The solution isn't to give up on him or bench him but rather find a way to make sure he doesn't get caught in bad defensive match-ups. Yes, he has to compensate for that weakness with other strengths. But that doesn't mean he has to be Jokic either who by the way, is not even a very good 3 point shooter.
How good the players are is irrelevant? That’s a hell of a hot take. Kpj and green are one of the more talented backcourts, but in terms of winning basketball they are probably what, 20th?
Pretty much any center will be positive by those metrics, but ya I’m certainly not saying to give up or bench him or anything, that would be foolish. My thought is basically “will he hold up as a starting center on defense in the wcf/finals games”. The jokic stuff isn’t relevant really, he’s a one of one and a top 3-5 best offensive player ever.
