Amen Thompson is the Rockets' REAL franchise player

Again Van Vleet and Brooks are not crunch time scorers.

They are also not signed to do heroics in the 4th, they are signed to babysit the younger players and help win games.

The real value is when Amen, Cam Whitmore, Jabari are growing into contributors because of VV and Brooks.

Then they accomplished the task!

 

Yeah I just don't think FVV is a CP3-level player. I do think he is a bit underrated, but I see him as a step below that level.

Could he age well and play alongside Amen? Sure, but I'm not going to count on it. More likely he starts to drop off in a year or two. We'll see though! That's why his contract is so good for us. If he does stay consistent, or perhaps even improve a bit as he progresses through the typical peak years (which isn't unheard of), we have the option to keep him. And I do agree that he fits okay alongside an "Amen as point forward" team.

 

If he is only just passable as a shooter he is still likely a very good PG on his passing, rim attacking, defense, and leadership alone - agree that he quickly vaults into superstar status with better shot consistency.

 

The reason why FVV is viewed as a stopgap guy is not because he's over the hill. It's because he is intentionally overpaid. He is a good player. But he is not worth the max long term. (He can go up a notch and be that. But at 29, it's not likely.) It is okay or even desirable given the salary floor requirement to overpay him for two years, maybe even three years. But you don't want him to clog up room. If our young guys are what we hope them to be, our cap room will be pretty tight in a couple of years. Do you want to lose those guys because of money?

 

I agree that he is “overpaid” in the sense that no other team was willing to give him that contract, we were the max bid and paid the bad team tax. I do think he is underrated and can live up to the contract ala similar players like Conley and Jrue Holiday who are similarly underrated due to defense. So either he lives up to the contract which would be a great thing, or in three years still no other team is willing to pay him that amount which means we can retain him for cheaper. Even his current salary isn’t a huge issue for the cap unless multiple young players on the team become super max players, which on the one hand would be a great problem to have and on the other hand isn’t very likely imo. I think this team’s best shot is building up multiple fringe allstar caliber players (fvv being one) in an early 2000s Pistons construction, rather than banking on some superstar that I don’t see on the roster.

 

I feel like he's on the decline. He really had a not great season last year with the Raptors, efficiency just tanked so much with a noticable loss of athleticism.

 

This is accurate. FVV is not particularly a great shooter, it's not necessarily that he raises our floor significantly for his individual contributions but rather he "plays the right way", "trains the right way", "prepares the right way" and all of that has a significant benefit to the habits of developing young professionals AND he is overpaid as cap filler so we can afford to retain the young professionals he is mentoring as they come off their rookie deals when his contract is up here. The number of years on his deal is strategic because we gotta start ponying up a lot of cash for Jalen in a few years.

This offseason's FA signings were all about providing mentorship while taking a lot of cap room without signing A LOT of players to long term deals so there is still playing time for the guys who have high ceilings and can be contributors inside a few years. I think that's ultimately why we saw guys like TyTy, JC, and KMJ offloaded because while they had potential, the time table and available playing time wasn't going to get them there in a few years so their playing time was sacrificed for vets who can help the guys who CAN turn into net positive guys inside the next 2 years when we gotta start making heavier investments in those players. While the front office execution was sloppy at times, it feels like they got the big picture strategy right in terms of how this offseason supports future success and again - we signed

 

Read my post above - we didn't sign FVV because of his individual contributions on the floor - we HAD to spend a lot of money this summer because we were like 80mil UNDER the cap floor so we gave him more money than he deserved for his individual contributions because otherwise we would have had to spend that on ANOTHER player who would eat into our available playing time so...just overpay FVV so at least we get the mentorship and healthy habits building he brings and we keep our roster relatively uncluttered to maximize the amount of playing time for our guys on rookie deals.

Side note - I don't know why people are finding this concept so hard to understand. I feel like daily there are several people here still thinking we gave FVV a max based on his individual performance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Arguing over this is a waste of breath when no basketball is being played right now to prove one way or another. Once the season starts you will see if we paid $40m for a babysitter or if the advanced stats prove him to be as good as they say he is. It’s funny to think that people believe the Rockets knowingly passed on a Kyrie who is on a tradeable contract to give Fvv an albatross just for babysitting duties? No organization would be dumb enough to do that unless they believed the two players had comparable on court impact like the advanced stats show.

 

...Unless it is for someone better, the pieces needed to get someone better, or someone near as good, but will be better long term.

The Rockets are going to need to make a big trade in 12-24 months. I'd guess Amen is the PG after that trade, the Rockets get another star, and have long athletic young guys that score, shoot, and play defense around them.

 

I don't have an issue with how much FVV is getting paid, we need to spend to be above the salary floor.

I am simply making a point if FVV will be in our future plans 2-3 years from now. I am simply projecting his performance based on his injury history and possible decline.

I liked the FVV signing, but I also think people severely overate his longevity. His style is not CP3, he's more of a scoring spark than a play maker. The raptors won a championship because FVV started shooting lights out from the second unit not because of his play making.

 

He improved his playmaking but in my opinion he is really just a glorified combo guard as well.

 

"Glorified combo"?

A dude that was an All Star a year ago.

Yeah, makes perfect sense.

 

So what, a good percentage of NBA players are borderline All Stars who have the stats to be considered......

Players with good scoring and assist numbers.

Jalen Brunson has been playing out of his mind, is still is not an All Star because he played limited minutes and was not a household name not long ago.

But now Brunson is leading the United States National team starters.

Brunson is the new Lowry meet Billups. He is already 27.

 

Or Kyrie wouldn’t come here. Or Kyrie would make us surrender several of our prime assets which is what Portland would demand. Pretty dumb take.

 

Franchise player is not showing us any recent workout videos. I'm about to demote him from franchise.

 

We paid fvv more than Kyrie got, kyrie was going wherever the money was

 

Demote him from making burgers to blowing balloons for kids parties.

 

I'll wait and see. Last season could be a sign of declining. And it could be just a bad shooting season. It happens. 28-29 is generally still considered squarely within a player's prime.

 

Can we stop with Kyrie? He makes every team worse. He's flashy it looks cool but his results suck. He's anti harden: (game isn't pretty but man he can take anything to the playoffs) pretty game but career loser unless he's playing with the goat. I'd rather have FVV and his contract is very tradesble cuz he had a 3rd year team option. Plenty of teams may want to dump salary.