You can blame Silas all you want but the mastermind was still Stone who also hired him....he needed someone who listens to him on the tanking matter. Stone knew very well about what happened on the court and still chose to go thru with it. You could see that with KPJ his prodigal son, you could see on his face when he was forced to announce that KPJ was no longer part of the team.
U right stone is also to blame. He allow a toxic culture of enabling the likes of c. Wood and kpj while screwing over the young prospects. Sengun got fked over for a year and a half.
Silas never hid, he was a bad coach but Stone definitely try to hide....that is a ruthless human being.
Silas deserves a lot of blame, Smith being incapable of shooting or playing defense is solely on Smith. Those were literally the only 2 strengths he had as a prospect.
No offense but i think this is a bit revisionist. When Silas was hired they had gone out and got Wood. They still had Westbrook, Harden, Gordon, Tucker. Silas initially talked about how this was a win now situation and how he was glad he wasnt coming into a rebuilding situation. https://www.si.com/nba/2020/11/12/houston-rockets-head-coach-stephen-silas-interview So im posting this to say that stone deserves no credit for forward thinking. He didnt hire silas to be the tank commander. He hired him and the moves he made showed that he still thought this teams window was open. Basically stone is inept here as well because he thought Silas was a championship caliber coach. Even after russ and james request trades, they brought in vets that they thought would keep the team competitive. Stone was really just that bad and Silas was just that bad and the two of them together equalled the worst team in the league over a three year span. They actually didnt go extremely young with a team full of kids until Silas' last year.
The data showed that Tari and Alpi were our best defenders last season, and that Jalen and Jabari were among the worst. Yet, certain people still keep talking exclusively about Sengun being a "negative defender" supposedly being our main problem.
Tari and Alperen were statistical darlings coming into the draft, and it appears to have translated for both of them. Would not be surprised at all If they are the two best players on the Rockets by the end of this season. Tari would certainly help bridge the gap between Jabari and Alperen. If JG and Jabari are not efficient shot makers. If they are not play finishers, I am worried for them. Neither can control tempo, neither is a special defender, neither can create to make their teammates better. We need these two to be shooting 40% from three in bulk. Things would look SO much better If they were.
That looks to me like Jalen Green was supposed to fight through the screen. Smith was in the unenviable position of choosing betwen covering his man or attempting to stop Green's guy racing toward the rim. If that was supposed to be a switch defense, then that's another story. Of course, I'm not saying Smith played well in that game. All the Rockets players seemed on their heels and baffled by these screens/picks all night long. They were definitely not on the same page nor ready for the speed of a real NBA game.
@DatRocketFan is just fabricating his own version of history here - Silas did not want Porter Jr - he wanted to bench him and bring back Wall , according to reports. Some people have told themselves this convenient narrative that everything's going ok, just change the coach - predictably it is falling apart.
Green definitely can create to make his teammates better. Do people actually watch last season? Sengun had a massive efficiency drop when Green went to the bench. The team did worse by a lot in ppp when Green went to the bench also: Green and Sengun literally had the same exact assist to turnover ratio last season. Ya I get it green is a guard and I'm not denying Sengun is the superior playnaker but Green isn't Jabari level bad. He's like 3rd year Devin Booker level bad which is still okay for a score first guard. https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4865/onoff#tab-team_efficiency Green and Jabari for their careers score so differently. Green almost has to self create all his buckets. So no both are probably not going to have the same efficiency. Jabari should have a higher efficiency than Green due to the nature that eh doesn't create for himself anywhere near as much.
Aside from being soft, like not trying to stop that drive in @foggy94 vid, there are two glaring weaknesses. Ball-watching, and general lack of awareness Not deceleration on drives, allowing opponents to rise with no resistance, as well as easy step backs Here’s my vid of ball-watching to date.
The video below (from another thread) seems to be a similar play, but with Green and Sengun rather than Green and Smith. Sengun chooses to try to stop the drive, leading to an easy lob and dunk.
That looks like he's indecisive between his man and the driver. The right play would be to challenge the shot. If the guy could dump it off to the big man for a slam, so be it. You always challenge the shot and make the guy pass it off. I'm sure the coach would point it out at the video session. But the real fault of that play was the perimeter defense letting the guy get into the paint.
Great thread. And yes, Jabari plays unbelievably soft for someone who talks like he is so tough. His post defense provides zero resistance and I think teams will really start targeting him.
the problem is: 1). We drafted Bari for shooting. 2). We drafted Bari for defense and he’s not good at either right now. He can still develop, but we are getting a player who is way behind what we thought we were getting. Right now, there are several players drafted after Bari that are much better. These are facts. I hope Bari takes a big step this year, but we need to face the facts about what he is.
I guess I agree, but it looks pretty much like a no-win situation at that point. Maybe Green needed to play tighter defense on his man, or maybe there needed to be better communication between Green and Smith. But it happened way too frequently in that first game, and not just with these two players.
Yeah, once Green trailed his guy by two steps, it's over, 2 on 1. That's not much Jabari could do. If it's supposed to be a switch, then Green shouldn't have gone over the screen. If it's supposed to be a straight up defense, Green should have fought much more closely over the screen. It's kind of weird the Nathan Fogg uses that play to show Jabari's defense. I think heypartner's clip is a better illustration of Jabari's lapse.
Jalen Green is the only guard I've seen by fans here that is expected to magically fight through every screen regardless of context. This same exact situation with FVV the same thing would have happened. You aren't going to play under on Garry Harris who is a 43% 3 pt shooter last season on 5 attempts per game. Bari didn't commit anywhere near as much to Harris. Bari at the very least needs to force the extra pass from the guy going down hill. NBA players can't phase through NBA screeners. It's not in the realm of physical laws yet.
