Coach Ime needs SOME help in elite offensive CREATIVITY

I said in a previous post that the team needs a sniper, a reliable long-range shooter that the opposing teams will have to constantly account for. The opposing defenses are now focused on stopping Alp by stationing four or sometimes all five of their players just around the lanes and swarming Alp when he gets the ball on top of the key or post-ups. A shooter like Tyus Jones (42.6% threes) will discourage teams from what they are doing now. That would also open the lanes more for Alp, Jalen, Bari, and everyone else. As for the defense, it is unsurprising that the last three teams that the Rockets played used exactly the same offensive scheme to counter Ime's switching defense. Ime may need to make a tweak to the defensive and offensive schemes because the whole league has now figured them out. I agree, too, that the defensive mojo of the team is absent when DB is out.

 

I think that’s the conundrum here that Udoka, his staff, and Stone’s team need to figure out. The most comparable team is DEN who runs heavy PNR and post with Murray and Jokic in a slowed paced half court offense. DEN ranks in the bottom half of transition teams in terms of frequency and points per game. But Murray is better at getting into the paint and finishing or drawing a foul than FVV not to mention better 3 pt shooter.

If you look at the top 10 PNR ball handlers in the league you see names like Brunson, Dame, Trae, Halliburton, Morant. All these guys are prime time paint scorers and high tempo players. All can shoot 3s except Morant but he has a good mid range game. FVV is a good player just not good enough to play this style. Amen could get there in 1-2 years but he needs a mid range shot from the elbows or a 15 ft FT line jumper.

Back to DEN, they have great shooters to flank Jokic especially Pope. If Rockets want to play their 2 guard this way then Green isn’t fit in that role. Not saying he isn’t a good player but that’s not his strength to catch and shoot and be a tertiary player. The personnel just not good enough or fit for this style in my opinion.

 

Some people point to OKC and compare their progress to the Rockets and ask why that team has been more relatively successful in a short time.

But people forget that SGA is in his 6th year. He also played under Doc. He was mentored by CP3 for a year. OKC’s coach is in his 4th year. They had 2x 20 or so win seasons first 2 years, 2 games under .500 last and 20-9 currently in their 4th year under this coach. They have 3-4 guys that have been with the team thru this stretch besides SGA including Dort, Joe, and Kenrich Williams. Rockets may hit .500 this year with a better outlook for next year similar to OKC. It’s a process.

 

This roster is not that Celtics roster. Let's put this in perspective

 

Then I'd personally say it makes more sense to switch the style when you bear in mind that 3 of our 6 young prospects are high tempo, athletic young guards...

 

If you say so.

You do realize that the reason we get so many "open looks" is because most teams know the Rockets cannot shoot, right? That is why opponents have started packing the paint and making us jump shooters. I am sure Ime is aware of this; the Spurs did this to us when we had Harden and he used to do it to those OKC teams all the time. He tried it against the Warriors but it did not work.

 

We are a super young team..... Ime is clearly more worried about fundamentals.

You are just a fool to have high expectations despite overachieving.

 

It has to be a balance unless we have a very good pg that take people off the dribble and finish in the paint consistently. I like the way Celtics play. Haven’t looked at their numbers but they manage to balance out the offense between Brown Tatum and Porzingis. They post with Porzinis, play PNR but also iso Tatum and Brown. Very unselfish basketball. But then again Porzingis is a stretch 5 and Sengun isn’t. Still think there’s a way to resolve the offense. Rockets are unbalanced offensively these first 30 games and it’s clear.

 

It's too early to say it's an Ime problem. He might be a bit slow at it that's fine. Remember the number of problems he inherited and where we are right now in the standings. Some of you guys said the culture would take years to fix if they could be fixed at all. Some of you said Alpi would never be a passable defender at C.

He's fixed a lot of things already. Give it time.

 

Ime is no D'Antoni but he can gradually become Rick Carlisle.

But in other words.....Udoker's team without a superstar is pedestrian on Offense.

 

There definitely is a way to balance it (ie, push the break sometimes to take advantage of Jalen/Cam/Amen, don't always run everything right down the centre of the court from the top of the 3 point line and clog the paint/make us so predictable) we're just not doing it. We barely ever even modify our point of attack, it's crazy how predictable we are. Especially if we want to maximise Green and Amen we need to run some quicker plays, maybe some high screens as the defense is getting set with everybody spread out or something. It's a crime that we have 2 of the fastest players in the league and they never get any space to even start running in.

 

If we could shoot they wouldn’t pack the paint. Is that your point? That is my point. It is not the offense we run thats the problem. It’s the personnel. They were hoping that Jalen would be the outside scoring threat for the first unit and Holiday and Bullock for the 2nd team. Neither has really worked out. Holiday is being sought out on defense and he is regressing to his mean, which is and always has been a journeyman that can make an NBA team, but is not a solid contributor on a good NBA team. Bullock has been awful. Tate has been awful. FVV is fine as a facilitator, but because of Jalen he has reverted to what he was last year in Toronto. Two of Jalen, Amen, and Cam need to step up or we need to make a trade for a legit starting SG if we are still in the playoff hunt nearer to the deadline.

 

There is only one player who is creative, high basketball iq and court vision in this team and it is Alpi.
But he is not a machine, he is a human, he needs help and this is more than FVV-Alpi P&R games, a consistent shooter or shooters.
The guards of this team can not shoot...
Our #2 draft guard is walking on the thin rope of becoming one of 5 years bust. He is nearer to be bust when compared to be NBA role player and this really frightens and worries me..

We need quality shooters... Basketball is played with 5 player, how long Fred and Alpi carry this team as two player?

 

Offense is not Udoka's forte. He needs an offensive guru to implement the offense that can utilize the players better. I agree with OP that our offense lack creativity for a hub like Sengun. the lack of motion is not going to maximize what we have.

I do want to give him time. His first priority is setting up a culture that emphasizes effort and defense. I think he is trying to keep the offense simple for the young guys to adjust.

 

In terms of transition, last few games, there has been an effort to push more.

For the starting unit, more offensive wrinkles would be nice, but tbh, if people want more offensive variants with Amen and Green, as well as a more open lane, maybe have Green run the 2nd unit again.

Jeff Green can park to the side. With a Holiday Cam, or/and Bullock to have spacing. See if that gets Jalen going.

Amen and Jeff or Amen and Jalen to practice a two man game.

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Ultimately it's more on the players than scheme, but I'm not opposed to trying more things for development and reps.

 

Came here to post this. The scoring consistency of our guards is not average NBA caliber.

Fred is a good facilitator, Sengun is a good creator and their net rating versus other Rockets pairs speaks for itself. All offensive systems benefit from having a dual threat guard (or better, triple threat), which is missing.

 

Apologies in advance for the long post..... thought about not posting all this but I figure the numbers are valuable regardless of whether you agree with my summation...bottom line - I agree that Udoka for all his strengths is a defensive coach first and needs help offensively (but also he needs offensive players).

A little context comparing Houston to other NBA teams in terms of how well they are guarded(found on nba.com). In theory the more unguarded the shots you get, the better off you are as a team unless you have those clutch shot makers like Luka(which we clearly don't have). The idea here is to look at what types of shots our offense is generating AND how good we are at converting those. First the numbers:

Very tight(less than 2ft)

• 14.5% Freq% which is 6th most frequent in the league
• 27th in the league on 42.7 EFG%
• 27th on 43.2 2pt%
• made 0% 3pt% along with 11 other teams - effectively they don't take them at all along with 11 other teams which seems like a good thing.

Tight(2-4ft)

• 34.4% Freq% which is 27th in the league
• 25th in the league on 51.8 EFG%
• 19th on 53.5 2pt%
• 24th in the league on 24.4 3pt%

Open(4-6ft)

• 25.8% Freq% which is 19th in league
• 19th in the league on 54% EFG%
• 25th on 54.3 2pt%
• 12th in the league on 35.9 3pt%

Wide Open (more than 6ft)

• 25.2% Freq% which is 11th in league
• 18th in the league on 58.8 EFG%
• 23rd with 62.3 2pt%
• 19th in the league on 38.8 3pt%

Other stats of note of percentages of shots generated compared to peers:

• 11th most possessions(9.3%) taken very late into the shot clock(less than 4 seconds) and 12.9% taken with 4-7 seconds - I know Jalen often gets stuck taking these bad shots late in the clock. Essentially nearly 1 out of 4 possessions ends with us taking a rushed shot at the end of the shot clock(less than 7 seconds). See Jalen getting blocked twice by Eric Gordon as the shot clock expired last night for example.
• Houston is a top 10 team in terms of how many times a player dribbles before giving it up(between 2-6 dribbles). We don't pound the ball like the Mavs and Thunder who lead the league in 7+dribbles, but we also don't have elite scorers like they do. We ARE however one of the worst teams in the league at 0 dribbles or less - we do it 42.9% of the time compared to league leading Utah at 51.5%. Translation - we make the passes and the ball stops for 2-6 dribbles more than most teams.
• We are a bottom 10 team in number of catch and shoot shots generated(the dribbling above might have something to do with that), a middling teams in terms of number of pullups generated and are in the bottom 1/3rd of the league in generating shots inside of 10ft.
• Touch Time: Our "touch time" is generally higher than most teams - we get the ball and we spend time surveying defenses. There are good teams high in this category but they exclusively have stars who make good reads based off those touches.
• Play type: we are a middling team in terms of isolation shots generated(5.7% of possessions - I wonder if some of this is because of us taking shots too late int he shot clock that are almost exclusively iso shots), also a middling team in terms of transition percentage at 16.9%, a top 10 team in terms of PnR shots taken by the Handler(18.5% of our shots), 8% of our PnR shots are taken by the roller which leads the league, a top 5 team in terms of freq of post ups(6.7%), a bottom 10 team in terms of spot ups(22.1% of our posessions), we rarely do Hand offs(3.7% of our play calls - ironically Denver(Jokic) and Sacramento(Sabonis) lead the league in these types of plays and that's who Sengun get's compared to offensively), we are the 2nd worst team in the league at cutting(only 5% of our shots), a middling team off screens(3.1% - although most teams don't operate this way, only GS operates this way a ton), a middling team off putbacks(5.5% of our shots)

...so what does it all mean? We replaced very bad players this offseason with very good defensive players and equally if not worse shooters and this is largely reflected in this season's record - when we are able to play solid defense on every play, we have a legit chance to win any game. If we take even 5 minutes off the brakes from let's say a sluggish start, this team is at a huge disadvantage to win because our offense isn't good enough to generate enough offense to win games. In terms of our offense - it would seem like we need better shot makers but since we like the defensive presence we have established, the question is how to get the most out of the excellent defensive team we have established. It would seem like there is a bit of a correlation between our players holding on to the ball and/or dribbling more to shooting shots late in the shot clock which are generally poor shots for us. Playing more offense in transition is an obvious way to do this but has the adverse effect of not rebounding to limit possessions and I think part of Udoka's strategy here is to create one tough shot and done opportunities for our opponents(side note, we are one of the best rebounding teams in the league right now and we are doing it with group rebounding). It would seem like based on stats, our offense is about getting the ball into decision makers hands and letting them go to work and/or generate offense and outside of FVV, I don't think we have those types of players who can be trusted to generate good looks and even if we did we dont have the types of players to make those good looks because we generally underperform as a shooting team.

I think there are two calls to action here:

Today: we likely need more "set plays" around generating quick looks for when the shot clock gets to 10 seconds or so. We have too many possessions where we are forced to play against the clock and replacing those with a few more okay but not great looks likely would help us provided those are 3s(because we are such a bad long 2 shooting team). Jabari or FVV coming off off ball screens seems like a good option here. I think we need more "0 dribbles" style of flow into our offense but that requires far more off ball movement than what we have today. Along with this, Sengun HAS to extend his range to maximize the types of players we can surround him with because playing inside of 15ft is going to dictate the types of players who can be successful around him.

Tomorrow: Been saying this for a year now - we gotta decide on a core and build around it. Part of the issue with the current roster construction is it's a mix of "best available" from the draft and who we could acquire in FA this past year(screw you, Brook Lopez!). At some point if we are deciding that Sengun is who we are building around, we have to upgrade with better shooting two way players hopefully with flexible switching options similar to Denver but those players cost money and resource to get. In some ways, it feels like Green and Sengun are two distinctly different roster constructions and until Jalen becomes a more consistent outside shooter with even better defense or Sengun develops range, they can't really coexist. That being said, if Jalen isn't fetching much in the trade market, it does seem like keeping him and working with him as much as we can is the best option and then play hard ball with negotiating his next deal until he becomes a more valuable trade asset in terms of value. Guys like Tate and Landale seem like options to move in the trade market if there is value to be gained in trading them but we would likely be getting future assets in return for them - not guys who help us now. That leaves the option of cashing out some of our future assets - I think that would be wise BUT I also think that this year in particular is a bad time to do that because so many teams are one role player away from distancing themselves from the pack which means there are a lot of teams right now trying to compete with selling future assets for "win now" players. Houston's future firsts from Brooklyn are nice but we are competing with the Mavs, Thunder, Clippers, Kings, Pelicans, Lakers, Suns, Warriors, 76ers, Heat, Cavs, Knicks, and Nets who are all trying to get just a little bit better to compete more closely with the Twolves/Nuggets/Celtics/Bucks and I don't think getting in a bidding war with a Heat or Warriors type of team who truly is in "win now" mode to complement an aging core is in our best long term interest.

 

Udoka put the ball in Amen’s hands a few times with the second unit without Green in that Pacer game. He had a top of key iso and few times coming off screens to drive with 5 out and plenty of room to drive. I saw Udoka tried to get Green the ball early against the Suns and a couple games before that. I think the issue is offensive set, style of play, and Jalen’s own lack of aggressiveness and comfort with his current role. Amen needs to improve that 8-10 ft floater and ellbow/mid range shot tp go with that explosiveness. Hopefully these 2 get more looks. I just find it fascinating that Udoka doesn’t play more iso since he did it with Tatum and Brown.

 

Which team wins without “stars”? How do you define “star”? It is an overused and misleading term anyway.