How ironic is it that the US shooting team has been ASS in the shooting competition? Like really? LOL
I like Alpy a lot but realize I've become a skeptic. I wonder if someone can convince me I'm wrong about him. - Top effort Sengun is a neutral defender, but he doesn't give that top effort consistently. So the Rockets are soft in the middle far too often. I wonder if it isn't lack of effort, but that he just can't give that much energy to defense when he's carrying so much of the load offensively. And that's understandable, few can. But Sengun can't afford to give anything less than 100% on defense or else the Rockets are both weak in rim protection and easily mismatched because he doesn't switch well. Unless he's all in. If he's going to ease up anywhere let it be on the offensive side. Let Jalen and the others handle more of the offensive load. Great. - But it's hard for Sengun to work as a complimentary player when he's mostly an on-ball player at this point—mostly because he has no gravity as a shooter. He loses a ton of value as a scorer if he doesn't have the ball in his hands and he hurts your overall spacing because defenders can cheat off him. So until he learns to shoot threes well enough to contribute positively to spacing, he's only valuable as an offensive hub. But...being an offensive hub (presumably) prevents him from giving 100% slash being adequate on defense. - Also, his offense is overrated. And not because of his shooting problems—including FT shooting. That's rated properly. The idea is, yeah, he can't do that, but he makes up for it a total package offensive hub. Well, as a total package offensive hub he's overrated because he holds the ball so damn long, and it's an efficiency killer. He posts up like a 90s player, the possession is HIS. Yeah, he often uses it to find other guys who are open, but often that takes 10 seconds; and he also has tons of possessions where he's just plane slow and deliberate. It's not that he's slow, but that he scores effectively with tons of time-consuming fakes. Between the time he holds the ball looking to pass and the time going through his moves, you have a slow stagnant offense that doesn't leverage the skills of Sengun's teammates. - But it's not just post action, true. It's not always that slow grind. He also operates from other places on the floor, for handoffs, pick and pops/rolls, etc. Those are faster and looser, more likely to create offensive advantages, but they also bring Sengun away from the basketball, and he loses tons of value as a scorer the further he gets from the rim. He shoots (approx) 70% from 0-3 feet, 50% 3-16 feet, 40% from long 2s, and 30% from three. And the further out he goes, the less likely he'll draw a foul—he gets so many on fakes in the post—and the more the defense can cheat off him, daring him to shoot, killing spacing. - So to be an effective scorer he needs to be in the paint which inherently creates very slow offense, which are just not high level offenses unless you have (prime) Harden or Luka. In addition to spacing and all that, slow offense allows the defense to set, improves their chances of anticipating what Sengun/Rox are going to do. It also asks more of his teammates: Hey, keep running around for 10 to 15 seconds while I look to find an opening. Or I'll just shoot. Is this a style/bball-personality thing or is speeding up his process something that he can train or he'll age into? I can't think of any other players who were like this. Normally the ones who dominate possessions with slow post scoring are the black holes, the reluctant or untalented passers. Great passers I associate with fast decision making. And sure, Sengun passes plenty fast when he sees an opening. But there's so much holding the ball and waiting. I'm totally wrong? I should have more faith? Yadda, yadda?
That wasn’t what he was saying and you know that. But by all means, please go for the snarky and insincere response where you willfully misinterpret his legitimate concerns, it really furthers the discussion.
All your boyfriend's concerns have been discussed to death numerous times. Please don't defend him so fervently; he should be capable of holding his own at this age.
It's a lot of cherry-picking of perceived negatives. You could do that with any player. The advanced stats show his positive impact on the floor.
LOL at that essay. Honestly, most of the time he holds onto the ball more than he should simply because he has d*mbass teammates who don't understand spacing and don't know where they should be at when Alpi has the ball on the block. You can't initiate a post-up play when your teammate's standing under the rim watching you. Every time he touches the ball, he spends solid 5-6 seconds trying to tell Jabari and Jalen where they should be, lol.
I am almost sure that with Reed getting open and Amen and Tari cutting, Alpi won't have to hold the ball long.
Yeah, last year there seemed to be even fewer cuts than happened under Silas. Need some motion in the offense to max out Sengun. I get that Ime was trying to do a few things well and set the floor by really emphasizing defense, so I have some hope that we'll see more offensive movement this year. I think we have the depth at both ends to do it.
I think your concept of efficiency belongs to factory production -- using the least time to produce the most products. In basketball, efficiency refers to using the least possession to score the most points. It has nothing to do with how fast the team plays. As you have pointed out, a lot of elite offensive players don't play very fast. You gave examples of Harden and Doncic. But the player Sengun is mostly compared to is Jokic. He also doesn't play very fast.
Whats yet to be determined is whether there will be open lanes or not. And much of that will rely on whether our outside shooting is a threat or not. If the paint is a fortress, Amen and Tari are going to have a hard time of it.
I think the main point here is he should be faster decision maker. And that comes with experience and also he could benefit from more mobile team mates & playing style. The other points, I think you are putting too much emphasis on the negatives. The shooting numbers are similar to a young jokic except for 3pt shooting. Sengun is very good attacking to the opposing center and drawing fouls. He just must be less hesitant, take more of the open shots and hopefully improve the percentages as much as possible, which are reasonable expectations given his age and developmental curve. The post offense is almost always demanding a double team. Demanding a double team and being able to make the right pass out of it is one of the most effective plays. We have not executed to its full potential but I think it is gonna come with better shooting and better off ball movement. I think you are also overestimating how much of his game is post-up play and how much time he is spending there. But I hear you and hopefully he will polish his game in those areas.
Think about it like Green being dumped the ball at the end of the shot clock that you mention all the time. It is not a real factor but a fan who is focused on the player can notice that easily because it happens every now and then.
I get ya. But I am not pointing to specific players when I do that. I am just pointing to a general concept that every team has where their best perimeter self creator often gets the ball dumped to them when a offensive play breaks down and the shot clock is dwindling.
