Amen has an mvp ceiling if he can develop a good mid-range shot. If he never develops a mid-range he’ll be an Iggy.
Based on what we've seen so far Pippen's the best comp I've seen anybody come up with. I don't really see the Westbrook comparison at all if I'm honest, just very different players, despite both having elite athleticism (same goes for Ja) and people forget that Westbrook might not have been a good distance shooter but he shot 81% from the line in his rookie season and was actually decent on a lot of attempts for the first decade he played. The closest I've seen people say to my eyes have definitely been Pippen and Igoudala. Now he may be more than that when it's all said and done, but he's not really shown that on the offensive end in his career so far, which despite being effective in the niche roll of rolling to the basket and easy dunks was not remotely in any way an advanced offensive game.
Amen is not like WB, who I watched very closely at OKC. Their biggest overlap is being good rebounders. Amen is a great defender; WB was poor. Amen is unselfish; WB was the living, breathing definition of selfishness. Amen is a great cutter without the ball; moving without the ball was beneath WB. Amen is not a chucker who "had to get his". WB, nuff said. I could go on.
Westbrook might be the most physically imposing combo guard in league history though. It was his greatest strength and later on...his greatest weakness. Amen doesn't possess (only Cam currently has this on the team) a Westbrook level of "you can't ****ing stop me and I might die but you're dying with me" level of bravado. That's what made him truly a terror in his prime. Even Lebron didn't have Westbrook's fearlessness. The side effect of that was that for as long as he was in his physical prime, he was a force. When that waned....even a little bit....he became a negative and a loser. DeeAron Fox and Ja Morant are two examples of players that might suffer the same fate. Frankly this worries me about Cam (on top of that weird rumor about degenerative knee condition).
It'll be interesting who gets the start when Dillon sits one of the first two games, likely Tari or Amen.
After the way Amen played towards the end of last year, I'd be worried if I was Tari. As good as Tari is as a disrupter, Amen has him beat on D, and whilst more limited, Amen definitely doesn't fluff as many gimme buckets at the rim.
Iggy doesn't seem to have Amen on the radar yet. When I spoke to him, all he knew about him was that his brother had a blood clot. I hope Amen plays well enough to get everyone's attention this year.
Interesting point. Amen could end up pushing Tari off the team down the line. One thing in Tari's favor is he can guard bigger players (like PFs) on a regular basis. I really want to see both guys on the floor at the same time.
The few times we got these two on the court at the same time last year was endless energy. Really looking forward to the bench group.
I genuinely think Amen will have him beat there as well. Tari may be slightly taller but I'd hazard that Amen's probably stronger with the way the USA basketball coaches spoke about him. I genuinely would not be surprised at all if Amen starts at the 3 long before he starts at the 1.
I imagine this won't be the first time you've been wrong. It's okay, it happens to most people I'm told.
Amen has Tari beat as a POA defender, easily. So far in their careers, the Rockets defense has been much better with Tari in there than Amen. I'm not sure how much of that is Tari and how much is that just randomness/lineups. There was definitely a complete fall apart on defense for the 2nd units when Tari got hurt and before Amen started playing as a forward. I think Tari has the edge now, but expect Amen will likely have the edge defensively. Amen is a better offensive player, easily so far. I really am interested to see what happens when the Rockets have centers play 48 minutes a game with Tari and/or Amen in the game.
Yeah I'm very interested to see how the juxtaposition of potential small forwards to centers works out myself. Adams on paper should have more of a defensive impact than Alpi (though a significantly lower offensive impact which may make it a net negative overall) but I'd be very interested in which of Brooks/Amen/Tari produces the best results alongside Alpi. I did actually like Brooks for a good part of last season, but I just have this feeling that he's going to rapidly fall behind the other two, especially with his antics. More interesting to me is who out of Amen/Tari will have more of an impact with the starters. I think there's a clearer path for Amen to contribute as a starter at the forward position than replacing FVV just yet. So hyped that we get to watch Rockets basketball again tonight!
I love Tari and think he will have a long career in the league but to repeat a story I told last year - I went to a Rockets game earlier last season and one of my kids(who knows very little about basketball) said to me - how come everyone keeps telling #17 where to be on the court? I think that was the problem with Tari at least pre-injury - he still had some lessons to learn about where to be in relation to everyone else on the court and operating within a system. Then he got hurt and we didn't see him the rest of the year. No concerns about him long term - that's just a young guy learning the team game, but considering how effective Amen was at finding his spots off ball and how dominant he was defensively, I think Tari comes into the year likely behind Amen in the rotation. Honestly if Tari and Amen can prove they can be real long term forces this year, I think it spells the end of the Dillon Brooks era and we use his minutes to redistribute between those guys and Jabari. This is a team desperately in need of a consolidation trade to free up some minutes but I'm struggling to see what that trade is at the moment.
Tari is the youngster in the best position to make Stone move on from Dillon Brooks because they overlap so much. He can guard 3s and 4s all game, every game just like DB. At this stage, Amen is more of a perimeter defender. It isn't even debatable Tari starts the season behind Amen in the rotation.
THIS - would love to see a world where those guys are causing havoc. Tari would need to become a better shooter on volume(he was okay but not great...but not really on high volume) and frankly Sengun needs to develop range too since he is likely going to develop a shot sooner than Amen.
