Actually, that's totally false. It is not true that most championships are built that way unless you're defining a star post-championship or you're defining them very loosely. For example, you may be counting Pau Gasol and Lebron James as both being just a star. But still you make the point, almost all championships are not built on one player. The ones built on one player are very known (Nowitzki, Hakeem, Curry, etc) and they are valued because of their rarity. Off the top of my head you're forgetting the defending champions in your examples so let's just say you've not researched this, but that's a minor error in the grand scheme of things. The point is that it is dumb of a front office to rebuild for 5 years then anchor your team to one player unless that star is essentially an ATG prior to that championship. You can sign one star in FA if you keep the cap space long enough, you don't have to tank for that. For injury reasons alone you shouldn't do that. On Amen yeah it's maybe hard to see an ATG now but who knows, he does have some outlier characteristics.
I love Alpi more than most and believe he can bounce back from his recent efficiency woes, but always thought of the Jokic comp as pie in the sky. I think Sengun settles in a top-20ish player assuming he gets his shooting back.
I mean the top 2 players of most championship teams are a big and a non-big. This is not rocket science. Hakeem/Drexler, Shaq/Kobe, Gasol/Kobe, Duncan/bunch of guys, Curry/Draymond (I don't count KD cause he's not a part of any teambuilding just happened to be a unique situation), Jokic/Murray, Giannis/Holiday, AD/LeBron, etc. I mean even just looking at the Rockets and how the perform on the court with each other, Amen and Jalen both play better when not playing with each other. That's the sort of thing that happens with two perimeter guys, as opposed to a big and a wing.
I have no comp and I've stopped trying to guess after 4 years. I'd rather focus my optimism elsewhere on players whose progression make more sense.
Frankly it sounds like a story you told yourself a long time ago and your mind has stretched whatever it can find to fit that. Case in point including Gasol, Holiday in these. You obviously know Hakeem won one right before Clyde so you can't include the Clyde one. Yes, exactly as I anticipated, if you stretch the definition of "star" far enough, you will find an excellent big and an excellent perimeter play on many championship teams. Regardless, it's obvious two non-shooters is not a team to be built around in this NBA. So on your recommendation to build around Amen, that's not a good idea because if Jalen is out and Alpi is certainly out, you're sitting here with one star after the most brutal tank job in history. You could have just signed a max FA to mimic at least 90% of that. It's a bad idea. Definitely build around at least 2 people and don't let old hearsay get in the way of building something that @OremLK has shown you is not an impediment to building a winner.
On this too, speak for yourself. Jalen's progression makes perfect sense given Silas and G-League experiences. His current improvement is exactly what me, many on this board and Ime predicted. It's going exactly as it was supposed to go for a HS-level player joining a team forcing losses for 2 years with poor culture all around. If you force losses, stats must artificially shrink. It's not mathematically possible to lose more without anyone playing worse than they otherwise would have. They are inextricable. It's so obvious that we predicted it years ago. You were just too busy calling those "excuses" and getting mad at us for not being able to see any positive in the big picture just because the stats are not linear.
What is posting on a message board but speaking for oneself? Or do you fancy your words on the internet to mean anything more than that?
I have no idea what you're discussing here, but back to topic. Jalen's progression makes perfect sense given Silas and G-League experiences. His current improvement is exactly what me, many on this board and Ime predicted. It's going exactly as it was supposed to go for a HS-level player joining a team forcing losses for 2 years with poor culture all around. If you force losses, stats must artificially shrink. It's not mathematically possible to lose more without anyone playing worse than they otherwise would have. They are inextricable. It's so obvious that we predicted it years ago. You were just too busy calling those "excuses" and getting mad at us for not being able to see any positive in the big picture just because the stats are not linear.
What about the non-KD Warriors? They built around two shooters Curry-Thompson and a playmaking big Draymond who is a non-scorer. If you don't count Draymond as a "star" big, then the Warriors dominated with basically two backcourt guys.
They were elite on defense because of Draymond and Igudola, to a lesser extent. I think Draymond was the second most important player on their first couple of championships.
Less ploddy/more dynamic Sabonis would be awesome. That's what I'm hoping for. He's more of a project than I think Rockets fans care to admit. Ultimately why I think everything we do this year from here onward is just icing on the cake. The real question will be how Jalen fits around Sengun/Amen and a PG moving forward. Too many guys who need the ball in their hands.
....keep in mind we only very recently started operating in what is effectively a hard cap in the NBA. Not to say you are wrong, but to say the league has changed in a fundamental way and I'm not so sure the conventional thinking of simplistically collecting multiple stars as a way to drive title aspirations is the path to future titles for every team - now it matters how they perform against their contract. Especially when it comes to players/teams who make the SuperMax who are doomed to play on paper thin teams if you aren't smart about spreading out draft capitol to build out a pipeline of cost controller players who can outperform their draft scale contract. That's effectively where Phoenix is right now - capped out, without a way to bring in cost controlled depth. The loop hole used to be that you could spend as much as you wanted to build an instant contender and then you get reinforcements late in the season in the form of buyout players - that was the cost controlled way to add depth. That loophole doesn't exist as freely as it once was meaning guys like KD and Jokic have to grind harder in the regular season just to keep up with the young upstart teams. How you assemble a roster to compete has changed considerably and we will start to see new trends emerge in the coming years after cap smoothing stops - like I'm not so sure a SuperMax is a good thing anymore. In a hard capped world, I think we will see trend of more fiscally responsible front offices building title contenders more consistently unless the player they have is truly generational (Lebron, Curry) - not just "an all star".
I agree on Sengun. My take is everyone outside of Amen is available for the right price and Stone needs to go see what options are available for any of our young players. We are well past a consolidation trade - it's time to turn potentially multiple of Jalen or Alpi or Tari or Jabari or Cam or Reed or Tate into a meaningful upgrade somewhere. While I agree Sengun is the best player on the roster today not named Amen, I'm still very dubious on his ceiling - we have seen increased opportunity and defensive focus for him and that alone was enough to make him an all star but otherwise he hasn't really added much to his game.
Sengun was better last year but wasn't an All Star because the team was sub .500 at the time. Agree that everyone not named Amen should he on the trade block. Naz Reid is someone I'd look at this offseason and potentially package whoever for a star on a team friendly deal. Ultimately my issue with Booker is that he's overpaid as hell. Jalen is 75% of the player for half the money. I'd love to get Mathurin here to get a real shooter next to Amen and Sengun. Ultimately I think Amen is redundant with Jalen and I trust Amen to finish at the rim way more than Jalen. Booker is the ideal fit just not at 60m per year. Not sure if Ime wants to roll with this team again next year. There's a ceiling on it and I don't necessarily trust Sengun or Jalen to push their ceiling much more than they already have. Sengun has probably regressed this year offensively and Jalen has probably made a baby step forward in that regard. Need to get a real rim runner in the draft with the Suns pick as well. This is the first time the front office will actually feel pressure. This team is cute and fun but it isn't going to compete for any titles unless we make Amen the centerpoint and reconfigure the team around him specifically (and he doesn't stagnate).
It feels strange and a little off to call Draymond a "star big man". He definitely doesn't fit the usual archetype for that as 6'6" forward whose career averages are 8.9 points per game and 6.9 rebounds per game, plus he doesn't block that many shots, and most of his offensive value comes from his passing. I almost feel like he operates more like a really weird defense-first point guard than a big.
Why do you trust Amen finishing at the rim more than Green when they have similar percentages at the rim built one guy has a lot more of his finishes from things like tip ins and open dunker spot attempts? This premature ejaculation of Amen, a dude teams sag off of and this is the funniest part and ironic... is one of the primary reasons why a player you despise and thinks has a relatively lower ceiling literally is top ten in both on ball and off ball gravity. Do you understand this? Amen's limitations literally place a player you think is like a slightly better Benedict Mathurin to be top ten in on ball and off ball gravity where I think the only other player top ten in both lists other than Jalen is Steph Freaking Curry. When its crunch time and teams start full court pressing and aggressively swiping at the ball handler, Fred and Green are significantly more capable of handling that ball pressure. The ball handling, footwork, bag and shooting stroke gap is still pretty large in Green's favor. Amen is stronger, longer, has higher top end speed due to longer strides and has bigger hands to do passes that Green will have harder times with putting mustard behind them. This is what Amen is better at than Green superficially. It isn't enough to think Amen can replace Green's role.
It's a similar profile to Gobert. Who if you just look at his stats also isn't deserving of his praise. I mean just look at the Warriors defense during his time there. Other than some of the KD years when they dgaf about the regular season, it's top-5 defense consistently. And it's clear Curry/Klay aren't the main drivers for that result.
Joel Embiid with a worse shooting. They both like demanding the ball at the 3 pts line and rushing to the paint.
All right I don't think you're necessarily wrong that Jalen's attempts are on average more difficult than Amen's, but I just want to interject here and say that no, their percentages at the rim are not actually similar. Amen is shooting 75% at the rim and Jalen 69%. That's a really big difference. It's comparable to LeBron (74% career) and Klay Thompson (68%). I do think Amen's attempts at the rim have gotten much more difficult since he joined the starting lineup and opposing teams started taking more notice of him, to be clear. I don't think the level of defensive attention is that different these days--if anything, Jalen probably has an easier time on his drives because defenders can't sag off and load up the paint to the same degree (which is to his credit for being a better shooter, but also to his detriment for not finishing better when he gets in the paint).
