I think it was the result of the change in his physique and the added muscle he put on to get stronger on defense the offseason prior. He was smoking layups and easy shots from the start. And it never got much better. He's pretty much always been a subpar free throw shooter. That I think is mental.
I know you are trolling when you use Jalen and reliable in the same sentence. Your ragebait will not work.
Of course kd is a major upgrade over green. Still having fvv as your pg comes with its difficulties. His main strength is being consistent and not negative. But he doesn’t have much upside either and the fact that he can’t go to the rim is making the lives of defenses a lot easier. Jabari also can’t create advantage by himself. So we are left with Amen, Sengun and kd to create an advantage. There is enough juice there to carry us in the regular season with consistent contribution from Jabari and fvv. My expected scenario is we’ll look very good regular season. As playoffs go, we’ll see the limits of the roster and Ime’s offensive creativity, which is probably not much. I wish ime would experiment more during the regular season but he is not that type.
He has been playing with an injured ankle for several years now, he finally got surgery on it so expecting him to be better. This team will likely have more players with missed games than the previous team, Jalen and Dillon were iron men, but we will have a more developed Reed Shepherd and Cam Whitmore. The depth this team has will help, we have Tari, Reed, Cam, and Tate/Holiday as insurance. Jalen consistently showing up may not have been a good thing, because he was just not good. DFS addressing his ankle issue also hopefully has positive results.
My ONLY issue with this trade is Jalen is 23yrs old and KD is 37yrs old. If KD was in his early 30's I would be fine.
A large part of that is Jalen himself for not showing massive improvement in 4 yrs. He got way too comfortable as the King Rocket when really he should have been living in gym and working his ass off. Maybe this trade is the wake up call he needed.
Um, that was literally our biggest weakness last year. Generating enough offense, especially in the half court when we don't have transition or second chance points. I don't know about other people, but swapping Brooks with DFS seems like a fairly lateral move to me. I was mostly against trading for Durant, thinking it would take more of our assets to get him, but despite all of the reasons I haven't liked Durant over his career (there are quite a lot) swapping JG for him in every possible way helps us with generating offense and helps us with half court offense. Combined with one more year of hopeful growth and maturity from Sengun, Smith, Reed and especially Amen- we may not be an offensive juggernaut, but we should be better than last year.
I've been vocal about the fact I that I hate KD and I don't like trading for him - and I still think this is a dumb thread. I hate him because I think he might be the softest player in history. I lost all respect for him when he joined the Warriors, then actually came to respect him less still when he went to form a super team in Brooklyn and it failed on a colossal level and, rather than taking accountability, he blamed others and demanded a trade to form a new super team that also failed on an unfathomable level. I say all of that so you understand that what I say next is not coming from a Durant fan who jumped for joy upon his arrival. I have my reservations, particularly about his leadership abilities, but he's one of the best shooters in the history of the NBA. He is one of the most efficient scorers in the NBA. He is one of the biggest mismatches in the NBA. He is nearly un-guardable. He is a 50/40/90 shooter that has a gravitational pull on offense that very few players in NBA history have had. Guys like Fred and Bari are going to get easier shots. As someone mentioned before, Sengun thrives when guys are cutting and moving and getting to their right spots. Durant, Fred, Amen and Bari are all very high IQ players who know exactly where they are supposed to be. And with that starting lineup, at least 4 out of 5 guys are above average to elite playmakers. Someone else mentioned that our offense might be an issue of all five of Sengun, Bari, Tari, Amen and Reed have flat lined (and pointed out that there is a low chance of that). I'd argue that even if all five of those guys have flat lined and there isn't a large improvement with any of them, our offense still just improved radically. I think, for example, that even if Bari is the exact same player he was last year, he will get more wide open shots and likely his percentage should improve by at least a point or two. Same with Fred, who was terribly inefficient last year, but has not historically been a bad shooter. I expect with this new spacing, we will see him regress to the mean some and become a more efficient and higher percentage shooter. That's before we get into having a 41% three point shooter in DFS coming off the bench or a constant lob threat like Capela coming in or Reed taking a leap.
Very good post. I wanted the Rockets to get a more balanced roster even if it meant sacrificing some defense. Stone re-balanced the roster and actually improved defense and rebounding. Brilliant moves, just need a little injury luck.
I think the Offense will struggle early on...but should take off mid to end of the season. Sengun was forced to take some bad takes because when Jalen was not hitting his shots, he was very passive. With KD, defenses cannot sag off like they did on Jalen. The pick and roll of KD and Sengun should be very efficient. With KD taking more jumpers than before...there should be enough spacing for Amen to drive to the rim. I'm worried about FVV and his shooting.
Yeah I think this is the only relevant answer here, and the proper way to answer this question. Who the hell knows what "enough" offense means to OP? The word "enough" just leaves him room to cry about our offense no matter what. But the bottom line is that the offense will be better than it was last year. Maybe a little better, maybe a lot better, maybe a top 5 offense, who knows? But definitively better than it was before, that's the main point I think we need to make.
Short answer yes. Still get our top 7 scores in double digits. Im expecting KD to be much more catch and shoot off Amen’s drives and Alp’s kick outs. We’ll get closer to the 50/40/90 version of KD given how he won’t have to go iso ball but only in key moments to carry the team. 26/7/4 from KD 22/10/5 for Alp 19/8/6 for Amen 15/8 for Bari 13/6 from Fred 12/7 from Tari 10/4 from Reed
KD is an iso player. I think we use less pick and roll when KD is in the game. If we do use it will be Amen/FVV with Sengun.
Can this team generate enough offense to do what? Win a title? I don't know, I don't think this team will win the championship but it is possible at least. I think the offense is better than it was last season for sure. Kevin Durant, even at 37 years old is a MASSIVE upgrade over Jalen Green in almost every way imaginable. Durant scores more, scores from all over the floor, draws more attention and also is massively more efficient. A lot is being made of Dillon Brooks - but he did almost all of his "good damage" from three last season. He shot 39% from 3 on 6 3's a game and Dorian Smith shot 41% from 3 on 5 3's a game. So it is a wash from 3 Where Brooks did score more than Dorian Smith was inside of 3 - where Smith took 6 shots a game and shot 46% Smith on the other hand took only 2 shots a game from inside 3 but shot 57% from the floor. So Brooks took 4 more shots a game from inside 3 than Smith but was inefficient at taking those shots. The Rockets also saw Amen Thompson take a big step forward next year and has all of the signs of doing the same again in 2025-2026, and that should be a major boon for the Rockets. Reed Sheppard also potentially will be much better. So the Rockets offense, should be better in 2025-2026 - is it good enough to win a title? I don't think so, but it is possible.
Too much is made out of this..... The Durant trade has not even gone thru, takes 1-2 days with the expansion to multiple teams. Then Summer League, then National team games, then slowly but gradually September off......Pre-season.
