Amen Thompson is the Rockets' REAL franchise player

What about the two kick-outs to open shooters?

The thing that stuck out the most: even in a casual pick up game, Amen is a team player that passes out of double teams instead of forcing shots up.

 

Amen's 1v1 skills look pretty rough. Even Steven Adams looked better than this in 1v1 settings.

 

Amen plays by instinct rather than by craft. He gets himself stuck a lot of times because he has no "plan" in his moves. In game, he can rely on his fast processing power to make crisp bail out passes. With this kind of 1v1 game, there's no passing. Once he gets stuck, he has nowhere to go but force a bad shot.

He needs to develop counter moves to make his moves unguardable 1v1.

 

The lack of craft going into his third season concerns me. Going against Davion he only had one speed: very fast. Going very fast isn't the same thing as having a good first step out of the triple threat, which is why he rarely got anything going towards rim. Many of Amen's crossovers had him going backwards, away from the hoop. Amen got stuck several times doing that and even had one of his crossovers picked. He hit several tough shots which is great, but in a 1v1 setting I didn't expect him to be so awkward with his handles and footwork.

Not trying to be a hater. I've raved plenty about Amen's star potential.

 

Twas a workout he was prolly just experimenting trying new stuff

 

Woe is me. Amen has not perfected all his flaws in a couple of months. He is going to continue his march to greatness. Our team and future is in great shape. If KD gets hurt, we will still be a better team than last year and still have great flexibility to build toward something very special. I think posters are just bored.

 

I strongly agree with this.

Amen already shows advanced levels of deceleration. When you combine this with his length, he won’t need a bag. The game winner (against Boston I think). Was a great example.

even if teams want to sag off of him he is going to eat up that space and it will require more than one human making a decision on what to do as soon Amen is on top of them. If he is passing out to Kevin Durant, Reed Sheppard, Tari, Bari, FVV and DFS I think there’s gonna be plenty of space and success.

the other thing that I think people really probably need to come around to is the fact that Freddie will likely have an improved year.

 

3rd year leap. Behold his coming. Amen.

 

4 second shot clock doing a lot of work here. Presumably because its not practical practicing Harden style probe the defender 10 seconds when you are using up another NBA players valuable time.

 

Here is Amen doing what SGA does: Using brute force to create space for an open short/mid-range shot.
This is what I was talking about earlier in the thread. He has the tools to do this just as well as SGA.
Of course, after creating the shot, he must hit it.
I imagine some charging fouls will be called early on, but he'll learn from experience what the refs will allow.

 

Amen looks like a changed man off the dribble. Totally smooth mechanics, fantastic balance, and he is one step from hanging on the rim.

That shoulder bump is going to be the next move that’s outlawed by the league. If Amen makes that pull up jump shot, forget trying to stop him.

 

Amen and KD working out together? Same trainer same location on around the same day

 

Lu Dort after Amen puts his shoulder into him:

 

The list of guards and forwards that was 1st team all defense by their sophomore seasons (since 1968-1969):

Amen Thompson

This is the whole list.**

No Payton, Pippen, Kobe, MJ, Draymond, Kawhi, Dennis Johnson, Moncrief... etc.

** Bobby Jones was 1st team all defense his first TEN seasons, but he played in the ABA his rookie and sophomore seasons

 

I think he needs to also add posting up to his offense.

 

He needs to keep working. This is just against against a practice defender. I didn’t like what I saw against Davion Mitchell in the drills they did few weeks ago. Needs to show he can do this with tight defense on him in games.

 

Are you considering Evan Mobley a center? Because he made the all defensive 1st team as a sophomore while starting next to Jarrett Allen.