People are focusing on Reed Sheppard, but really it's Point Amen who really need to step up

KD and Jabari have to guard someone though. If Amen is guarding Banchero, who's KD going to guard? Let's say Okogie and Jabari grab Wagner and Bane. Who's guarding Suggs - Sengun or Durant? That would be a huge mistake, Suggs will wear them out easily.

Seems clear to me from this season's acquisitions that Amen will guard the best small player essentially. If you push Amen up, someone turns from a positive to a negative and that wastes Amen's impact.

I hope Jabari, Tari and DFS guard the best offensive player more often. They're not as important to our offense as Amen so I need them to pull their weight.

 

This is exactly what I’m afraid of, considering Ime is our head coach. I’m afraid that we’ll see too much minutes that the team plays with Holiday, despite the fact that he’s nit really a point guard, just because he’s a better defender. Reed minutes will still be limited just for the sake of avoiding bad defense possessions, which will eventually harm us on the long term. Ime likes to play it safe, that’s one of the reasons Fred played heavy minutes last season. Now we’ll have a slight increase in Reed’s minutes, and significant increases to both Amen’s minutes (which is fine) and Aaron’s holiday (which is worse than Reed, but because he’s a better defender Ime will stick to him more than he should be).

 

Probably correct. I guess I’m mostly thinking about the uber stars like SGA, Doncic, and others that don’t really fit the best small player mode. Amen has to guard those guys most of the time, regardless of who else they let loose. Maybe it should be the best perimeter players that aren’t centers that he needs to guard. Without FVV, we do have a conundrum on who guards the quicker guys if Amen is on Doncic for example (Okogie?, Tate?).

 

I think it's a given that Ime will screw up the lineup and rotations, which is good news for those who are hoping they force Amen to try to be a PG instead of doing what he's good at, or those who want to see a lot of Aaron Holiday.

 

I think it should be Amen too but from Sham, apparently its going to be Reed

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...EHorWpY4DNFZ0OSw7AgSFbj2x5AcEyw:1758637217340

 

I am not sure if Holiday is the better defender long term. He's an okay defender at his size. Reed has his strengths and weaknesses on defense. He is inexperience. But that can cure by more reps and by learning. I am quite sure Reed will improve on defense under Udoka's coaching. It's his offense that will determine how much he will be trusted. Can he knock down shots consistently? Can he run the offense without a lot of turnovers? He will have to step up on those thing pretty quickly or Holiday will take his job.

 

Honestly, the one that needs to step up is Ime.

 

If the Rockets can't handle some growing pains with Reed, which must include Ime burying his inclination to bench someone the second they make a mistake on defense, then I don't have high confidence in the team's season.

FVV is an extremely important member of the Houston Rockets, but Stone has gifted Ime with a loaded roster. Ime is going to need to step up, as others have said, and show that he can coach up a young player to be a baseline NBA point guard whose main job is to not turn the ball over, not be a Doncic-style traffic cone on defense, and hit a respectable % of the open 3s that Sengun, Amen, and KD will generate for him.

 

This article is just speculating that Reed will start. I haven't seen any hard evidence of that yet. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

An Amen jump is expected. 18pts on 8 FGAs . ha. If anyone can do that, it's him.
But I don't want him playing point who knows what Ime will go with. More reason to watch the preseason games.

Thinking back to the Nets game where Amen struggled but Reed was their to pick up the action

a little sample of what could be in store for us if the sports gods chill for a second