Doesn't matter, if San Antonio wins 1 or 2 before he craps out, then he has achieved what he set out to do..... That is probably Number 6 and 7 after the 5 Duncan Championships. The Legacy thing is just something you cannot control entirely.
That's a longer discussion, but personally I don't see any evidence that you should build around the assessment that someone can or can't be an MVP in the future. Seems an unnecessary layer heavily influenced by bias. You can have the superstar you dream of but if you're not a top 10 offense and top 10 defense, it doesn't matter (see: Suns with Booker and Durant wildly underachieving). I'm definitely not as high on Luka as most. I think he's certainly a max player and a clutch player, but we have seen better than that in James Harden. 30+ points and 8+ assists while needing to be hidden on defense is not the same as a 30+ point 5+ assist game from Jordan or Hakeem or Kawhi or even Jokic who's not an elite defender. I do think prime Senun can average slightly fewer points on higher efficiency plus the same amount of assists as Luka while not being a negative on defense. Since defense is 50% of all your contribution, I do believe that Amen is so much better than Luka defensively that at even 24ppg and 7 assists a game, he's providing the exact same on court value. I don't think any of it is a foregone conclusion, but I also don't find it necessary to worry about this right now. The offense is excellent when Udoka gets Adams out of the way. If he lets Sengun start at C, we have the most offensively potent PF/C duo in the NBA in Sengun/Durant. If your defense can't stop a generational talent, it can't stop this either imo. Not a fan of the 04 Pistons. I think we have more of a Celtics thing going on.
Rockets most efficient offense at 125.2 Off Rating. Double Big Sengun-Adams lineup continues to be incredibly efficient at 130.8. Anyone watching should be able to see how efficient the Rockets offense is with the double bigs as long as one isn't blinded by biases. Granted, Nets, Raptors are as bad as the Thunder are good. I'm still amazed the double big lineup with Adams and Sengun has been this good from the last month or 2 last season until now.
Short sample size but saw a good point on social media: for an offense with no flow, spacing or true PG, we’re dropping 128 pts a game. This is a 180 degree turn from D’Antoni 7 seconds or less. We eat up a lot of clock. But it’s cause we run a lot of offense through Hub Sengun and he’s so patient. That half court productive patience is going to pay dividends in the playoffs when the game slows down to more half court offense like it usually does. I like where we’re headed.
I also imagine that our offensive rhythm as we see it developing with Sen hub is helping our offensive rebounding as well. We turn good shots to great shots, the defense breaks, and our guys are already getting in position for the offensive rebound. That’s what I saw last night anyway.
No matter how good the Offenses are in the Finals and before the Finals, the average score is around 100-115 the last years .... it would stay that way. https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/highest-scoring-average-for-a-team-in-nba-finals
There are like 15 legit pg in the league. Fred will never be one of them. Could we use one of the 15, Yes. But we don’t have one. And we don’t need one. The offense can function without one if we simply seek favorable matchups. Settling for a second hand pg is not the answer. What we do need to do though is defend the perimeter. Our bigs are athletic enough to learn how to extend. They are not getting it done. But they can learn.
https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/advanced?slug=advanced&TeamID=1610612745 Lineup GP MIN OffRtg DefRtg NetRtg K. Durant - J. Okogie - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson 3 27 150.9 124.5 26.4 K. Durant - S. Adams - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson 4 33 131.8 116.9 14.9
Long term, I still think he's got a chance to show his upside, but right now Reed is a big reason the defensive efficiency is down. I think there is some letdown on the defensive because the Rockets are scoring well, but another big factor is just being slow on closeouts. I think playing Okogie more will help this some. I don't like the defensive fit of Durant and JSJ. Both are better as the low man than running around on the perimeter. Very very small sample, but Amen, Okogie, and Tari have looked very good together the past two games defensively. I think it was Cam Thomas who was trying to use two screens multiple times back-to-back to get a favorable matchup, but no matter what he did, one of Amen, Okogie, or Tari was on him. He ended just giving up with about 7 seconds left on the clock and just passed it to someone else.
Good point, I hadn't looked up the stat but if anyone is curious, we've got a 106.9 defensive rating (very good) with Reed on the bench, and 118.5 (very bad) with him on the court.
Part of it is how many ways we have to attack. The different sets and initiators will get more and more comfortable in their roles. Get DFS back and get away from the zone defense being overused and this team will go on a long streak of winning basketball.
Defense is so hard to rate using stats. Lots of variables: who you are playing with, who you are playing against. Eye test seems to be more reliable to me except for the counting stats like blks, stls etc. Reed not being able to move laterally and stay in front of his man as good as you think he should be able to is a major problem. His height is another. He also is playing a lot with Adams and Capella who are both pretty much traffic cones on defense and I believe more a cause of why we are playing zone than even Reed. Reed does look to be playing somewhat better defense game by game, but I’m not sure it’s going to improve enough for him to be our primary guard off the bench come playoff time. I don’t think we have the personnel to be as good on defense this year as last, but our offensive improvement is going to far outweigh our defensive regression. Championship teams need to do both well.
Defensive rating with Adams is the best on the team. Kind of hard to be the problem defensively when the problems happen while you are on the bench. Funny thing, when Reed and Adams are on the court.....the Rockets' defense has shut opposing teams down. Granted, this is mostly from Adams and Reed playing with the Terror Twins a lot to cover Reed. Offense hasn't been good as swapping Durant for defense is not good. Udoka is still trying to find a unit that can cover Reed defensively without being horrible on offense. I think Reed will have to play better.
The offense flowed well in preseason games. Then it didn't flow well in the first two regular season games against two good defensive teams. Then it flowed well again against two weak defensive teams. I am sure opponent strength has something to do with it. Just not sure how much. A larger sample size will make it clearer. No matter, these are the three things I observed that has improved our offense: 1. Having Durant in place of Green is a huge difference. 2. Sengun's maturity in play making and shooting makes everything easier. 3. Jabari being more aggressive gives us an additional dimension defenses have to pay attention to.
The offense didn’t flow the first two games primarily because of the double big lineup imo. It killed spacing, limited Sengun’s ability to be a hub, the zone defense forced Amen to expend energy running around the perimeter, etc.
We are 1st in offensive rating... and 18th in halfcourt offensive rating. That's because we are rebounding 46% of our misses in the halfcourt (lol). As I've said before, we don't have good offensive flow because Ime/the FO don't believe in offensive flow as a goal unto itself. It's not a philosophical priority for them. It's not our project. Tbf, from their perspective: If we can get reasonable quality shots up, limit turnovers, and rebound half our misses, who needs flow? (not saying I agree)
