I come to this thread when I want to see stupid observations from people that struggle with basic math, and it never disappoints. S tier clutchfans.
Adams continues to be a dominant force with and without Sengun. Doesn't get out and defend on perimeter, but just his size makes angles awkward on drives that he does a good job guarding interior despite not being an elite shotblocker (though looking better this season). Reed started slow, but looked good late 3rd and in the 4th quarter. You can tell his teammates want him to succeed. Tari got some rebounds for a change, but missed all the potential 2nd chance points off of them before getting hurt. JSJ had a good 2nd half. Still settled a couple of times for deeper mid range shots. Amen had some tough misses, but had some serious flashes of destroying pressure. Rockets didn't use movement, cuts against the pressure as much as they could. The Rockets were just flat out better attacking Portland's strength. Okogie looked good. Showed some dribbling against Portland's aggressive closeouts. He is not always the best off ball on defense which negates his POA defense some. Sengun and Durant were Sengun and Durant. They should not be this low on my list, but Durant making shots and Sengun playmaking isn't that surprising. Sengun did knock down threes as Portland choose to let him get good looks. Not enough minutes with Reed, Durant, Amen, and Sengun if any. Think this could be the best offensive 4some later in the season. I get they want to stagger Reed and Amen, but the minutes they get together rarely have both Durant and Sengun. I get the double big has been good with Reed, but think later in the season, next season, those 4 would be a force together. I think Amen would feast with those 3 and another shooter.
It’s all going to come down to defense with Amen and Reed on the floor together. If it doesn’t fall off we have our future backcourt. Offensively Reed opens up the spacing and Amen’s ability to get into the lane will be even more unstoppable as the year goes on. He just needs to quit missing so many layups. His speed is actually a detriment to shooting. He should try and dunk more instead of laying up the ball. He will get more fouls as well. I didn’t think Reed would progress this fast and would like to see how he does when defenses are pressuring him more with the ball, but his shooting is a game changer for this team. People that wanted to move Amen back to the dunker spot full time need to own up to their mistake.
Not sure why Ime played Reed and Holiday together for longer than 5 minutes. Holiday is redundant with Reed on the court.
Really? He blew a layup against Detroit. Other than that, I assume he's missed one or 2 more. Maybe even 3 more. When does your eyeball test suggest he's missed all these layups? Granted, I get the difficulty on his layups isn't high, but he just isn't missing many.
Opponents absolutely hate being guarded by Josh Okogie. His combination of persistent physicality (even when his guy doesn't have the ball) reminds me of DB. Add to that his length, strength and lateral quickness and guys eventually stop wanting the ball. Very glad he's on the roster. His short bursts of scoring are found money.
He's been so good. Rockets are going to have to trade away 10 million or so to give him an MLE next season.
I don't recall Portland being able to attack the size of Reed and Holiday moreso than if they weren't out there by themselves. To me, it looked like Holiday provided spacing for Reed while the double bigs clogged the paint offensively and defensively without any negative consequences. Granted, I was pretty chill while Holiday was in there and may not have noticed something Portland was doing to take advantage of the size.
Reed's finally looking to have really turned it around. KD is poetry in motion when he's really getting buckets, not just potent but incredibly aesthetic also. What a joy to watch (when he's not on the Warriors) Sengun is a beast Amen is super athletic, but he's still not close to a young LeBron no matter what anybody says tbh, there's levels to that ****. edit: forgot to add that it looks mad to my eyes that our current "Twin Towers" are wing-playing silky shooters haha.
The one thing Amen shares with Jalen is that they both need to approach their dunking the way a young Westbrook or Ja approaches their dunking. They're so hyper athletic that with the extra height/length there really are not many people at all who can stop that. If Ja can go over damn near everybody regardless of height then Amen can dunk on probably everybody not named Wemby if he just went up hard.
The eye test says we rock! And we're just getting started. You can see the game by game progress from everyone, and it's exciting to watch the team come along this way. P.S. This schedule is werid af. Even though the guys are well rested, I don't like it because we have 2 less games than most of the other teams, and that means more 5 games in 7 nights stretches later on.
Well, the game was pretty much in the bag at that point, kind of semi-garbage time. Maybe it's the brotherly thing that Holiday got to play more than usual. I just thought Holiday is kind of a poor man's Reed.
I don't have an issue with having multiple shooters on the court as long as other skills are represented as I see shooting as synergistic instead of redundant. This assumes the shooters don't have a weakness that is being exploited. I don't see Holiday as exploited much defensively even if he doesn't provide value defensively. He can shoot. I get Houston is stacked and he's like the 11th best Rocket (assuming everyone healthy), but letting deals like the Rockets getting him on a minimum deal is why some teams struggle to improve when trying to improve.
When Holiday came in, the floor was wide open for the offense because he made it impossible for Portland to double anyone. I think they can find a way to take advantage of that lineup at times. I saw that shift as well.
