You really don't think shooting .205 from distance has something to with it? That's worse than Westbrook ....
I’m a “glass half full” guy. The benefit of the trade was replacing Jalen with a legit go to scorer to close out games. Because the lord knows that would never be Jalen.
The Rockets are going to give Amen every opportunity to figure this out. This was going to happen with or without Fred. The difference now is that its happening much faster. He wants to play PG and the Rockets are going to let him because it benefits everyone except for the people that think he cant. The Rockets arent a title contender in the foreseeable future if Amen doesnt realize that potential. If we relegate him to Swiss army knife, then you have 4 ancillary pieces and youre shopping for a new Durant every 3-4 years.
The difference between with FVV and without is that now they have no backup plan. Plan A is plan B and C and plan D is go back to plan A. The main roadblock for Amen is a respectable 3. Shooting .205 isn't going to get defenders to respect anything. Much like Westbrook, a triple double machine without a good outside shot - teams back off and clog the paint. Andre Iguodala is another example .... had all the tools accept a reliable outside shot. I doubt the team or Amen has the time to invest during the season to solve such a big problem, it's going to have to come with offseason work, and it may take a while.
Why is Swiss army knife a "relegation"? Why do we have to put all our hope on Amen being an elite PG? Sengun can improve to be good enough as the primary initiator of a contending team. Reed can improve to be a 25 ppg scorer and initiator. If these guys improve, and Amen improves to be an elite Swiss army knife, we don't need a Durant type star to contend. I'm not saying Amen can't be a great PG. Just disagreeing with the sentiment that "If Amen doesn't become an elite half court initiator, we have no chance of becoming a championship team, so we have to put all our eggs in making him one."
The Rockets are a title contender right now such that the Rockets not being able to become a title contender without Amen realizing his potential is BS. On trying to acquire a new KD every 3-4 years, I think this puts too much of the Rockets success on KD while at the same time paints the image that the Rockets would cease looking to acquire great players based solely on how one player performs. I think some players will outperform expectations. Some will underperform. Putting all the hopes of one player developing and assuming all other young players don't elevate their game is an assumption I will not make. I would hope that the young core makes trying to get a KD in 3-4 years unneeded, but I'm not banking that solely on Amen.
Im responding more to people who believe thats all he'll ever be. We need to give all 4 every opportunity to try and be more than they are. If it was up to them, we wouldve traded Jabari away by now and look at how much he's improved his handle. People arent talking about that enough. That drastically alters the dimension of this team. Agree with @Corrosion that we at least need a backup ball handler on days where Reed and Amen just dont have it or the matchup is causing issues. But this whole "Amen isnt capable of running the point" is looney tunes. Same folk that said Jabari should never dribble or Reed wont be anything more than Pritchard. They have to learn somehow and this team *needs* someone to ascend. Sengun isnt there yet and there's no guarantee that he will be. But 2x All Star is definitely a start.
No I don't think so because I've seen this exact phenomenon happen to Giannis under Kidd. Shooters doing all sorts of stupid ****, terrible positioning, constantly nixing the spacing by putting someone in the dunkers spot, Jason Kidd laughing when it's implied to him that a different offense would produce different results, etc. Same talk about Giannis has a limited ceiling because he didn't work as a PG in Kidd's offense. Then he wins a title. Like I said, there's no doubt someone can improve themselves and increase their % but the question is how is there such a strong pattern of lead wing players not meeting expectations on drives? It could be that Durant got old faster That Tatum forgot how to finish and then remembered That Brown forgot how to dribble then became FMVP That Jalen just sucks That Amen is just not good enough to do it Yes I'm sure these things have some minor or meaningful thing to do with it. But what would prompt you to actually check if there's a more dominant pattern? Like how many players in a row have to fail at this or what calibre of players? If we got SGA and his finishing efficiency dipped would you then say "should have developed his 3pt shot more" or would that be when a serious investigation of the entire sample (Udoka and players' careers) is prompted? Surely there's a possibility that an NBA coach is not good at something he's never ever demonstrated he's good at.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying "that's all he'll ever be." I think it's more likely to take an offseason to work thru.
If he's going to continue as a point guard, this roster won't work. If you're building a team around a player who can't shoot, then all the players around him have to be shooters. It's not a problem in the regular season, but in the playoffs, nobody will defend someone who shoots 20% from three-point range. Amen and Şengün might be a good duo, but if the team is built around Amen, Şengün will only be a burden.
We have the 3rd best 3 pt % in the league. Our bigger problem is the lack of a coherent offense. We are in the bottom of team assist %. It has to do with playing too much ISO with a superstar that wants to shoot from the FT line every time down the floor. This roster will work, if Ime can put in more motion and back picks instead of just handing the ball over to Durant, Sengun, or Amen and saying make it happen. We have better personnel than most teams in the NBA, but our coach is consistently outcoached and it will get worse in the playoffs.
The elephant in the room .191 You aint attacking a set half court defense with that. Amen attacking downhill after a made basket or on the fast break is one thing, Amen attacking a set defense is another. Quickly probe the defense, attack if the opportunity is there, otherwise give the ball up and assume the dunkers role. Best Of Both Worlds. Point Swiss Army Knife.
That play was created by Sengun's gravity. They had two guys staying at the elbow to stop his drive. KD and Aaron on one side. Batum was caught between Amen's dunk or Reed's 3. He decided to run toward Reed and left Amen cutting to the basket.
This is pure facts. We still don't make teams chase us and we do almost nothing to create easy buckets for our guys outside of the transition game. Like you say, we've got the personnel to run all kinds of off ball screens, backdoor cuts etc and make it more than just relying on the talent to overpower the defensive effort. Ime's running a blunt instrument offense in a league that thrives on surgical precision. We desperately need someone to come in with more inspiration on the scoring end, we're already vague contenders in our current state, a true offense might make us real ones.
I don't believe that this is an Ime problem, it's a personnel problem - because they don't have a guard who has enough gravity to create, we rely upon Sengun and KD who thrives in the mid range. Amen gets an awful lot of clean looks off of those two as does Jabari. That's a huge part of why the team as a whole has shot so well from 3 so far.
Whilst i agree on the lead guard point, it still doesn't change that we could easily run off ball screens with for example a Reed/Stevo pairing whilst Alpi creates in the high post and get him some wide open lights out looks. We could do the same with Jabari and literally anybody and he now looks able to be either a deep threat or a drive threat regardless of whether he was the screener or the person running off it. We have big body centers who know how to set excellent screens, we also have sharpshooters. We don't have to just rely on the most basic p&r actions, iso play and being the best rebounders ever.
