While much of the blame has been put on Udoka, Durant may have a big part to do with how the Rockets play in terms of ISO and individual improvisation. This article from 2019 reveals his unhappiness with Warriors motion offense. “The motion offense we run in Golden State, it only works to a certain point,” he says. “We can totally rely on only our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we’re going to have to mix in individual play. We’ve got to throw teams off, because they’re smarter in that round of playoffs. So now I had to dive into my bag, deep, to create stuff on my own, off the dribble, isos, pick-and-rolls, more so than let the offense create my points for me.” He wanted to go someplace where he’d be free to hone that sort of improvisational game throughout the regular season. https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/...t-we-all-want-to-iso-but-id-rather-win-titles
Yeah I've been mentioning that KD's propensity to go rogue and ISO in GSW was his issue with Draymond...and that sometimes he'd literally demand the ball and it would annoy the crap out of Draymond. It's part of the reason they had that big fight actually where Green said they don't need him. I think there is a lot of truth to this too, that it's probably more of KD's fault and not Ime's because they do actually run offense when KD isn't on the floor, sometimes looks like a different team tbh... With that said, I still put this on Ime, he has to do what is best for the team, not the player, its clear running so much through KD causes a lot of stand around lazy offense along with TOs. Sure, tie game, a minute left to go, get to easy money sniper, let him do what he do, but it's a lot harder to win games relying on one person than it is relying on multiple.
PG Reed Sheppard/ Aaron Holiday SG Aaron Holiday/ Reed Sheppard/Josh Okogie SF Kevin Durant /Jabari Smith/ Amen Thompson PF Kevin Durant /Jabari Smith/ Amen Thompson C Amen Thompson/ Jabari Smith
interesting video here. Talked about how Durant’s isos in his 2nd year in GS increased and exploded in the playoffs especially against Houston ironically lol. But it mentions his unwillingness to play a motion offense and prefers iso ball
I think the Rockets vision for this team before Fred went down is to mix in iso play with Durant movement offball and the injury changed that. I think they wanted to play Fred and Sengun 1-5 screens or fred coming off DHO’s kicking it back weakside to Durant etc. Unfortunately the Fred injury really messed up that vision and our current guards just aren’t good enough
Pretty sure if Durant didn't want to play team offense under Kerr, he sure is not going to play it under Udoka.
He said the offense had to mix in iso and should not rely on one type of play. He did not say it should be all just be iso. Is it me or recently it looks like we are going for KD and Sengun p&r a lot?
KD has no clue how to win a ring - sure ISO helps but systems get you there, a balance works. Him at 37 ISO-ing leads to a crappy record. We are .500 in close games, we are 1-7 in overtime, all because we have an iso heavy offense. DD
You can tell he prefers ISO’s and pull up middies all game, he rarely ever moves without the ball and he rarely sets screens.
He didn’t but he favors iso. He played this way his entire career. But you can’t blame him. He’s a dominant player and ISO is used for dominant players. I think that video i posted is interesting where it talks about how his ISO’s increased year 2 and exploded in the playoffs at the rockets expense lol. It worked against him in some games yet he still favored it
Offense was a problem in Boston when Udoka was there… Offense was a problem last year with Udoka. This isn’t KD- this is what Udoka does. Udoka largely gets away with it when he has a top 3-5 defense. The problem now is that he doesn’t have a top 3 defense so he is not stacking regular season wins. Hopefully Stone and Udoka put their ego aside and hand the offense over to someone else - but even then, this is a really poorly constructed team, the pieces really fit poorly together. The Rockets need to get a top level defender at the 5 and move Sengun for a defender/shooter. We may also have to change our view of success with this team - something will radically have to change for the Rockets to beat the Thunder or Spurs.
Sengun and Post ISO's are SIGNIFICANTLY different than top of the key, face up ISOs The former you can literally run motion offense around, watch the Nuggets.
They do but you can tell they don't really have the chemistry for it. Alpi-KD 2 man game has not really worked how I think most of us imagined it should have lol, I mean if it did, I think Ime would spam it but it honestly IMO has led to a lot of TOs or really slow developing offense. We'd be a much better team if just this alone worked tbh. Honestly, it probably won't work until Sengun can hit threes. If you look at the start of the season things looked very different.
There’s nothing wrong with mixing iso ball with your offense. Jordan did it, Kobe did it, and the list goes on. You have to have that guy who you can say “go get us a bucket right now”, and KD is that guy. The problem is when it’s absolutely forced. The majority of our offense is “KD go get us a bucket.” We don’t have good second options in our offense. If the first pick and roll with Sengun isn’t there (And that isn’t even ran enough), the next move is just throw it to Durant and Pray he can bail us out. There has to be more to this offense. If people are over shadowing the pick and roll they need to be forced to pay for it. We wonder why our team makes so many bonehead passes that get jumped, and part of it is due to a lack of playmakers with high basketball iq, and the other is our offense is so freaking predictable. The other problem is Amen’s inability to shoot 3’s. Look I love Amen as much as the next guy, but when KD gets doubled, and Amen is in the corner, that guy can basically slag off and make it 3v3 again instead of it being 4v3 like it should be. Ime doesn’t do anything to try and fix this, he just says “ make it work!” This is why I didn’t like having both Amen and Sengun out there that can’t shoot. Now Amen is improving from his corner 3’s, and if he can even become average from there or slightly above, that would change everything. sorry, rambling.
