'What about defense?'

Defense doesn't matter in today's NBA - we just need to outscore GSW!


a gem from a few years back that i was told... lol

 

Aside from Utah and Phoenix, the other 5 teams on that list can all boast a top-10 player.

We shouldn't focus on getting a top ten defense right out of the gate. We need actual basketball players on this team first.

 

Other than Mobley, there isn't really any obvious path to that right now because of the dearth of bigs on the team. I don't think we can have a legit playoff type defense without bigs that can't be played off the court.

Other options to get that big man might include:

1) Take a raw big prospect(or multiple) later in the draft and hope they develop someday rather than turn into Bruno.

2) Get lucky in free agency.

3) Get lucky in a trade. (happened with Wood ...)

 

We barely even have a roster now, you can worry about that later.

Once we had Harden, we got Ariza, Tucker, Luc, Beverley etc to round out the defense.

We just need any good players we can get our hands on right now.

 

Does anyone think that Silas, knowing this team was not going anywhere w the injuries and shakeup, decided to significantly limit scheming and play calls on both ends of the floor so as to not overload young players with info/plays but also so as not to burn schematics on players we will likely try to move before we can truly start rebuilding? Holy run on sentence, I hope that makes sense. I wonder how much of last years lack of competent play and coaching was simply do to long term strategy. Of course we would never know this, as no player or coach would ever publicly admit it, but we know that in football coaches don’t open their playbooks till late in the season.

 

The team you see before you today, and tomorrow, will not resemble what the Rockets will look like when competing for a championship

We are the worst team in the league, and we are getting the #2 pick, unless major changes prevail, we will be a bottom team over the next couple of seasons, we will be hunting top draft picks

Once we find a star, through our draft picks, or through a trade, that's when the team building starts. Team building should not start around Christian Wood, an at best borderline all-star level player, with 2 years left on his contract before becoming an UFA

 

I know there will be posters that disagree with this, but my opinion- things like looking for top 10 defense and things like finding the best fit should not be our concern right now. Right now, we are a bad team, and our focus should be finding as many young players with lots of potential to develop into legit starting level or all star level players in the future. If you do that, there will be young players you get that don't pan out, but for everyone that does, then you have a strong asset that you can move for the right fit later.

It looks like today, most of the threads are making comments based on Milwaukee's championship and how we can try to emulate that. To me, that seems like an overreaction and something we are too far removed from to be worrying about. But if you want to do that, look at what they did this year. They were a contending team, with a top 5 player, that had multiple playoff letdowns. So then they used lots of assets (possibly even overpaying) to go out and get Holiday, and then later to get Tucker, in order to add strong perimeter defenders, significantly improve their team defense, and find the right fit.

Hopefully, we get to that. But we aren't there yet. For now, the more draft picks and young players we get, the better our chances of them possibly developing into great players that we can use to build our team out then.

 

If you really want to be surprised look at the top offenses this year. Look at the net ratings.

Defense is important, but not more important than a good offense.

Champions are balanced.