Amen's athleticism is electrifying, and his court vision makes him an unique prospect, no doubt. But it's also difficult for me to envision him becoming an even average shooter--unless he completely changes his mechanics like Lonzo did (and Lonzo was an outlier case, let's be honest). And this is the problem with us having the 4th pick. We know what we'd get with Wemby. We know what Scoot provides. Brandon Miller is sort of projectable (though I don't know if he's the best fit for our team). Amen is a question mark--albeit one with immense potential.
I'm going to go ahead and say Amen will have most successful NBA career of this draft class. Bookmarked.
I think Amen has a higher floor than people realize due to his size, athleticism, defense, and passing. The obsession with 3P shooting has gone a little too far, to the point where people assume any perimeter player who can't shoot is worthless even if he's 6'7" with a 7-foot wingspan and elite in several other categories. If a guy like Marcus Smart can make it in the league as a vastly less physically-gifted player and a worse passer, Amen Thompson can too. He just needs to make sure to buy in 100% on defense while he works on becoming an average-ish shooter. I think "6 foot 7 uber-athletic Rajon Rondo" is a reasonable comp. I'm all-in on the playmaking here. If Amen can put in enough effort defensively to stay on the floor 30 minutes a game, he will average 10+ assists in a few years after adjusting to the league. @ me in a few years if I turn out to be wrong. However, I do want to mention that like Rondo, you should not expect Amen to light the world on fire his rookie season. It's going to be a helluva adjustment for him.
I dug into some stuff Adam Spinella wrote about the Thompsons and player archetypes in general. I think some smart people are basically claiming there's a good chance Amen Thompson is a multi-time all-star even if he *never* develops his shot. I think this assumes he hits as a high level playmaker (something like 8+ APG I guess), finishes well at the rim, and provides versatile (1-4 I think?) defense*. And I guess high level BBIQ/feel for the game. That's still a very high bar, but doesn't seem super crazy given what he's shown. There are also some interesting ideas on how to generate efficient offense when the defense knows you're not a good shooter. If you are a high end athlete (with a quick first step), you basically give yourself some counters to a defense that is sagging deep off of you from the perimeter. Stealing some videos from Spinella: Spoiler Westbrook is in some of those, and as I (and I think others) mentioned, he's not a terrible comp. Improve some of the shot selection with Russ (though I also hope Amen's post game would be better given his height), and I think you'd probably end up with a guy with fairly decent PPP, even if he ends up as a 25% 3pt shot. This would require the rest of the team to be pretty good at shooting, but I've kinda assumed that's necessary for the team to be any good anyway. Even if you assume Sengun should be the primary playmaker (Senhub), IMO he needs to get to 33-35% on good volume to be that Mini-Jokic (and that number would probably be sufficient with a lineup involving Amen). Of course, Jabari and JG need to be hitting at a high clip too (ideally closer to 40% IMO). Of course, if Amen *could* get to 33%-35% with his 3pt shot...then things get really scary. * I much prefer Scoot to Amen, but I will say I am intrigued by the possibility of a lineup with say Amen/JG/Tari/Jabari/Sengun. That's like 4 guys with 7' wingspans (Sengun might be slightly less, but around there, and likely around 9' standing reach I'm guessing?), and while Sengun and JG maybe aren't the best defenders (yet?), the other 3 guys could help out a ton (with rim protection, scram switching, etc.). And that's without throwing in other draft picks or guys signed with free agent money. You can swap in a Cam Whitmore, Jarace Walker, Taylor Hendricks, Brandon Miller, etc., but they likely wouldn't be in that PG role (unless JG/Sengun handle those duties), leaving one less 1-4 defender in the group overall. Am I just trying to cope with the truth that the Rockets have the #4 pick? Probably. But hey, I can always dream until those dreams are shattered by the hard truth of reality. edit: I promise I drafted this before @OremLK post, which basically says all of this much more succinctly.
He’ll be fine if he develops his midrange/float game. A point guard doesn’t have to be a good three point shooter.
Adam Spinella is not smart. He is the opposite of that. He is a high school history teacher masqurading as a middle school/high school basketball coach for a 'latin' school.
Great post @RC Cola . I agree completely, and I also agree with preferring Scoot even though I like Amen a whole lot. Just my view here, but if the Rockets sign Harden and draft Amen, which is looking to be the likeliest combination of outcomes right now, the initial message to Amen needs to be all about defense. Tell him "we are drafting you to be our defensive stopper on the perimeter and we want you to focus all your attention on that as a rookie. That's how you earn your minutes on the floor for now, Harden is our main point guard and you're coming off the bench as our defensive specialist. We want you to focus on making plays for others on the offensive end and setting other guys up for good looks. Practice your shooting off the court for now and don't worry about it at game time."
FWIW, I think Sam Vecenie, Maxwell Baumbach, and probably Hollinger (if you interpret his analysis somewhat favorably) have said a variation of the line I said at the top. I think some other popular draft analysts have said similar things, though I might be getting people's opinions mixed up at this point (I've consumed tons of opinions over the last week or two). But yeah, maybe they're all dumb poo-poo heads that fart from their mouth and don't know a thing about real NBA basketball.
Part me likes that (and certainly we should do that if we go the Harden route), though I'm also thinking Amen would need to get reps as lead creator ASAP (I don't necessarily agree with the "put him in the G League for a 1-2 seasons!" idea). Given his likely struggles at the start, it might be smart to keep him on the bench initially (maybe 25%-33% of the season), but he really won't get better (i.e., elite) at that until he's put into that role. I was initially supportive of the Harden idea, but confronted with the strong possibility of drafting Amen (or smaller possibility of Scoot), it isn't really something I'd prefer at this point. On a 1(+1) year deal, maybe. Especially if he's willing to play off-ball and help with development in general. Otherwise...I actually *kinda* prefer KPJ as starting PG...which is weird for me to say (not the biggest KPJ as a PG fan). But yeah, I understand there are some strong signs indicating a Harden reunion is likely. Regardless, stressing defense is a good idea for developing Amen. He should be yanked if he's not putting in effort on defense. As long as he plays solid D, he should earn some minutes, even if he ends up shooting 20% from 3 (in fact, *not* shooting open 3s should be another thing that earns him a seat on the bench).
The draft is a crapshoot, you look at the upside, not the downside. There may be safer players later like Hendricks, Whitmore and Walker, but a roster full of safe players is mediocre. Gotta take the big swings, especially since we don't have an apparent superstar yet. It looks like Amen is probably the guy.
Not convinced Whitmore is necessarily even safer than Amen. He's a better shooter, but he's still not exactly good, and his decisionmaking is so slow. I have real questions about his basketball IQ. Walker or Hendricks for sure, but the gap on upside is equally large. I would take one of those guys if we had been a nearly .500 team and already had a great young star at point guard like Indiana does, but uh, we weren't and don't.
The success story of Kawhi Leonard will encourage teams to take a flyer on defensive players with enough potential on Offense.
Outside of shooting, he still looks pretty raw. He has all the defensive potential, but outside of highlight reel plays he still tends to let his man go by him very quickly and off the ball he falls asleep a lot. And I am not fully sold on his feel for the game yet - OTE was a mess, but it looked like he also made a lot of bad decisions. If it were only his shoot, I‘d feel a lot more comfortable with taking him, but outside of his athleticism, finishing at the rim and passing, he feels like a project that is also older than most other players in the draft. Now that is fine - if we want to find potential all-NBA-players I think he has the highest ceiling (his ceiling is probably higher than Scoots, but of course behind Wemby). But I also do believe he has the lowest floor of all top 10 guys.
Brody jumps of 1 foot like Lebron and 2 feet like Dwight. That second quick tap jump is also scrumptious
I'm still a bit undecided on his defense. Not in terms of potential (he clearly has the length, lateral quickness, athleticism, effort, etc.), but in terms of skill/technique. He does ball-watch and gamble a lot. But I also think Ausar did too, as do some others. I've heard it thrown out that transition is so important in OTE (as every team sucks in the half-court), that guys might be gambling more than normal just because that's actually a better expected result. Even if you get beat, the defense will fully collapse as there is no shooting in the league (Thompsons might be average honestly). I want to say they played a bit differently in some of their non-OTE games (and I think Ausar/Amen also locked down in the playoffs when needed), but kinda hard to say (and I only watched a bit). This does feel mostly like technique/scheme stuff that IMO should be easily "fixable," but until that's proven, hard to say for sure (and regardless, he will need to adjust to NBA teams with much better shooting and less overall transition offense). Outside of that, I don't know if I think he makes a ton of bad decisions. I think he needs to clean up his handle some (especially against doubles/hedges/blitzes/etc.), clean up some passing stuff (jump passes), go for simple finishes through contact more (vs more acrobatic moves to avoid contact), etc., but I think those are generally fine for his age (JG has basically the same problems). There are a lot of team concepts he'll need to learn too (just weren't done at OTE I think), but again, not sure that's too unusual for non-NBA guys. I do think he has a high feel for things (offense and defense), and he (and his brother) can process things really well.
if we were still in tank mode and not trying to win, he’d start right away, but since we’re not, I’m thinking he’ll be coming off the bench for us for at least the 1st 2 years due to broken jumper and turnover issues I could see lineups of Harden Green Amen Bari Sengun or Harden Green Amen Tari Bari will be more of a defender, finisher, and secondary playmaker in these lineups
Harden will get Green and Amen a lot of alley oops in transition and give them a lot of kick ahead passes as well like he did with Maxey Harden can break down the defense and kick it out to Green for open threes or Amen to attack a scrambling defense in the halfcourt Amen can drive and kick as well…Harden was more comfortable with and more willing to take catch and shoot threes this past season, and I suspect it will become an even bigger part of his shot diet as he continues aging
I do think you'd want the ball in Amen's hands most of the time when he's on the floor. That's where his talents lie. Sure, you can kind of see him doing cutting actions and just a ton of movement off the ball in general, but you're throwing away his best pure basketball skill if he doesn't have the ball in his hands, that obviously being his passing. I suppose it wouldn't be that different from what we were doing with CP3 and Russ in the end. You'd just be seeing a lot less of it during Amen's rookie season because he'd probably only play 20-25 minutes per game if Harden does indeed come back, and they'd probably only share the floor about 10 minutes a game.
