It's almost like they're new to basketball. The winning streak was going to happen with him. It's a shame he got hurt when he did. Notice how some who were like "he's Sengun. Will be back better. I wish him the best recovery." are now the ones piling on this crap that 2 styles can't mix. FVV has made an effort to push pace.
What’s it like being wrong with almost 250 games of evidence? I mean, that has to be some kind of record.
“win streak means nothing” “We’re beating teams” ??? I’ll try to dumb this down as much as possible. Losing your best player does not make your team better. Playing against the worst teams in the league makes your team better. Does that make sense?
Stats don’t lie. There are more assists, more points without Sengun. The system needs to be altered to suit not Sengun but all the players. The rest of the team wants to run. https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/rockets-players-stats-with-and-without-sengun-this-season
That's because their shooting has been next level. I've done this for every game in this winning streak. Original 1st match up. I know that this game the Rockets D held Markkanen and Clarkson to zero points in comparison to the 55 they had in the first game. But the Rockets managed 27 assists. The final score was 127 to 126 with Green and Villain going 6/22 FGs and 1 of 9 from threes. https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202401200HOU.html Dive into the numbers. And Amen was still not being trusted by our head coach. Making your shots opens things up. Hue knew. Adding this for fun. And their catch and shoot is even more ridiculous, same wide open shots they were missing all year
With all due respect to senguin, he is not jokic. That's not a slap in his face, jokic is the best player in the league and most likely will be the best player this decade. Bc he is not jokic (btw green is no kobe) the Rockets have to find a way to Make them coexist. Maybe it's something like green does his thing if it's there first 14 sec of shot clock and then they slow it down and they alternate bench time so they are staggered.
It can be just as simple as every possession that starts with a defensive rebound Green is pushing and doing his thing and every possession that starts with an inbounds pass from an opponent make is Senhub time.
It really is as simple as hitting their shots. The offense is no different. PNR, horns and some occasional iso. Getting guys out on the break isn’t new, hitting shots is. Someone being out isn’t the reason Jalen and others are making shots. The idiocy behind that logic is astounding
I think someone being out can have a positive effect on other players performance, including shooting. Better ball movement and tempo can get players better looks and more buckets. In basketball, chemistry plays a large role. It’s very very clear that the current lineup is playing differently and better without Sengun. It’s up to the coach to somehow incorporate what Sengun does best with what the rest of the team does best. Can it be done? I hope so.
The current lineup is shooting better. It began with Alp in the lineup. Number of passes has not gone up, pace hasn’t picked up. Same offensive sets. The bottom line is players hitting their shots. Almost every shot type, play type, number of passes is the exact same on the season. We’re just making 40% from 3 over the last 6 games instead of 35% on the year. Adding your best player back to the lineup doesn’t take away from shooting. It gives more space to shoot.
It's really hard to have an honest discussion about this because of the factions and agendas behind so many of the posts. Lots of SOFs reject it outright because Sengun is awesome, how could we be worse without our best player? And then on the other end we have JGOFs who use 6 games to discount what we've seen in the previous 200, and that Sengun has been holding this team back all along. I'm entertaining the possibility that we are better without Sengun. I think it's silly to ignore it. But if it's true, it should be pretty easy to provide some kind of stats or data that support the argument, right? The most common one that people keep repeating is that the roster loves to get out and run, and Sengun prevents this. But then you look into the stats and it's not true. According to the data we aren't playing any faster since Sengun went down. The pace is basically the same (actually slightly slower), and the offensive time per possession is almost exactly the same. So it's not that. And people have pointed to transition, and the transition attempts are very slightly up, not nearly enough to account for what we're seeing. A lot of posters also keep repeating that "the defense is so much better without Sengun" which is also just false. Easily disproven by looking at any stats. Our defense is not better without Sengun. Maybe it could be if we had a great defender to replace him with but we don't, the defense is worse with 5 out and it's roughly the same with Jock in there for him. It's not that. Another argument that I think has some credibility is that the offense is better because Sengun isn't clogging the lane. But if this is true, why is the offense still dominating with Jock on the floor? Jock is playing extended minutes and the offense is thriving with him out there. Jock is not a floor spacer, not a 3 point shooter, he's often camped in the dunker spot or setting screens, similar to Sengun. This argument would make sense if Jock was killing the offense, but he doesn't, so this one doesn't seem plausible. People have said we're running better offense and getting better shots. But we've gone from 18.2 to 18.5 wide open 3s per game. Is that really it? I don't know, it's just weird. It's undeniable that these past 6 games since Sengun went down are the best this team (this set of players) has ever played. It's not even close. It's just really weird that almost all the reasons people try to point to are demonstrably false. You can go look at the numbers and see that the things they're saying are not true. I would expect for something to be easily provable, like, if our pace was way up, or our drtg was way better, or we were getting way more transition. But none of it is true. So what is it? Is it random? Did Jalen Green coincidentally decide to go super saiyan at the same time Sengun got hurt? I think that's really unlikely. But none of the commonly given explanations make any sense. One thing I didn't bring up is that Jalen Green (and others) just need the ball in their hands to succeed. Maybe this one is true, I don't know how to look this one up and prove/disprove it. Could we see Jalen Green shooting percentages based on how long he's touched the ball? Based on number of dribbles before shooting? Maybe it's a fools errand for me to even try to quantify this stuff at all. Maybe it's all based on rhythm and confidence. I don't think we have a stat for Jalen Greens 3 point percentage when he's dunking and smiling vs when he's not.
It’s as simple as making shots. Which builds confidence, which means you make more shots. It’s not a difficult concept. It’s good that the “shooters” on the team are making their shots at an average to above league average rate recently. That should only get better when you add a player like Alp. You’re going to have to choose who to double or focus defensive attention to when you have the gravity Alp and Jalen currently has.
What if Sengün just missed jumping on the 10+ Winning Streak Train.......because he got injured. And it would have worked the same way with Sengün playing....everyone just played better. Then this 16 pages of thread is useless.
Right, but yall are both taking the opposite side of the argument. The question is "are the rockets better without Sengun", and I'm trying to explore if the answer is "yes", then why? Yall are both telling me "actually the answer is no" which is fine, I get that viewpoint. Maybe it is pure coincidence that they are playing better when he went out with injury. That's still a possibility. And personally I am still on that side, I'm leaning towards "no". But it's worth looking into "if yes, then why?" and that's what I'm trying to analyze.
That is the theory of nobody is the problem right now and everyone's overpowered (gaming language) Everyone's power is maximized sans those that are out injured. I am proposing to give this Jalen and Alpe show another year and see what is what then. At least give it a proper sample size.
The one upside to the possibility that the Rockets are better without Sengun(not saying they are, but let's just speculate) is that he's a terrific player who tons of teams would love to trade for.
