There is some credence to what you're saying. You could surround Harden with 4 Home Depot employees and he'd still somehow get 28/5/5. Sengun definitely gets more "well but Fred" or "well but Jalen". Like....Jokic doesn't do this. I can't recall him ever doing this. It's eyebrow raising but not concerning. Yet.
I think if he continued his fairly linear improvement then I'd be comfortable calling him one. From 9/6/3 to 15/9/4 to 21/9/5 last year, I think if he had 25/10/6 on good-ish efficiency, that would probably be a superstar to me. Also, if he was playing that well, the rockets would've probably won a couple more games, lets say 19-7, and still the 2nd seed in the west? So yeah, that stat line with the defensive improvement, leading the second team in the west, that would be a superstar to me.
Yeah, it's obvious that the Rockets are running their offense through Sengun. There are lots of things need to be fixed: Sengun needs to fix his touch around the basket. Yes, he is swamped. But he also missed a lot of shots he was capable of making. Jalen needs to string more than a couple of consecutive good shooting games. And he needs to learn the difference between a good shot attempt and a bad one. FVV is shooting even worse than Jalen. I never thought that was possible. They need more cutting and off ball screens to take advantage of Sengun's passing ability. Amen's midrange and corner 3 has improved a lot. But it's still not enough to be a threat to space the floor. He also needs to be better at handling. He keeps losing the ball. And he isn't good at initiating a half court offense. Jabari and Brooks are okay but need to be more consistent. Tari needs to play smarter. And yes, stop missing layups. Alpi has caught that same missing bunnies bug. Cam and Reed need to grow up faster. That's just on top of my head. I'm sure there are others things I missed.
Fox and Brunson are on the verge of potentially making the leap but I would not hold my breath. I do see KAT being a force in New York but he will be in the shadows of Brunson.
No, no, yes. I think Brunson is right on the edge. I think the version of Sengun that I described would be a similar caliber/tier player.
To me it's Jokic, giannis, shai, luka. There's other fringe guys like brunson, curry, tatum but those 4 are clear superstars.
Like I said, it depends on your definition of Superstar. To me. Those 3 are all stars and really good players but not superstars. You said that if Sengun went 25/10/6 with pretty good efficiency, then he's a superstar. KAT is averaging 24.9 pts with 52.9% fg% and 44.2 3pt% on 64.5% TS%, leading the league in rebounding at 13.6, 3.2 ast, 0.9 stl and 1.0 blk but you don't consider him a superstar. Obviously, theree's no concrete definition of superstar. To me, a superstar is a guy that makes teammates better and can take over games on a fairly regular basis. Harden was the last Rocket to be able to do that. On the bright side, if the Rockets stay toward the top of the Western standings, then voters will feel obligated to elect a Rocket as an all star. That would likely be Sengun.
Yeah if you want me to get more detailed it's about a lot more than just your box score statline. KAT has great efficiency but he's got zero passing talent whatsoever, compared to Sengun. So to have the same offensive impact he's got to score a lot more, compared to a guy that can run the offense effectively. He's also a much worse defender than Sengun. Regardless I don't want to turn this into KAT vs Sengun because honestly I think KAT is probably better than current Sengun considering Senguns underperformance this year, relative to what I expected. But the linearly-improved version of Sengun that I was envisioning is quite a bit better than KAT. For me it's about whether you can be the best player on a championship team, thats my definition. Obviously there's a lot of ambiguity there because you can argue all day about whether or not a guy is good enough to be put in that category, but that's where I set the bar. So a controversial player (for some people) like Tatum is definitely in there for me, since they just won. I personally think you've got no shot if KAT is your best player, so that's immediately disqualifying for him. I think we're all hoping that someone on this roster can get to that point, otherwise we're not winning a championship. I personally thought Sengun could get there, I saw a lot of potential in him. Year 1 to 2 was a massive leap, and then year 3 was another massive leap. Maybe I was naive to expect the same leap from year 3 to 4, but I did expect it. And if the leap was in line with my expectation, I would be comfortable with him in this category.
Few things from last night: - Teams are doing their best to keep him away from the paint, and that's easy since there are no shooters in the team. He definitely has no help in this roster and every time he tries to score he's facing 2 - 3 defenders at this point that's clamping down on him. He needs to learn to play through that though and not let it get to him. -Needs to add reliable floaters to his bag. His touch has gone off this season, not sure if it's the way he's being guarded or his body changing or whatever, but flat out needs to get that back. I think part of that is him trying to adjust because he's consistently short or the shot is consistently soft at points. Can be a good sign actually because that signifies he's in control of his skills, unlike another guy in our roster. Also the fact that most times he can bring it when needed when games are on the line. He's just in a weird stage here, I'm not that concerned. - Starting the games soft needs to stop being a thing. It's annoying. - Needs to take more shots. He's always been very timid on taking shots, just feels like he's hawkishly watching his efficiency. I'd rather see him take shots than watching dumbass shot after dumbass shot from Fred or JG - frankly they are also pushed to it a bit. If it's a good shot take it. He needs more attempts overall. - Team needs to make a decision and establish some hierarchy and system. We are too obsessed with this Core 7 idea but it's a group of guys that don't necessarily fit together. Our guys have been consistently bad now at playmaking, off-ball movement, passing, etc and I don't see any improvements on these fronts. Sengun sure would benefit from cutters, good off-ball guys and sharpshooters around him, but every team needs those anyway. There doesn't seem to be any conscious effort to build depth in offense and if we keep going in this direction we will be a perennial playoff 1st - 2nd round exit at best.
Missed the game yesterday. Did Sengun get dominated in match ups with Harty? Segun seems to really struggle with physical big guys. I have noticed this with Zubac and Harty in previous games.
I think he was pretty much head to head against him. He was able to push him around and create space when they were 1:1. Folks love creating sound bites and frankly can’t process the game well so just throw nonsense takes around as if they were 1:1 whole game, but they were rarely leaving Hartenstein isolated, always sending help and double or tripling him.
Hard to say because Hartenstein benefited massively from guard play. But Sengun is for sure below expectations.
That was two years ago. Before kpj iso starts around second quarter, he used to make 8-10 points on very high efficiency
