Not sure what Udoka is doing putting Amen on Inbounding duties again and again. He is having issues, not big deal, but should be working that out in practice, not in important games mid season.
In his two years combined, Amen has played just slightly more minutes than Jalen played last year alone. As far as game experience goes, he's still practically a rookie.
Just like that down to 3rd seed in WC and only 4 games ahead to play-in tournament. Can't go on such losing streaks and expect a comfortable position to make the playoffs. This was a very stupid loss. Had a timeout and did not take it. And terrible uncontested 3 was given up by Tate. Dude was literally guarding no one.
Amen messed up badly, and I bet nobody feels it worse than him. Let this be a big learning lesson, but let's support our players when they perform badly as well.
Yeah I get that Amen has been playing out of his mind, but this just cannot happen. Terrible awareness and Green was also lackluster. But let’s not overanalyze that play, but rather see that we played like a bunch of headless chickens the last 30-40 seconds with throwing up a three with 20 seconds left with a 4-on-2 situation. Just god awful. Then we get the rebound and throw up a contested one, why?!! We were ahead, play the freaking clock!! I get that they’re young, but no excuses for this piss-poor shots. Another issue I have is with Amen, like last game, he’s not being guarded at the 3pt line but guys sag. So do something, force it, attack, use that speed or just shoot that 3 when it’s open. Don’t wait until there’s 2 seconds left. He really needs to work on that. Lastly, this is again also on Ime, he’s shuffling line-ups and rotations, so showing some flexibility is good, yet at the same time you should also make sure you get a good shot, have the guys in there who are poised and know how to work well together. Inexcusable loss once again.
It's crazy to think that nobody at that age has done that since Hakeem, and Hakeem was a rookie. Even more impressive is that Hakeem wasn't even familiar with basketball until age 15. He had only played basketball 7 years when he reached 22. That's half as long as Sengun has played.
What has that got to do with not having him passing the ball in. I'm the biggest Amen fan on the forum, but he sucks at inbounding the ball and Ime keeps putting him in that position. Coaches are supposed to put their players in position to succeed, not fail.
He knows he messed up. He’s pretty stoic, but he looked crushed after the game. He pulled his jersey up over his head. Amen’s got a good head on his shoulders and seems to have a lot of pride. Hopefully he’ll learn from this and use it as motivation.
That's not even the worst part, look at who was on the court at the time, Ime put in what he thought was his defensive stoppers who couldn't get a single stop.... then didn't call a timeout to move the ball to half court and put back in the guys who got the lead to begin with. So you had someone who isn't good at bringing the ball in trying to bring the ball in with guys who don't play together and are offensively challenged (in addition to not being good on defense). Ime 100% set the team up to fail.
I'm not gonna lie. I almost laughed when it happened. Collapsing in clutch time is so typical with this team.
