[IKO] Amen Thompson to undergo MRI. Left arena in walking boot and crutches.

Things happen. Bari broke his hand in shoot around, at least Amen was in a game. He will probably be back for the playoffs and the boot was precautionary. Next man up

 

Wtf man… when did this happen?

 

This is why Steve Kerr is actually a good coach. He always sat Curry the whole 4th quarter when they were up big time. Even if he was close to breaking a record or getting a triple double or anything.

Udoka really looks foolish sometimes and that’s concerning.

 

Ime should know better, even if Amen doesn’t.

For starters (), Rockets up by 26 heading to the 4th…. NOT ONE starter should have been back out there. I know “no lead is safe”, but understand your opponent and the situation - it’s not like we surprised the Celtics or Thunder and got up huge unexpectedly, and know a run is coming. It’s the basement dwelling, injury riddled Pels. The game is over. Hey, if the lead somehow gets down to 15, bring the starters back in, fine.

At the start of the 4th, Amen had 7 boards. If he doesn’t get up to 8/9, I feel like you don’t even push for him to get that triple double. I guess you live and learn (Ime and Amen both), but this is a big loss for the team, on both sides of the ball. Hopefully he’s back for the playoffs. The experience of playing meaningful basketball under the bright lights is huge for these youngsters.

 

For me it’s exactly this reason that I find it easier to criticize him, since I could see him trying to test out line-ups with a few starters mixed in with a Cam or Nate or Jock. Since Amen was the ONLY player out there that didn’t have a business being there, solely for the reason of a freaking stat chasing, makes this even more stupid and Ime deserves a lot of **** for it. Amen deserves **** as well, I don’t care how young, stat chasing has never sat well with me.

I really wouldn’t mind if we go down hard now and miss play-offs all together. Without Amen it’s pointless. Also since I don’t care for Ime to stick around for much longer if he continues to be this stubborn.

 

Luc Richard Mbah Moute getting injured the last game of the season before the Playoffs. Up 18 points. Injured his shoulder on a dunk after landing hitting the floor. Go for a layup.

Mike D'Antoni made that mistake too. Cost the Team in the Playoffs.

 

Mike D'Antoni last game of the season. Luc Richard Mbah Moute injures shoulder again. Out for the Playoffs. Cost the Team a Championship.

 

It's not about the 3 extra minutes Amen played.

It's about the months of driving these guys into the ground.

Effort is not unlimited and I can't believe that even has to be said out loud. I don't think he understands this. In the long run, you will lose AT LEAST as much as you gained when the eventual burnout, leg-less shooting, lack of momentum and weak ligaments/muscles become your downfall.

A placebo effect is regularly created in sports in order to bypass the signs your body gives you to chill for a second. Flu game type of stuff. That's fine in difficult games, in limited situations (playoffs), but every coach who has ever tried to have their team go playoff intensity all season gets lots of injuries and then acts like it's a coincidence. It's not a coincidence we and the Magic have the most laborious offense and the most laborious defense and we have been unable to stay healthy and look as tired on offense as we do on defense. That's our mirror image in the East. Banchero is less efficient than Jalen Green despite taking half as many 3's and getting to the line twice as often. Franz was a great shooter in the first two tanking seasons and suddenly can't break 32% from 3 for two seasons when they started playing for wins.

There's no reason we should be doing this. All it did was give us more wins in the first half, and less in the second. It's an illusion. The pendulum always swings. If we had started the season 5th and been 5th right now, we'd be healthier going into the playoffs, we would have an advantage over dumb coaches going into the final stretch and you all wouldn't whine so much about losing something (2nd place) that was unsustainable in the first place. He took the team that had the athleticism advantage and buried them so deep that we look like the older team most nights now.

A bunch of you argued fiercely with me about this, and I hope you have the maturity to say: there will never be 100% medical proof that fatigue is causing dead legs and injuries, but this is as much evidence as anyone has ever gotten that this is the case. If you need more evidence than this and you're still doubtful of this, you were never open to the possibility. Don't be disingenuous and nitpick about something that was never possible even with a team of medical experts studying the situation in person. If you made a bet about how this would go, any reasonable person would look at this and be like: our shooting is getting unusually worse, our rebounding is shrinking so to bandaid we're playing more bigs, most of our misses are off the front of the rim and my favorite tough minded guys are going down like flies. He put the team on Sengun's shoulders last season and it collapsed. He put it on Amen this season and it collapsed. Jabari's hand snapped like a twig earlier. Fred just can't handle it. Tari has had injury issues. Don't even get me started on the Celtics non-covid injuries.

We're in 5th like we were always predicted to be, but we're collapsing on our key stats (rebounding, defense) rather than gaining momentum right now. Ime, this is a competitive game, winning is flat out more important than effort. We engage in effort to achieve wins, we don't worship effort for the hell of it. In fact, the smart coaches are trying to figure out how to get the highest long term production with the least effort (it's called efficiency). We're regularly watching coaches make tactical changes that improve their efficiency without adding a superstar, stop acting like your ceiling is everyone's ceiling.

I get it if we were in the effort and defense championships Ime would be a dynasty, but that's not the league we're in. We're trying to win the Larry O. Defense and offense are equally important. Look at championship coaches. The most common missing archetype there is defense-only. Don't build a career and a team around a failed idea. Both sides matter in basketball, and rebounding is just a small sub category of both sides. Points, assists, FTA, blocks, 3P%, TS%, rim protection and perimeter defense are all mathematically more important than rebounds. You're fixated on a small thing that will disappear as soon as difficult games arrive.

I'll say it for the 3rd time: this is not a harmless bad habit, it is NOT worth the artificially inflated half-seasons, this is dangerous to our entire rebuild and will turn off a lot of superstars/agents who now have a larger sample to judge him by. No one wants to send their star to a franchise where they don't win more but ask for more from their players. Stars have options and leverage. Kevin Durant will tell you to your face the offense is stupid. He told Kerr to stop excessive passing/movement when he's in the game and he told Bud the other day in front of cameras that his offense is failing. The Kevin Durants and Devin Bookers and James Hardens of the world are not going to "Sir yes sir" you like these kids, they will put your flaw on blast to the media, management and ownership. You're not ready for that.

Thank god we have an easy schedule and some spacing coming to soften the blow of losing Amen. These kids will work hard so I'm hopeful we can still build some momentum and Amen can get healthy soon.

 

Yeah Amen is 5th in minutes per games played either over the whole season or since ASB iirc and in general the requirements of effort from the players should require a coach and staff who knows how to handle their bodies to maximize this without burning them the **** out. It’s impressive what we showed last night, but in general the team has been tired for sure.

 

Didn’t Ime pull Sengun from a game earlier this season when he was in reach of a trip dub? Ime should know better. Fatty

 

i still think, even without cp3, rockets would have won if Luc was healthy. this **** was devastating.

 

No excuse. Up 30 in the 4th you rest your starters. Our stay ready crew is actually very decent. There was no risk of blowing the lead with our reserves. I get wanting to be a player-friendly coach and let guys get there’s, but you don’t risk injury to your best players just to pad stats. Anytime a player gets hurt playing when he shouldn’t be playing it’s the coach’s fault. Ime’s a great coach but he made a big mistake and we are gonna pay for it the rest of the season. I’ll also flag that he’s done this before and the only difference is that he came out Robert DeNiro instead of Christopher Walken in Deer Hunter.

 

Statistically injuries tend to happen later in games. A fact to acknowledge and why you rest your starters when you are up 30 in the 4th.

 

To reach 30 points in a blowout. Pointless and dangerous.

 

If Amen is out long or worst, expect a heavy dosage of pick n roll with Jalen and Big Turk. Jalen will probably have a few more 40 point games. If we run more inside out plays with Alpe operating in the post, that should solve the half court problems. How many bigs can hold Big Turk in the post? Not a lot. Also, Jalen should run pick n pop with Jabari.

 

I'm not sure you can protect yourself against this type of landing injury. It can happen to anyone; it's super depressing.

It's not as though Amen picked up the injury chasing a board or anything. He took a shot in the flow of the game. We've had Amen racking up experience points all season and want him to be more assertive on offense because he can make contested shots.

The silver lining (ha ha ha) is the David Roddy signing.

 

Walking boot and crutches is routine with all ankle sprains. Thinking of Big Ben wearing a boot after the steelers game and playing the next week circa 2011.
Never liked any of our starters playing more than 30 min

 

Absolute train wreck 2nd half of the season. It’s a wrap.

 

Other than Fred Vanvleet,

....there's not a single player on the Rockets averaging as many minutes as any member of the Knicks starting 5, who are all 35-40 a night, but sure.....ok