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

You have a loser’s mentality. The goal is for this young team to win as many games as possible.

Before fvv got injured, rockets were the second seed, on pace to win 50 plus games this season, they’re still only two games back of the second seed.

I don’t care if they lose in the first round, but if they fall to the play in and lose, the season would be considered a failure.

 

Playoff basketball is different. They have the defense but need shooters.

 

Idk about a failure. That was the expectation coming into the season. There were some folks that thought we overperformed last year and expected a regression this year. Looking at the schedule we should be comfortably be at 47 wins. 50 is doable which is where I think we ultimately end up. That is a resounding success.

 

The Spurs in 2014 would be the latest example. Kawhi was only 22 and not yet a franchise level player - he won the MVP in the finals averaging 17 points a game. Duncan was old at that point.

As for the idea that players magically become superstars in the playoffs after not being one in the regular season...yeah that's crazy.

 

That is a good example - and even in that example, the Spurs had Duncan and Parker and Ginobili went 62-20 in the regular season.

I can think of a couple of teams in the 70's that arguably lacked a top 10 player in the league as well - but we are overall look at like 4-5 teams over 50 years, so it is really rare.

 

I have a loser mentality? Who said that the Rockets shouldn't try to win as many games as possible?

Stop reading into what I said.

I never said the Rockets shouldn't try to win as many games as possible - the Rockets have overall played very hard and have won a lot of games. Realistically they don't have the talent to win 60 games and are unlikely to go deep in the playoff with the team as constructed.

No one said anything about trying to lose games.

 

What would you say this teams ceiling is this year in terms of playoff success?

 

You can consider it anything you want, but the Vegas over-under was 43.5. No reasonable fan would have been upset by a 48-win season before the year started. Yes, given the hot start we all hoped for better, but sequencing of wins shouldn't matter.

FFS, when the year started everyone thought the Magic were going to be better with the amazing combo of Banchero and Wagner. Their Vegas O/U was 47.5. Yes, they had injuries, but both of their "young stars" were there last night (not Suggs, Amen more than offsets him) and we beat them handily ... and we all expected them to do so because our young team is better than theirs, which is NOT what Vegas or most fans here expected on the way into the season.

Rockets fans need some perspective sometime.

 

Absolute ceiling IMO is winning the 1st round and then getting bounced in 6 games in the second. Most likely outcome is losing in the first round.

 

I am happy if the Rockets play hard and win 47 or more games this season. That would be a big improvement over last year.

I think the most likely outcome is that the Rockets will lose in the 1st round - and I am okay with that if they play hard and don't lay down.

The reasonable ceiling I think is winning a playoff series - but for a team that is this young, in the Western Conference, first time in the playoffs and without a franchise player: that would be a pretty impressive feat.

The whole point of this year was for the players to play hard - improve as a team and individually and hopefully have a player or two take a giant step forward.

It would be awesome to win more than one series would be awesome but I think reasonably expecting that is a lot at this point.

I think that overall the players and coaches have had a pretty good year all things considered - and the drop off with key injuries isn't surprising based on the lack of stars.

Amen Thompson I think has taken a really nice step forward - and Jalen Green hasn't taken a big step forward, but he continues to incrementally improve as well and while he may not (or may) be a real star, he is at a minimum becoming a solid starter with still a chance to improve.

I have honestly been a little disappointed in Sengun's improvement and Jabari has improved some, but I would have liked to have seen a little more from him.

These guys are all pretty young - so they have room to improve, after awhile it becomes a question of how much more they can or cannot improve.

 

Since this is considered our evaluation season, with Amen being out this is the time for our 2 star players in Sengun and Jalen to carry the team until April when our schedule gets hard, which I predict we'll have FVV and Amen back in the lineup.
Stars are born in this moment! I think this stretch is mainly an evaluation of Jalen. Can he carry the team with playmaking through this stretch? Sengun won't be traded for finding productive skilled big men is a gem these days in the league.
However, we can easily upgrade the SG positions...

 

Good way to look at it.

Amen has made a very exciting jump. And you see his handle getting more comfortable, mid range improving, etc. -- he's hopefully got more levels.

Alpi started off absolutely gangbusters. It seems the season has worn on him, but you can see who he is now.

Jalen has improved on the margins -- I don't know we'll see a giant step, but he's been solid. Honestly, the playmaking has been better than I thought he could be.

Jabari gets an incomplete for me. He started off terrible, and then got hurt right as he started to show consistency. It's interesting that he's actually seemed to improve his rim protection. It's also interesting to see him get run as a 3 for what feels like the first time in his pro career.

17 games left -- 10-7 gets you to 50 wins.

 

Jalen needs to turn on the jets now. He's done it in past seasons when he gets hot at this time of the year, need him to not miss the timing this year when we desperately need to win as many games as possible with the Warriors and Kings on our ass.

 

Totally agree with you! One improvement Jalen had made is his playmaking ability...he's one of the best athletes in the NBA - he should be averaging at least 10 FTA per game and stop settling for so many step-back 3s

 

To be fair, the refs do not give him the calls when he gets to the rim. I imagine that is discouraging from driving as much.

 

Jalen Green finally got his on/off numbers out of negative territory, so that is certainly improvement on the margins. Even with his slight improvement from 3, there's very little actually data that shows any kind of star trajectory in terms of impact. Sengun is far closer to a true star level player, but he has some pretty visible warts that feel like they limit his potential and create roster building issues.

Amen Thompson is what you hope to see from a potential star. Will his long range shooting become a glass ceiling, maybe, but he is showing visible improvements in virtually every aspect of his game.

 

Vegas O/U don’t matter. Two years ago, Vegas had the Texans winning 5 or 6 games. If they were accurate, they would’ve projected the Texans winning 10 games.

Having said that, coming into the season, I thought the rockets would win about 47 games. At one point, they were 32-15. When you’re on pace to win 50 plus games, expectations are to advance past the first round. I don’t think that’s too lofty of a goal.



If VanVleet doesn’t get hurt and they beat the teams they’re supposed to beat, then they would’ve won over 50 games.

 

I don't think we can count out a "Rookie of the Year" type of situation where his injury heels () in a manner in which he's stronger than before, giving him and the Rockets an unfair advantage. The association may have told fold after the Rockets run it forever.

 

Nobody. I'm pointing to the insinuation that: I know right now we don't have top end future stars before we've seen them in the playoffs or seen them in even below average spacing. There's no serious roster that is less likely to make these answers obvious than ours given Silas, spacing, no playoff data. It's a highly subjective thing being sold as objective.

That's false, rewriting history. When Shai was 22, you may have thought he's sure to be a franchise player, but it was not widely agreed on his previous team, on the Thunder till he was 22/23 years old or in the general NBA landscape that this is their Nikola Jokic or Giannis. I won't even get into how Shai was groomed by Jerry West and Chris Paul while Green was groomed by Silas, Stone and KPJ essentially. Too skinny, too small they said, "can he impose his will in the playoffs" they asked. I remember all of the opinions outside my own. We're not talking about what you might have predicted. Anyone can be right in hindsight. We're talking about this mythical idea that it will be obvious before it happens.

Giannis was considered the broken jumper guy without a post game to compensate who will struggle to reach the same heights as the top end players "in the modern era". Suited for past eras. No one thought Giannis is a 1A title-winning franchise player before he made noise in the playoffs.

Curry was being taken to church by Mark Jackson to get rid of the demons in his ankles lol. They used to call him glass ankles. They used to question if he has the floor general skills to be PG or the size to be SG. He had to prove that wrong in the playoffs. For a long while, he had to prove he's better than Monta Ellis.

You don't have to tell me about Harden. You forget I was also Harden fan numero uno, I believed he's a franchise player from beginning to end even while people didn't or changed their minds. I don't let my bias change the point: Sam Presti didn't know, so anyone acting like they objectively know what we have on our roster is not being honest. Sorry Nook but you don't know. Flat out you don't know. Which is normal if it's your opinion. It's not normal to sell it as an objective truth. You simply do not know the ceilings of these players, it's way too raw and early. There's a reason why your'e excluding Jokic, Brown/Tatum duo, from this convo. Nikola Jokic is now an ALL TIME GREAT and 3 months before winning a title people were questioning if you can build around a slow but tall mediocre rim protector in this era. People will toast him on the perimeter in the playoffs they said.

It's exactly as I said: hindsight is 20/20. You're probably picking the 3 you thought would become franchise players, and then assuming that you can repeat that exercise now on a team you have under the microscope. That's selective hindsight. The point here is: there's not going to be an obvious moment where such and such is a 1A franchise player based on their regular season performance in this offense.

I am not talking about the polar end of the spectrum Pistons. Reality is not these two poles - which is another myth being sold around here. It's a spectrum of winners, and you are confusing their post-success stardom with their pre-playoff status. Acting like it's binary is so illogical.

The best player on the court thing is a cultural myth, it's literally a corruption of the reality. The best team on the court wins in the playoffs or regular season, that's reality. That includes talent, chemistry and system. That's why the Suns are going to fork over a killer pick to us this summer.

That's correct, I'm saying in a very quantitative way so that I can come back and show how wrong these thoughts were: there are at least 2 players on this roster who the majority of NBA teams would give the max salary to in their early prime. Those 2 people are first going to struggle in the playoffs and be questioned whether they are a fit with the team and with the era. After that they will get far in the playoffs and they will be anointed stars but will be questioned for whether they have what it takes to actually win the trophy, whether they have that singularly-dominating gene like Hakeem. Obviously, 99% of stars will not even achieve what Hakeem did as a franchise player. This point of contention is only cleared if you get screwed by the refs or win in the Finals.

It's the same old story, I've seen it a hundred times. Amen is confirmed. Alpi needs a 3-ball. Jalen needs one more medium sized step in FTA or 3PA. The rest will be taken care of with muscle and experience. At minimum 2 of these guys are as valid to build around as Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, and we have the assets to put elite role players around our guys like these Celtics or how the Spurs did post-Robinson. You're only getting worried about it because you'e comparing to all time greats or the polar opposite Pistons. You can't form an analysis around outliers.

Right now we're watching this team under the artifical depression of 4 years of the worst spacing in the NBA. That's two years of Stone and Silas intentionally pushing our stats down to generate losses. Then 2 years of Udoka who has under-coached every offense he's ever coached. I don't know an above average offensive coach who thinks "I can't do better than Silas nor can I confirm I can do better than tanking teams with similar range offensive talent". Current stats for all 3 are scientifically highly unlikely to be showing their full capabilities. If you were a betting man and there was a bet going around for "which players might see an offensive rejuvenation of they switch teams" it's all 3 of our guys who would be offensively better on 15-20 other teams and on every other playoff team but the Magic (if they're even in the playoffs).

You can see it happening live with Banchero and Cade. 4 months ago, it was "oh I wish we had Banchero at least he's 6'10 250lbs with a handle". No one was talking about Cade who was suffering from a lack of spacing previously. One tiny thing changes for Cade: Ivey injury forces JBB to start an elite one-way shooter at the 1 (an average role player, not a star) after Cade has a shaky start to the season. Cade takes off because of spacing. Suddenly, everyone is praising Cade for being a true franchise player lol. Meanwhile Paolo is still Paolo, nothing has changed, but everyone is talking about whether he even impacts winning at all. This switch is hilarious to me. It's amazing people can't see that because of injuries to stbCade took off when his spacing improved, Green took off when

Just take your fandom out of the equation for a moment. Let's look at it through our mirror image the Magic. When you can explain why Franz's 3PT shot is regressing, manchild Paolo can't be efficient and any shooter they bring on board declines in 3PT shooting then you'll start understanding what is going on with our team. We are the most unoptimized teams in the NBA offensively and you tend to confuse that with "they are what they are". If spacing can make Cade better than Banchero, why can't it make Jalen or Amen or Sengun take a step up in tier? Why can't our poor spacing take them down a tier? Perhaps you're not applying a nuanced weight to spacing, it's neither a massive thing nor is it nothing. It functions as friction or lubrication, it can make the same shot attempts easier or more difficult at a trackable level. All of the core guys on these two rosters would be better on 15-20 other teams. Whatever is your diagnosis for Franz and Paolo, just have that same energy for our guys. Whatever additions and trades you prescribe for them, apply that to our team too.