Rockets Identity Crisis

Tate is a speed it up guy. Always plays with high energy.

With that said I do not see the Rockets winning anything with a Sengun centric offense. Either not run all or most of the actions thru him and open up the half court or trade him. As I said Turner and Giannis is ideal. If not then a defensive center with lob capability along with another dynamic scorer whomever that might be. If this means both Sengun and Green goes then so be it. This team needs more ball movement, quicker pace, and more spacing in the half court. It also needs major restructuring.

 

Sure, Holiday was the best 3p shooter on any volume on the team .... problem is, he can't run the offense as a point guard and he can't defend either position worth a shiiit. He gives up more than you gain from the "improved shooting".

 

Its PACE! Player for player, I think the Rockets are better than Indy but Indy has an INDENTITY that all of their players have bought into. We won more games, play better defensively but we have no offensive identity.......ULTIMATELY, THE GAME IS ABOUT WHO SCORES THE MOST POINTS.

I come from a high school where NOBODY could shoot. All we did was trap, press, get turnovers and layups. We played fast and we consistently scored in the 90's and 100's.... that was our IDENTITY

 

W

You are right about one thing, we have no offensive identity. We just roll the ball out and hope that one of our guys is hot and that our stifling defense and offensive rebounding will guide us to a win. It works pretty good in the regular season. It is not a recipe for winning in the playoffs. Thibs learned the hard way as did JVG and a host of other coaches that were one-sided in their approach to winning games.

 

every thread is just an excuse for this cult

lets play hard, smart, and whatever it takes to outscore the other team and win

guess who's really having an identity crisis and out of place

does rodman play fast or slow??

 

I agree that shooting is one of the glaring problems for our offense. We actually have at least two good shooters in Jabari and Reed. Both of them started out poorly at the beginning.

Jabari warmed up after about a month and was shooting well. Too bad he got a hand injury and that stopped him cold. It took him another month to get back to his shooting form after coming back. Jabari is a good shooter. He just doesn't get a lot of shots. They need to raise the priority of getting him going.

Reed had the rookie jitter early and he lost the minutes he had until after we secured the 2 seed. We saw that he could shoot when he played long stretches and had the ball in his hands (rather than standing in the corner waiting for it.)

Fred is also a career 37% 3p shooter (slightly above average). He had a down year. Both he and Jalen are extremely streaky. When they aren't hitting outside shots, they should do something else rather than keep jacking. But Jalen isn't a smart play maker when he penetrates. Fred is fine at organizing the offense but he is very limited when he gets inside the 3pt line. The backcourt is clearly the weak link that held us back on offense.

 

Yeah, can't argue with that ... especially the bottom line.

Edit - there's a lot more to this conversation that I just don't have time for right this minute, I'll elaborate next day or two as I have time.

 

I actually think we missed Tate in the playoffs. If nothing else he was another body to muscle up on Curry and frustrate Draymond. He certainly couldn’t have played any worse than Dillon.

 

Yes I agree. Tate could have been that x factor with hustle plays, rebounding, switching on fools like Podz or GP3 and taking their lunch. I hope Rockets re sign Tate who is very under appreciated. I can see him and Bari be very good players for other teams and come back to bite us.

 

DFG%.....24/25 regular season
Area..............Sengun..........Aaron Holiday
3-pt ...............47.1%.................41.9%
2-pt ...............36.0%.................28.3%
<6 ft ..............58.7%.................56.0%
<10 ft ............56.1%.................52.6%
>15 ft ............34.6%.................28.6%

If Aaron Holiday was bad defensively.....Sengun was worse.

Holiday (tracking-defensive dashboard)
https://www.nba.com/player/1628988/aaron-holiday

 

it all comes down to fvv and green offering nothing if they are not scoring. And even when they score, they do not make other players better, only marginally. I don’t think ime will be down with it but I would prefer a worse winning record next year and run amen and reed at pg to see what we have and to develop them. We are not going anywhere by putting fvv back there. You could keep him with an upgrade on Green, but it will only win you one more series in the playoffs.

 

That’s the issue with this team. They drafted Sengun and Green and forced them to play together. The Rockets had a more balanced distribution of touches with Silas. KPJ and Green had about 34 front ct touches a piece to Sengun’s 38 in 22-23. Udoka wanted an offense centered around Sengun and has made that clear. His front ct touches shot up to 45 23-24 while Green’s decreased to 24. Whether it was Silas or Udoka the offense always seemed disjointed or stagnant. Silas had more spacing but no real identity. Udoka’s offense has more identity but spacing issues.

This team just doesn’t have the right mix and a decision needs to be made which direction they want to go.

 

Ime wants to remain in his blockbuster ways. The heliocentric maybe works if you have Shai or Harden, then you have to see if they have heart.

 

Our team would be so much better if we just played fast since Ime is clearly not an offensive guru.

FVV, Sengun type players are good but not a good fit on this team. As much as I like Sengun, we need a center who can catch lobs every time down the stretch and is just a rim runner for our guards to expand their game.

We have our pieces.. apparently the front office really believes in Reed. Then we should have starting him at the point, he has shown he has passing potential.

This roster feels like it's built not to fit around each other because they never expected Sengun to be this good, they probably thought he'd be a solid backup big. Anyways, the facts are we need to trade Sengun eventually because unless your center is literally Jokic level in today's league, having a max player there at that spot is a mistake.

 

Firstly, I think that this is a good thread. Mathloom is one of the better posters on the board.

think about it in the context of how many threads you see like this from people like DD or BTG.

I can’t really say I think we have an identity crisis as much as we just have not defined and honed our offensive strategies and capabilities yet.

if Udoka can’t figure it out over the next season or two obviously he should go.

That being said, we have spacing issues and both backcourt players are in inefficient.

in an alternate reality we could be a better offensive team with a bunch of defensive struggles. I think fixing the offense and pairing it along with a defense similar to what we have had is easier than the other way around.

we have in-house options on the roster to fix and we have a ton of assets over the next few years or trade players.

I don’t even think we have to fix both of the issues. We could probably fix the spacing issue around the back court and benefit quite a bit or just bring in backcourt players that will make a few more shots.

 

Great post and this is also a reason not to get too attached to Jabari, Tari and even Sengun or Green. If we can get a Giannis or another star, great player and difference maker, and give up some of those guys then those particular players should not a reason not to do the trade.

 

I like how it sounds that Ime has an Identity Crisis like a freaking teenager or a Middle aged man, he had that scandal in Boston.

Dude knows what he is doing, will it bring a championship, who knows.

 

It is so obvious that we should play a fast pace. We have incredible athletes, youth, length, and hungry. FVV and Dillon are the impediments to that. Why not replace them with athletes and let the hounds lose. We either keep starting FVV or run fast pace. You can’t do both. I really think Ime would do that if he didn’t have his crutches.

 

We should have played at a higher pace, but not because we would get better results. Quite the opposite we would have done much worse. What quality of our players make you think that we would do better? Sengun's fantastic outlet passes, Jabari's or Tari's dribbling coast to coast, Jalen's or amen's handles, the decision making of any youngster outside of Sengun, the terrible lob passes we have seen all season long? We had nothing going for us to play fast other than the generic young and athletic label. They would mostly look like the headless chickens from the Silas era turning the ball the over or over again.That's why FVV was so important for this team and that's why Ime goes with FVV, turn the ball over rarely, do not let any of the young ones to make decisions, play a fixed offense and hope that you can win. It worked well in the regular season, partly because no other team takes the regular season that seriously

Ime wanted to make the playoffs more than develop the players. That's why reed, cam did not play or Sengun did not have freedom to playmake more, pass to cutters, instead he constantly bullied his way to the basket. We have hit the ceiling of this approach with this roster, round 1 exit, if you are lucky maybe conference semi finals.

Now they could upgrade Green to run the same thing again. we might do better than this year but that road leads to the same result imo, possible with one more round of playoffs. The bold move is to play Amen and Reed at the pg, reduce FVV gradually to either off ball or backup role, and upgrade Green if possible. Figure out how to maximize their talents gradually, try different things. We might end up worse next season but we will build more strongly for the future.