Back to this .... How do you get your shooters on the floor when they really aren't your best players? Who's minutes do they take? Another issue is having multiple non-shooters on the floor, particularly Amen & Sengun who are probably your two best players - can you run a modern NBA offense efficiently with the two of them, shooting in the 20's or do you eventually have to decide between the two (if one of them doesn't improve dramatically)? Then you have two streaky shooters along with them in Jalen & Fred compounding matters when they are on a not so hot streak. (I just can't see FVV & Jalen being the starting back court again next season. On Reed - he was terrible last year in pick and roll situations .... and wasn't much better in isolation. His shooting did come along by the end of the season .... I think Jabari will eventually get close to 40% from distance, but Amen got a lot of his minutes after the injury (and his starting spot). If you want to get your best shooters and overall players on the floor, maybe you go with FVV and Brooks at the guard spots, Amen & Jabari at the 3-4 and Sengun in the middle. That's a much better shooting team and better defensively too ....
I agree but what I'm saying is our system also needs work. Guys like Jabari and Reed were sharpshooters, hell even Jalen Green shot 38% in Gleague. Now they all plummeted to below average in the Rockets system. FVV was a career 37% now he had his worst shooting year. Other than Dillon seems like everybody just struggling to score. Rockets were dead last in player and ball movement, almost the exact opposite of the Pacers. https://www.reddit.com/r/rockets/s/9sriOJqc3B
Udoka and his staff thought the best way to run an offense with a talented big that can post, drive, and pass is centering the offense on him. This means letting him initiate the offense in his spots or playing high screen and roll. He has also implemented Amen and Green more into the offense as the season went on. There is an identity there, it’s just the personnel doesn’t fit the style of play as has been discussed
Right now there are 2 Crises.....but not necessarily Identity wise.... Udoka cannot develop top talents well.......he can enhance already developing players like Sengün, that he can do well. Cannot find shooters and an Offense of easy buckets and backdoor cuts
Agreed with most of your points except the last paragraph. Your suggested lineup is just replacing Jalen with Amen in the original starting lineup before Jabari's injury. As unreliable as Jalen is, his shooting from distance is still better than Amen's unless Amen takes a big leap in his shooting. Swapping Amen and Jalen does not look like an improvement in shooting without changing how they setup the offense. I can imagine it would still be Fred-Alpi PnR, and Alpi iso, with Amen at the dunker spot. Just the same old. They have to be weened from relying on FVV and put Amen and Reed at the 1. As unready as they are, I am confident that they will learn, if only Ime is willing to sacrifice some winning at the beginning. Amen is a high IQ fast learner. He seems to be able to learn anything on the fly. Reed is not as gifted as Amen but he has better playmaking instinct. And if he can learn to use his shooting threat to get by his man, he will be effective. I actually believe that Jabari will get more shots if Reed is the playmaker.
what do you mean by “cannot develop top talents” Player development is not all on Udoka. When you talk about player development Josh Bostic is the player development coach and he has a team of several coaches under him along with a director who manages that department. They have worked to improve many players including Sengun, Green, and Amen. Udoka gives them his priorities or insight. What do you believe they have not done? Rockets cut back door all the time with guys like Amen or Tari. The issue with this team is not having the driving lanes to score against defenses, poor spacing and becoming stagnant when Sengun posts. Also poor passing/delayed response. Both Green and Sengun have several open shooters they typically look off and try to score themselves.
Jalen shot .365 for the Ignite. NBA G League Stats | Jalen Green I don't recall him ever playing for RGV and there are no stats available either. Also, the G-League 3 point line is shorter than the NBA. In the NBA, the three-point line is 23 feet 9 inches at the top of the key and 22 feet in the corners. The G League, however, follows FIBA rules, meaning its three-point line is 22 feet 1.75 inches from the basket. As for the lack of ball movement, that starts with the point guard being completely ineffective in the lane and is compounded by the idea that Sengun is the hub - they really don't want traffic on top of him (that's why Amen is so effective in the dunkers spot). Essentially, it's a product of the personnel - the poor shooting doesn't help with spacing issues either.
For the most part, FVV's three-point shooting (i.e., what really helps spacing) is average to good, except during the really bad cold streaks. The perception last season that he was usually bad is just wrong, as his season stats were terrible most of the year, based on two early-season cold streaks. FVV did not just get hot at the end of the season to get his numbers averagish. It was a slow regression to the mean. In addition, as his usage went down, his three-point percentage went up. FVV probably will never be a dead-eye shooter, but he's not easy to upgrade without losing a lot on defense. If the Rockets want to significantly upgrade the spacing, one needs to look hard at Amen and Sengun. They are the two best players so if one wants to upgrade shooting around them without adversely affecting the defense, there is really only one option in the starting lineup. Even replacing Green is likely to only have a limited affect on the three-point percentage. I expect Brooks will have a regression, and Amen and Sengun will likely make more of a difference. I'm really hoping Amen improves as that would make the biggest difference.
The idea of that lineup was to get Jabari back on the court and the 3 best shooters with Amen & Sengun. That's a very strong defensive team on paper .... and 3 shooters that have to be accounted for - assuming FVV returns to his previous form, or maybe an upgrade there. Really, it's replacing Jalen with Jabari .... On Reed - Maybe he eventually takes Fred's spot .... but based off of last year's stats, I can't see where he gets minutes and I was fully on board the Shepard train with that 3rd pick. 18th percentile as the pick and roll ball handler 11th percentile as a spot up shooter (crazy since he's supposed to be such a good shooter) 59th percentile in isolation 45th percentile off screens 39th percentile in DHO.
Its a product of the plays IMO. When you have so little ball and player movement then its no surprise people arent that efficient. FVV is an above average pg, he implements whatever the system coach wants. In Toronto they ran Nick Nurse offense and he was very effective there, even became an all star. 2 yrs from that suddenly he is a scrub shooting inconsistently from 3 I really think bad offensive system is the culprit. Jalen Green shoots 40% on catch and shoot but we still try to get him off isos and shooting mid range where he is shooting 16% for the season. These type of things show our offense is really bad. You keep saying poor shooting affects spacing but thats not true. Only non shooting affects spacing. When Amen is the guy spotting for 3 then his man will sag off him and guard someone else. Thats because everyone knows Amen is a non shooter. But when Tari spotting for 3 you think nobody will guard him because he is shooting 34% from 3? Of course they will still guard him. So Tari creates spacing even if he is below average or 34% from 3. Our wings are elite defensively and mediocre to competent on 3. That should be enough to create spacing its just that our offense is bad.
Dead last in ball movement and the Rockets are going to pay 30m for a PG that eats up the shot clock dribbling around the perimeter. I think this probably ends up the most disappointing off-season for the Rockets in a long, long time.
I don't necessarily disagree with the underlying point .... but there was a point during this past season, I believe just before the allstar break or maybe mid January where Fred was shooting .270 for the season and Jalen was at .308 - both terrible. If you read the post directly below the one I'm responding to you'll see were essentially on the same page - replace Jalen. BUT part of the offensive issues are that FVV is ineffective in getting into the paint and doing anything once he does .... yeah, he's a solid defender at the position and not turnover prone but he's so limited offensively, especially when the outside shot isn't falling and not particularly good in isolation or as the pick and roll ball handler. Jalen was actually better in the pick and roll .... based off of ppp. Fred may be harder to replace than Jalen but not doing so really caps the offensive capabilities of this team.
FVV was at his absolute high coming off the bench for Kawhi and Lowry. Him and Siakam were crucial and that is how him and Siakam's names rose to fame. He was known for his condensed shooting as his finishing around the rim was always below average due to his extreme size disadvantage.....now he has improved a tad on that one but it is still one of his weaknesses. He was playing the SG role when Toronto had their most successful seasons.
That's because FVV was really, really bad early in the season . FVV shot 38% from three from mid-December to mid-January, but you didn't notice because you were focused too much on season stats while ignoring past season stats that suggested he would likely rebound. FVV's shot was fixed well before mid-January. He shot nearly 39% from mid-December through the playoffs. FVV can't erase those two bad streaks, a total of 13 games, but over larger samples he regresses to an average to slightly above average shooter. Over 82-game samples, FVV is rarely below 36% from 3. Odds are decent (probably slightly better than 50-50) that by about mid-November, once he gets most of his first cold streak over a year old, FVV will likely be around a 37% 3-point shooter for a calendar year, provided he doesn't have a second career-worst shooting streak to start the season. He has a very good chance the case by mid-December to be above 37% for a calendar year. There are 5 positions to add an offensive engine. FVV isn't a cap to the offensive capabilities the team. If the Rockets traded FVV to Denver, would Denver's offense be capped? No. For the Rockets, there are 3 positions that the Rockets can upgrade more easily to improve the offense. I'm fine if the Rockets get a Garland to replace FVV. The focus this board puts on upgrading FVV is disproportionate to the impact upgrading him would be versus most of the other positions.
I want FVV to organize the offense to keep turnovers down and then become an off-ball player after the initial action to allow an offensive engine to cook. Whether you want to call that PG or SG, I don't care. The Rockets need an offensive engine (whether through trade or internal growth) to handle rim pressure duties much more than they need upgrade FVV. If the offensive engine plays whatever position FVV plays, FVV will sit and then probably traded. Otherwise, FVV will likely start for the Rockets until Reed or another young player take the spot from him.
I don't think you can use Reed's rookie stats to predict what he will be next season. For one, it's a very small sample size to be reliable at all. For two, he did poorly right off the bat for whatever reasons. It's not uncommon for rookies. Jabari shot really bad for his whole rookie season with a much larger sample size. That did not define what kind of shooter he is. And either due his timidity or due to coaching mistake, passing off the ball like a hot potato and then standing in the far corner wasn't going to help him improve. Later on, after his short g-league stint, it seems that they had encouraged him to be more aggressive. But he was still missing shots. Until he got to start in meaningless games and played as the initiator did he had several good games. The good games, both in the g-league and toward the end of the season, was also a small sample size. So it goes both ways, both bad and good. But the good games did show flashes of what he is capable of. Just like Jalen's brilliant flashes show what he could be if he could put everything together consistently. Reed showed that he's not just a spot up shooter. He has good court vision and can make effective plays if he is more involved in handling the ball, even against NBA level defense. I expect that they are going to give him another chance to be in the rotation and see how he fares. If he can put it together, he can be the future starter. My only worry is that he still has that jitter early and they give up too soon.
Fast forward to 2025-26....and the version now. He is neither good nor bad..... He can beat OKC by himself in a game and the put up 10 pts and 5 assists on bad efficiency in another game. He is more valuable to the Rockets than any other team is because most teams already have a veteran leader or a Culture setter. At least on teams that are legit and doing something right and not just flat out hopeless teams. So yeah his price should be 25-26 million and that is generous from me, that is where his value still lies in Texas.
what do you mean by rim pressure duties? Fvv’s main weakness is not being able to drive to the rim. Increasing rim pressure is the main reason most posters want to replace him. We need to create something from guards driving to the rim. Both fvv and Jalen are pretty bad at it for different reasons. That hammers ball movement as well because they can’t create an advantage from that. That’s why we are stuck to pnr and post up with Sengun. These are the only two main ways we created an advantage and got the ball moving depending on defense’s reaction.
So far, EIGHTY FIVE percent believe we would benefit slightly from playing faster. Clutchfans agrees on something!!
Weirdly titled thread.... clearly our identity is defense. Feels like we may have an "offensive identity crisis" related to the limits of our roster.
