Amen Thompson is the Rockets' REAL franchise player

It means the Rockets aren't stupid enough to waste a potential championship contending season "hoping" for a player to take a huge leap. You want as many good players as you can get, and as many ball handlers as possible.

There are more than enough ball handling chances to go around for 3 players. If one, or both, of the young players take a huge leap FVV can always slide over to a 3&D role like a ton of championship level teams have had at PG.

 

You demoted. The franchise presumably is on a private jet heading to Houston in the coming days @Os Trigonum

 

Yeah that's less shots for Amen. Sengun won't take fewer, he's the only inside threat. FVV is the PG. Durant takes Greens shots and a couple more I'd bet. Jabari is not taking fewer shots than Dillon. So how is Amen not taking fewer shots? Who's going to take fewer shots?

Doesn't matter where you put him, he's clearly going to be 10-12 shots guy again. That's year 3 of the franchise player.

 

Exactly, they don't really see him as the franchise player. They see him as maybe stealing some possessions but he won't be taking any of the shots Green took (those are Durant's now) nor any of Sengun's. He might pick up some possessions from FVV but that's not going to be material.

Really odd to me. Amen is already better than that.

 

FVV will take fewer shots (as he should). He took fewer shots when Jalen was hot. Durant will be like the hot Jalen every game.

 

Yes I mentioned that. It's still going to be like a couple fewer shots for FVV and a couple more than Jalen for KD. So maybe an extra 1-2 shots for Amen. That's not "I think Amen is the franchise player" energy.

 

Amen is not going to be a lead scorer next season. I will be pleasantly surprised if he is. Being the "franchise player" doesn't have to lead the team in shot attempts and points scored.

It will be fine. With Durant on the team, we don't really need Amen to score a lot. By the time Durant rides off to the sunset, hopefully the young guys, not only Amen, will be ready to take on big roles.

 

This guy gets it.

 

Man you're really missing my point. I'm not saying he won't get shots and I didn't say he should get the most shots - those are the extremes.

But it doesn't seem that he's expected to be a big 2nd or 3rd scorer in his 3rd season. He's not going to be the lead passer either. That's surprising. There franchise player can't be defense-mostly, certainly by year 3 such a labeled player you would carve out more playmaking opportunities for them than what we're seeing.

He's still in a role where he's guarding the best player and getting his points off dirty work, transition and few backup PG minutes. I wish they would trust him more than that, he deserves it.

 

I think Ime is going to lean in more to FVV as an off ball combo guard that seldom initiates the offense. FVV, Amen, Durant, Jabari, Sengun is the obvious starting unit. FVV is a decent spot up shooter. Where he fails is his inability to get in the lane and score or pass. That is exactly what Amen excels at. If Ime has any offensive acumen at all Amen will take FVV’s initiator role and FVV joins Durant and Jabari as perimeter shooters. If Sengun develops a decent out-side shot we can actually play 4 out at times. Of course, Durant is going to get plenty of ISO opportunities and will be our no. 1 guy when he is on the court, but to suggest that the Rockets have soured on Amen as a superstar, because they got one of the best players of all time is a stretch.