Rockets acquire Suns picks, return Nets picks to Brooklyn

Amen played 36 minutes a game last year as a starter, you're not "replacing 26 minutes of Jalen Green" with him - he's on the floor already, all the time, highest minute logger on the team.

Unless you're trading for Ausar you're not getting 62 minutes a night of Thompson.

 

The option to trade Booker just shrank given that he is now on teh books for $73 million in his age 33 season. He's a good player but that's a disastrous contract that basically REQUIRES the salary cap to go up 10% every single year - it might not!

 

Amen is already in the starting backcourt. I don’t think Holiday is worthy of a backup PG position on a contending team. If Reed doesn’t work out we definitely have an issue with depth at the guard position. FVV is good for about 60 games. Maybe Reed comes through and this is moot. I just think the Rockets won’t wait to add to the backcourt if Reed is struggling after 37 games when all there roster is available for trade.

 

Amen was not playing 36 mpg in the backcourt. He was playing like 8-9 minutes in the backcourt (i.e., the minutes from Green that need someone else to cover).

KD is replacing Amen's 25 mpg forward minutes along with 10 or so of Brooks's minutes. DFS, Tari, and JSJ will replace the other portion of Brooks's minutes as a forward.

 

Yeah it's the year 2025 people don't rigidly slot into positional minutes accounting roles like you are pretending here.

Thompson already handled point of attack defense, his whatever role on offense - and he was on the floor all the time

This season you will see him handle point of attack defense, and his whatever role on offense - and he will be on the floor all the time.

Unless you're saying he's going to spend more time - uh, taking c&s 3s like Green? I guess sure that's great.

The net gain in Thompson minutes from the subtraction of Green is:

0

 

This is a pretty silly argument we are having. Our backcourt bench is Reed and Holiday. The real question is if FVV or Amen goes down or can’t play monster minutes all year, you are dependent on a career third streamer (journeyman) and a 2nd year player that barely played last year. If Reed takes a MASSIVE step forward, we don’t have a problem. If he doesn’t we do. FVV has played over 70 games twice in his 9 year career.

 

So it is Green out and KD in a complete positonless system.

I'm not completely rigid as one should easily be able to deduce based on my posts sliding Amen from wing, to SG, and to PG covering up the perceived weak backcourt. The only positions I'm really rigid on are having a point (not necessarily a PG though) and a center (only if one is played).

Either way, the backcourt isn't thin in a positionless system or a rigid system (so rigid that I believe Amen can slide basically between 1-4 and a wing can play SG).

 

What does "sliding to SG to PG" even mean

He already covers guards on defense. For 36 minutes plus per night. So no change there.

What does "sliding to SG to PG" even mean. Describe it exactly. This should be easy to validate once the games start.

Here's my hypothesis - subtracting Green will have almost no impact on Thompson's overall contribution because he's already contributing a lot! Telling yourself that he's gaining 26 minutes is not only *mathematically impossible* but kind of a cope for the fact taht the Rockets guard depth took a hit. The loss of Brooks may hurt him though because he & Amen were interchangeable on defense and they shared the load.

 

It's a disastrous contract even if the salary cap doesn't go up 10% every single year.

I understand it's tough to draft / trade for a star. But what are they snorting in Phoenix?
Trading for KD was forgivable because he still had years left in the tank. But.......
Trading for Beal's corpse, then hamstringing your salary cap with his detritus, paying him to play elsewhere.
No real point guard.

Paying Booker $73,000,000 per season? They keep throwing money to cover past money mistakes and wind up looking like Heath Ledger's Joker sitting atop all that cash, ready to burn it up. "Let's cover up the smell of that turd with perfume. OOPS! It's not perfume, it's Old Spice."

 

Right. The options were (1) sign Booker to a huge contract to keep him or (2) trade him for the future. They chose the former. Now they don't have any options left other than the hope that Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and Maluach will turn out better than Durant and Beal.

 

Suns 2027 and 2029 Picks looking Niiiice.

 

They had a third choice - they could have said... look at what Jalen Brunson did with his contract... and then if Booker balked at taking a reasonable (but still crazy lucrative) contract, then they should have moved on. I don't get the Booker love from Phoenix or anyone else. Through 2030, the new cap rules make it stupid to overpay guys on the wrong side of 30 - which is when Booker's new years will kick in.

 

Green's minutes are either being replaced by KD or Amen. Either Amen can slide between positions in a positionless system as there aren't positions, there are rigid positions with Amen moving to SG, or it is somewhere in between a perfectly rigid and a perfectly postionless system (I'm in the latter).

Either KD is mostly replacing Green which is a big plus or Amen is mostly replacing Green which is a big plus. Either way, I don't understand the freak out about the backcourt.

You are just arguing semantics using a burden of proof logic fallacy. Green is not being exactly replaced by anyone person, but whether it is mostly KD or Amen (directly or indirectly), the Rockets backcourt got better as Green got replaced by a better player.

Amen did guard guards a lot. FVV and Green guarded guards a lot. Without Green, Green won't be guarding guards for the Rockets. Amen and FVV will guard who Green was guarding plus a guard, mostly. KD, most likely, will not be guarding who Green would have been guarding except when there was just a spare sucky offensive player to guard.

I see Amen playing guard (or not a guard without positons) without two other guards (or whatever you want to call FVV and Green) on the court as a big improvement as it means Amen can guard a guard without FVV or Green getting switched onto a player bigger than they can't handle.

 

His contract will remain the same percentage of the cap as it is now, more or less. If this contract extension is underwater, his current contract already is such that they didn't lose any value in a trade, and only created more negative trade value (they aren't going to trade him if it costs to trade him). If the current contract could be traded, he likely can be traded in the future. The extension just adds value if one views the current contract as having value, but more importantly, it buys the Suns time. The more years left on a contract, the less power a player has.

 

Brunson got the absolute max he could get when he signed. For him to get more he would have had to wait and risk injury/decline.

 

I'm not sure what's more ludicrous, the idea that Thompson is "replacing" Green's 26 minutes despite the fact that he was already on the court all the time or the fact that the Rockets now have 3 or 4 PF's who can't guard down and fewer guys who are capable of guarding big and small makes them even less exploitable (also you conveniently forgot sheppard who probably *is* the closest thing to replacing Green in the rotation, - and who *is even more* exploitable).

Thompson can't play any more mintues than he's already playing, or take on even more defensive assignments than he's already taking. That's just the truth!

 

Well, it's more that Amen is shifting his role from frontcourt to backcourt. Of course he won't play more minutes.

Kind of a musical chairs thing. Jabari takes Amen's starting frontcourt minutes. KD takes Dillon's. Amen takes Green's.

 

Is he really though? KD will be used as the SG on offense.... he typically has even higher usage than Jalen ever did.

I'm pretty sure Amen will play in a forward role on offense.

 

The biggest change from the trade is that Jabari goes back into three starting lineup playing with Amen. Prior to the trade, Jabari was coming off the bench so Ime could play Amen and Brooks.

KD gets the bulk of the Jalen minutes, Jabari gets the minutes Brooks had, Tari picks up more minutes, Sheppard picks up minutes, Capela picks up some minutes.

I don't see why there's confusion.

 

Pre-Bobby:

Bobby:


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