The "franchise player" debate has been settled. It's Amen.

you mean his baby mama right?

 

Wow. I did not know that Clutch was Jalen’s daddy. Everything seems a lot more clear now.

 

To get this conversation back to Amen rather than a use case in why we need moderators while some people turn this thread into a two person circular argument that goes on for whole pages about Jalen's shooting numbers...

I think Amen has the ability to be one of the best perimeter defenders of all time. I think he is a smart guy and if he can apply that in the same way Draymond has about understanding what offenses are doing - he is going to blow up a lot of offenses with the elite physical skills he has. The consensus is generally great offense is better than great defense but I think Amen will be one of those guys who challenges the notion. Generally the top players in the league are ball dominant scorers, but if you got a defender who can actually make the SGAs of the world less efficient, it really changes the outcomes of teams with high powered scorers and changes the evaluation on the impact of high level defenders.

I don't think this what Houston thought when we drafted Amen but it feels like with the coach we have, with the personele we have around Amen - we are lining ourselves up to be more of an old school Detroit Pistons type of defense first/ball control type contender. If we can find a way to generate some no frills somewhat consistent efficient offense here(Amen iso plays, some Durant mid range shots, Alpi in the post), this becomes an interesting team challenging the narrative on what wins games in the modern era after so many teams tried to adopt the 3s and layups Warriors style strategy - which ironically actually came from Morey and our G League RGV experiments to prove out a new theory on offensive efficiency.

 

Remains to be seen if you draft a hyper defensive wing like Amen or Kawhi......... long term.

Or go the OKC route and draft Cason Wallaces in masses.......Jrues and Marcus Smarts.

 

I think there are very few players who are good enough defensively to impact the other team's best offensive player in a way that makes them closer to average than elite but I think that's the place Amen is heading. Defenders who are good enough to do that AND can be a plus player offensively(albeit not elite) have always been in high demand.

I think an interesting observation is no one necessarily knew how good guys like Kawhi and Amen would be defensively. I'm looking at Kawhi's scouting report in a few different sources and he definitely had a defensive reputation and there was talk of his possible upside but I don't think anyone predicted he would be the best defender of his era....similarly, Amen's scouting report talked about defensive upside but he effectively became the best wing defender in the league in his 2nd year.

There will always be the Cason Wallace's of the world but I think the pecking order continues to be TRUE two way players who are elite at at least one side of the ball and at least good on the other side > offensively elite players who are average or less at the other side of the ball > defensively elite players who are average or less at the other side of the ball. You want to build teams around the Lebron, Giannis, and Kawhi types and once you run out of them(usually less than 5 of those in the league at any given time), then you start adding your Hardens/Currys, etc. I do think it's bizarre how we got Amen and virtually everyone missed on the defensive upside piece when he was initially drafted.

 

I don't think it's settled just yet. We just saw Alpi outplay the best player in the world and beat a stronger team. I'd say the franchise player tag is still very much in play (and how awesome is it that we've got 2 players who are looking that special?)

 

And neither of those two is the new guy who scored 26 on 50/40/85 shooting last year.

 

He doesn't count because he's already way past his prime despite still being amazing. But I'm not even fully convinced he's even the Batman any more. He may genuinely be Sengun's Robin if Ime can recognise what's staring him in the face and turn it into Senhub at the 4 as the main engine of the offense. We don't need a hypothetical, we've seen it works. IDGAF about the rest of the players on the teams, it worked against ****ing Jokic, and sorry, he's still the best player Shai's not close.

 

My point was more on your final paranthetical - it’s great we have 3 of them. Given the unique circumstances of each - Amen mainly a defender and a good passer, Sengun a great passer, and Durant a floating finisher - we don’t have to worry about who is the Batman. None of the three requires a heliocentric system - they are all flexible. And they are all awesome.

Add a bunch of unselfish high-end role players in Jabari, Atari, FVV, Adam’s, DFS, Reed and we are just loaded…

 

The season really needs to hurry up and get here tbh, I'm so pumped!

 

No kidding. We've had all summer to pump up every player as the second coming of Bird, Jordan, Magic, etc. Time for reality to hit. (Hopefully not...)