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

Saying Amen just lacks a jumper is laughable. It’s not just the jumper - he completely lacks an offensive bag, and his playmaking is just drives and kicks. I’ve been more disappointed in the lack of development on those areas than I am with the bad shooting actually. He’ll be very easy to stop once you feature him as your primary option. The leap he needs to take a max or be a #1 option is massive. We need to stop projecting capabilities we’ve seen no evidence of onto players just because they are athletic or whatever.

 

That's why I don't believe he'll be a #1 option. He's more of a nice complimentary player.

 

Point is they stay back around 16-18 ft since he’s not a 3 pt threat. He usually gets the ball at the wings or elbows and tries to dribble drive, then they put a defender on him. he usually isn’t successful with a stacked paint or a big waiting then he dribbles out or passes out in the paint. But this doesn’t mean he’s not guarded. He’s also a 3rd option on this team.

 

So far Stone hasn’t offered any player the max outside of that attempt to keep Harden before he left I believe. I don’t think Amen will break that trend.

 

Durant

 

I can't remember if I posted this yet but Amen the 3 point shooter seems like a lost cause right now

If he got a more reliable floater or mid-range that might be more realistic

 

I thought Durant took a discount when he resigned?

 

Disagree here. We're not talking about a regular ceiling, there are unfathomable athletic traits involved.

Think Jimmy Butler but if he was longer, taller and highly likely the most athletic player in NBA history. Amen will probably end up the better passer too.

 

Durant extension is well below max.

FVV's 1st year was the max. However, the Rockets financial situation was that his salary did not block an opportunity cost of acquiring a better player, or multiple worse players that would be better combined. Harden was not a free agent, and even if he was, he would not have taken the 2 years with a TO deal FVV did.

 

Anyone else notice that Amen doesn't seem comfortable finishing with one hand. The end result is that he struggles to finish over defenders (despite jumping a foot higher) - finishing one handed would allow him more ways to contort himself and get a clean attempt at the bucket.

I still think Amen's ideal role is more akin to Shawn Marion or even (optimistically) pre-injury Grant Hill than a PG. His handle is way too loose to be a PG and I don't think he's a quick enough decision maker either. Plus, the modern guard pretty much has to be able to shoot from the perimeter, and I don't know if Amen is ever develop that.

 

I think that is more likely to happen. However, adding the floater and mid-range game does not help that he's not guarded without the ball, and even with the ball, the defense can go under screens or play drop coverage. Amen only fans see this completely differently and this is a a bit of an oversimplification, ....but it is much easier for Amen to score lately with his man covering the other players, and it is harder for other players to score inside the arc with Amen's man there more.

Amen only fans: Look at all those potential assists from Amen on three attempts that other players are missing.
Also Amen only fans: Play a high volume, highly efficient shooter with any amount of playmaking ability with Amen? That's crazy talk. He might actually be confused with being the PG instead of Amen. Can't have that. Play Okogie. Wish we hadn't traded Jalen Green. Amen developing into a heliocentric PG is the only thing that matters for the Rockets.

Caveat: Reed is in a shooting slump and does deserve a huge amount of the blame lately. That said, I just don't think "playing well" while not being guarded tightly is actually playing well.

 

I agree with your points here for sure. I know Houston tried and apparently DID have some kind of agreement with Lopez before his last contract but apparently he backed out before it was finalized. I was actually surprised that we didnt push harder to acquire Myles Turner - seemed like an obvious fit but then it requires you to cut from somewhere else(Fred?, don't sign one of Capela/Adams, etc) but I think you are calling out what is the crux of the problem and we see it in the proliferation of "our franchise player is" threads:

As an organization, we have not fully committed to the future identity of this team and are stuck in between playing styles
- are we optimizing Amen as the next 2 way monster like Giannis and surrounding him with athletic shooters and guys who create TOs that start offense
- are we optimizing Reed and looking towards the more pace and space uptempo days of both Golden State(using Reed's gravity to do Curry like things, Amen is Draymond on steroids) or the Nash led Suns teams(Reed orchestrating like Nash, Amen playing a Shawn Marion swiss army knife role)
- are we playing slow controlled basketball and putting the ball in the hands of highly skilled savants like KD and Sengun - shades of Denver with smart role players making intelligent cuts and lots of offensive movement that give our technicians options to find players

It feels like today we are asking ourselves the question of 'do we have the coach who can weave all 3 of those style together with various lineups to make us the most flexible team in NBA history' but I think that's a bit of an unrealistic ask of any coach. The reality is, we likely won't be successful being a little bit of this, a little bit of that - at some point we have to commit to a style which is going to favor one player in particular, build a roster around that style(which may open the painful exercise of trading a very promising player to get a better player fit) and that will mean we have weaknesses but we gotta hope that we are better at our strengths than our weaknesses.

....but make no mistake here - the real problem Houston faces as a team here is identity - this team built around optimizing what Udoka does best, built around what Reed does best, built around what Amen does best, built around what Sengun does best - those are likely 4 distinct teams so we ultimately need to prioritize which one we optimize for. It doesn't mean these players can't coexist to some extent but I think you are right to call out that if we are putting all our chips on Amen, then Sengun might not be the best fit.

 

It’s never actually been a debate. It’s always been Amen.

 

Amen Sengun and KD are all fine

the problem is the double big line up

https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/a...uantity=5&dir=D&slug=advanced&sort=NET_RATING

 

Every one of these outlier shooting development guys (Horford, Kidd, Rondo, Lopez) only became passable standstill catch and shoot 3pt shooters, none of them became pull up on-ball 3 point shooters. And they were levels better shooters than Amen to begin with - except Rondo, who never got to the point where teams guarded him at the 3pt line, even off the ball.

Horford and Lopez were great mid range shooters their entire life. Kidd started his career as ~33% guy from 3, which Amen could improve by 10 points and still not touch.

Imagine Amen were on another team. Would Rockets fans really think Amen was going to become an OTD perimeter shooter? Of course not. Everyone would think of him like we thought of Ben Simmons as a shooter or Giannis as a shooter. Why does it change because he's a Rocket?

 

Just being able to shoot 3 stand still would already take him to the next level, he doesnt need to be Steph Curry out there.

Not every max guy needs to score on pull up 3s, for example Klay Thompson. Kyle Lowry at his peak was also a max level pg. Hell even Giannis

 

The thread is about being the Rockets' franchise player. A player we can win a championship with as our best player.

Yes, in 2025 your best player needs to be a pull up perimeter shooting threat in order to win a championship.

The only exception is if you are the GOAT undeniable rim pressure guy (Giannis) and you're surrounded by a perfectly optimized surrounding cast, and you get a lot of playoff injury luck.

I've already said that I think Amen can be a Scottie Pippen-style HoF level complementary guy.

 

Obviously he is getting guarded when he is trying to score, however opponents dont really make stopping him a priority, they dont put a man to guard him at all times like they do to Sengun or KD.

He has negative gravity, that means defenses dont consider him a threat and load up on other guys like KD instead. A guy like that doesnt deserve the max.

 

Jokic doesnt do pull up 3s iirc. He barely jumps on his 3s.

We already have Sengun as the franchise player. Its pretty cut and dried at this point he is even putting up 23 yr old Jokic style nos.

 

Magic Johnson only had a set shot. Nothing wrong with that. He needs to establish a knockdown jumper from the midrange, where he is progressing, and eventually be able to hit a set shot if they refuse to guard him on the perimeter. His FT shooting is testament to his ability to be able to hit a set shot.