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

Theres a large difference between offense and defense, in the NBA offense>>>>defense thats why Steph Curry and Luka Doncic are max players and PJ Tucker and Trevor Ariza didnt even make 20M a year.

Amen right now isnt seen as an offensive threat thats why his gravity stats has been negative. Once he starts getting guarded like a max player thats when he should be paid like one.

Amen does average 20 pts on highly efficient nos but a lot of non-max 2 way forwards do that like Deni Avdija and NAW. They arent as good at defense and as athletic as Amen but on the flip side they are much better shooters than Amen as well.

 

That's objectively false of course. Defense is exactly mathematically half the game. It's 24 minutes. It's half the possessions. You have to be a top 10 defense and top 10 offense to win a title - and that has been true in every single era of the NBA regardless of rule changes.

Those guys you mention are more marketable, but on the court there's no difference between denying or scoring 2 points.

DPOY's are max players and Amen was 1st team all NBA in his second season. If you move him back to forward where he can get way more stocks, he's back to doing that. Your position matters a lot on defense, the higher up your position the more defensive plays you can impact.

There are as I'm sure you're away plenty of elite defensive players who earned the max (Draymond, JJJ, Gobert, Mobley,etc). There are also plenty of excellent defenders without a jumper who are worth the max (Jimmy Butler, Wade, Iguodala).

Amen is an outlier defensively and we saw it last season. There's no wing who can protect the rim like him and there's no rim protector that can guard the perimeter like him. He's flashing historic defensive potential being able to guard anything between Steph Curry and Karl Anthony Towns.

Sorry but this is not PJ ****ing Tucker lol how insulting to what he brings.

 

The comment was about whether this year is a championship or bust year. I said it’s not necessarily this year but it’s within this 3 year Durant window. They didn’t get Durant to play hide and go seek. They already said it’s winning time. Not 10 years from now. Not 5 years from now. Winning time is now and within this Durant Rocket era.

 

They are trying to win a ring but at the same time they didnt mortgage their future to get KD. It was a roster upgrade regardless as I would rather have KD over DB and JG.

 

The point is, Amen can do a lot of things very well. His only weakness is shooting, which limits him as a perimeter player. But shooting is not something that is hopeless. Lots of bad shooters has become at least average. As many people have pointed out, his free throw improvement shows that he has worked on his shooting mechanic.

 

You can be a star player with below average defense (e.g. Curry, Harden). But you can't be a star player without great offense.

The thing is, offensive stars are hard to come by and they are a necessity for a team to contend for championship. Defense is more of a team effort. You can hide a bad defensive player. You can't hide the fact that you don't have a star offensive engine. This is why offensive stars get paid more than defensive stars.

 

yeah he went 10 of 10 from the FT line last night

 

One of the things that have made Harden, SGA, and a host of others so effective offensively is getting to the line. Amen grows more proficient on offense every day. We are watching a superstar in the making. It is laughable so many folks want to take him off the ball.

 

Ultimately "franchise player" means nothing - it's just a construct we are using here to debate that doesn't correlate to team record, any stat, how much a player makes, etc. There is no real 'job' of a franchise player so it is ultimately what you want it to be because it doesn't exist in real life. You can have your interpretation of what it can mean and I could have an entirely different interpretation and both can be 100% correct.

Thats not to rain on your parade - I agree to some extent with some of the things you said but I think we realy too much on the narrative way of talking through sports because that is the model ESPN has created with Stephen A, Skip, Shannon,etc. It's just "content" - doesn't actually move the needle in any meaningful way(by design btw - to keep us tuning in!). We need to figure out a more productive way to talk about this that does correlate to something tangible. EPM says our expected best player are KD, then Amen, then Sengun - the "actual" of EPM is showing the best is KD by a mile....then Sengun and Amen are in the same ballpark, separated by percentage points....but there are a lot of guys who contribute more to winning than both Amen and Sengun including Porzingis, Zach Edey, Lauri Markkanen, Jalen Suggs, Austin Reeves, Michael Porter Jr, Julius Randle, Mikal Bridges, etc. Maybe that list of seemingly less effective players means EPM isn't the stat but I think the point stands - how can speak on the same terms here?

I'm curious where you think Dwayne Wade sits on the "franchise player" debate? Would he be a franchise player today? Looking at the numbers, 23yr old Amen is frankly a better version of 23yr old Dwayne Wade but Wade didn't play in the analytics era so there is far more scrutiny on what Amen does today offensively. The one place where Wade is significantly better than Amen is he got the foul line a lot more. Amen seems to be improving significantly here - especially over the last month but Wade shoots roughly twice as many FTs as Amen does today when at the same age....and not necessarily saying Amen is going to be Dwade - just pointing out how Wade and Bosh were considered second rate stars....until they started winning titles and then they weren't. Lebron would appear to be franchise player there - yet Wade remained as Miami's franchise player and was frankly the heart and soul of those title teams.

 

since Dec 01 2025, Amen is 1 of 21 players with at least 20 prs, 5 assists, and 5 FT attempts

He's 2nd in FG%. Joker barely beat him with 0.5%. Even beat SGA

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/t...teFrom=12/01/2025&TeamID=0&dir=D&sort=FG3_PCT

his TS% is same as Butler, Steph, Kawhi, & Ant

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/a...ateFrom=12/01/2025&TeamID=0&dir=A&sort=TS_PCT

 

You will get full season stats as an argument. Where Amen is concerned it is disingenuous as it was clear to anyone with a basketball pulse that there would be a steep learning curve for someone being thrust into the PG position after only be a starter at forward for 1/2 season. Amen’s progression at the guard position and initiator is ahead of schedule.

 

I think you've made a mistake. This thread is titled "The 'franchise player' debate has been settled. It's Amen." It's not titled "The 'franchise player' debate could be settled if Amen overcomes his weakness". Right now KD and Sengun do all of the heavy lifting. If either of them had to miss any extend time we'd be f**ked, whereas we would have other players to soak up Amen's numbers if they got his minutes & touches.

 

I am actually not arguing for the thread title. Just a discussion about Amen's potential of being a franchise player. Of course it has not been settled. The title is about as good as all the other "franchise player" thread title. We have none yet if you want to be so serious. But Amen is among the top guys we have in terms of likelihood of becoming a franchise player.

I think you are underestimating Amen's impact. If Amen has to sit for a long time, this team will be in trouble. Sengun, Durant, and Amen are the players we cannot afford to lose for long stretches without being a much worse team.

 

Personally I am about 99% to the point where I would offer Thompson the Max as soon as he is able to sign. Maybe he will give us a little bit of a discount as some of his teammates have and that would be amazing.

but if he wants the full max, I am not even waiting a second to extend and let him sign that.

the free throw shooting improvement in the mid range shooting growth seem unusual to me. I admit he is still not great from the three point line, but he seems to have improved in those area is much faster than your typical struggling shooter.

to me he is clearly a max player, more so than anyone on the roster and frankly most of the NBA.

 

The corollary of this rule is that if a team's winning percentage drops by 18% in a long stretch without a player, the player made a big impact in the games he played.

 

Sure - it seems like a lot of people in this thread are arguing "is Amen really really good or not?" or "should Amen get the rookie max?". I'm not arguing those questions. If that's someone's definition of franchise player, cool.

IMO, "franchise player" means you have a guy who is your #1, and you think you can win a championship that way. He has been given the keys, and he has the steering wheel. The team doesn't need to add a better player above him in the pecking order to win a ring.

It's just a term, but I personally think this definition aligns pretty closely with how teams operate and the history of the league. Also tbh, how players see it. It's trite, but it's true -- there's only one ball. If there's one factor that outweighs everything else in winning the title, it's who is your best guy with the ball, and are they good enough.

Not every team has a franchise player. I'd say about half of them don't right now. Every team has a best player, but definitely doesn't mean he's a franchise player IMO. There are a lot more potential #2's and #3's on a title team out there than there are potential #1 guys on a title team. It's the scarce asset in the league.

DWade was of course one, and better than Amen from the beginning. He was an MVP candidate year 2, and Finals MVP year 3, scoring 35 ppg in a defensive era. It gets blurry once his knees started breaking down during the Heatles period.

 

Amen hasn't missed any games this year, but they went 3-2 without him last year (.600). But when Sengun has been out this season and last, they've gone 4-9 (.308).

I've seen a lot of good players generate big numbers on bad teams - someone has to take those shots and grab those rebounds. But those players don't elevate their teammates, hit clutch shots, or otherwise make a real difference. I don't think Amen is a bad player, but he's not a franchise player either. Teams leave him wide open, and I saw Tre Jones cook him like burger last night. He just ain't all that.

 

People have made up their minds about certain players and no amount of counter points will convince them otherwise. The franchise player totem pole goes as such:

1) Amen

*gap*

2) Sengun

*big gap*

3) Reed Sheppard

*gap*

4) Jabari Smith Jr

If they don't like it they can kick rocks. For what its worth this team cant function without Sengun who is the magic marker of the offense and Amen who is the magic marker of the defense. I do think Amen can improve his offense a lot more than Sengun can improve his defense which is why ultimately Sengun is slightly below him.