He has that sly eye squint and smirk right after he said it. He thinks that he is toughening up Reed Sheppard --- well it isn't working. He scolded and yanked him from a game 6 weeks ago, and Sheppard played poorly for over a month afterwards. The same style doesn't work with every personality or person. Udoka did a good job of cleaning up the mess from Silas, and had success with the Celtics--- but this is starting to feel like JVG/Thibs all over again, but with a guy that has watched too many Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds movies.
I get that he was slumping. So have several starters on this team. He’s the #3 pick. We have no legit guards. He’s potentially our best long range shooter and one of our best ball handlers. He needs to be able to play through mistakes just like Jalen, Bari and others have. He should be playing 30 min, not 20.
If Thompson were surrounded by shooters - his flaws wouldn't be an issue and he would be praised. The problem is that Stone has assembled a team of flawed players that do not complement each other well at all. Thompson cannot shoot .......... Sengun cannot shoot and his defense is suspect....... FVV cannot shoot or create..... Adams/Capela cannot shoot.... Jabari Smith is not a good enough shooter to cover for others...... KD can only cover for so much. It is just a bad mix
Reed in a couple of years on another team…it’s nice playing for someone that believes in you and builds you up. It’s pretty cool, yea.
Reed should be getting a lot of minutes. He needs the minutes to learn from mistakes. I think he is smart enough to keep progressing if given the chance. Even if they ultimately trade him the extra minutes are beneficial as they increase his value. Not a lot of downside to Reed floor time at around 30min/gm.
Amen and Jabari stitch this defense together. Everyone else is absolute trash on that end. Due to his lack of shooting, he could probably take a deal just a hair under the Sengun deal which would be a bargain. Just depends on how much ball he wants to play because he could very easily just command the max and we'd be ****ed at that point because some team out there would absolutely pay that and we'd immediately turn into the Chicago Bulls/Phoenix Suns/Atlanta Hawks. Amen/Jabari/Reed are the three most important players for the Rockets moving forward.
Reed should be starting, should be playing 32 mins a game, and he should learn from his mistakes. Ime is just not coaching him the same as others, they all make mistakes, but Reed is the one who is pulled and sat - the guys shooting is KEY to this team winning, his gravity is key to all the others getting space. We need MORE 3pt shooting to win in the modern league - and having 3-4 shooters on the floor at once instead of 1-2 is a major advantage. Ime isn't a good coach or mentor - he is a throw back - but somehow skipped OFFENSE and ADJUSTMENTS in the Popovich learning experience. DD
The locker room relationships seems to be wearing thin gradually. That's a dangerous sign. Some blame the presence of Durant because it seems to happen everywhere he goes. Maybe that's true. But Udoka and some players are also getting salty. Amen's regression on shooting and defensive intensity may have something to do with the situation too. The most important part of the head coach is to keep the players motivated and let them know that he is working his butt off to help them succeed. If the players start to feel otherwise, he is beginning to lose them.
I'm not convinced Reed can handle 32 minutes a game yet. I'm not all that happy with Ime's coaching this season, and I'm not convinced he's handling Reed the right way due to the way his minutes keep fluctuating wildly and some of the ways he talks about him in pressers and things like that. But I do think Reed playing around 25mpg is probably about all he can manage with his current conditioning. It's double last season's minute count.
The major difference is, there's no other player in the league like Amen. His athletic ability is rare, his intangibles, IQ and the ability to guard several positions, you just don't take that out of the starting lineup. There are several players with Reed and Sengun's skillset in the NBA. I respect all NBA players because, not everyone can do what they do but I think Amen is 1 of 1. And considering this is his 3rd position in 3yrs and by PG being one of the hardest positions to play in the NBA....I think he is doing a HELLUVA job! If you ask me or any head coach, would you rather have a great defender with intangibles or an inconsistent guard, who other teams target, Im sure we all know who they would choose
So our all star center has to be better or the forward pretending to be a guard who can't shoot is a liability? Interesting.
It's basically a super incompetent version of what Pop did with Tony Parker only with a player that doesn't respond well to that kind of bullshit.
DD Are you related to Howard Stern? He's a SHOCK JOCK too, who likes to throw things up against the wall to get responses, as well. Lol There is no other Top 4 Seed team in the West or East that Reed should be getting 32+ mins a game on.
You're still saying that better players need to be even better or Amen will be a liability. Good players make other players better. What kind of players can only be good if everyone else is a star?
There's only one player in basketball who matches or in this case exceeds Sengun's combination of unique skills at the center position, and that's Jokic, arguably the best player in the NBA. Sengun is already better than Sabonis, if that's who you're going to reference next. Both Amen and Sengun are pretty much in that "unicorn" category in regards to their weird combinations of abilities.
BTW, if Sengun could hit 35% from 3, he's an MVP candidate. If you need someone else to be an MVP candidate in order to not be a liability, you're a liability.
I also laid out why Reed and Segun doesn't work well, due to the fact that neither plays defense, however you didn't find an issue with that. I wonder why? Hmmm
