Amen-Tari is a match made in heaven. I feel sorry for other teams. Playing against them must be frustrating.
Perhaps losing his starting spot to Eason and having to fight for it back would light a fire under him? Either way, Udoka needs to be starting the Rockets’ best players, and Eason is clearly one of them.
No, he doesn't necessarily need to start the 5 best players. What's really important is the best players get the most total minutes and finish games. However, if Jabari causes the starting lineup to consistently fail early, he must be replaced. His last 4 games have been abysmal.
I agree that ultimately giving your best players the most minutes and having them close out games is what matters most, but Tari Eason has a +14.5 net rating, which is the highest on the entire roster. He needs to be a starter at this point. If Amen had any shooting ability, the same conversation could be had about him, but he’s not there yet with his shot. If swapping Tari and Jabari in the starting lineup is the wakeup call Jabari needs to start playing well and fight to get the starting spot back, even better.
The thing is, if you start the players you finish with, the guys that finish have more rest during a half between their minutes assuming same total minutes if they were a bench player. Backup players typically come in around the 6 minute mark in the 1st and the third. If Tari is plays 15 minutes in a half, he's playing 15 out of 18 game minutes as a backup. If he starts a half, he's getting 15 minutes out of 24 game minutes. That's almost like getting an extra half time each half if you time breaks of game time for a player with breaks when the game isn't being played,
Hoping our reputation for being the 3rd best defense expands to every officiating crew. Let us grab a little more jersey, benefit fully from the verticality rule. Bumping the ball handler in the PnR like Marcus Smart with no foul called. Little things that will lead to more Ws.
The starting units problems are not just on Jabari. Brooks who shouldn’t even be on the team is the only one playing at his own standard. FVV has been terrible. FVV, Sengun, jalen and Jabari have all started out well below expectations. Still we are 8-4 and a couple of bad Ime decisions from being10-2. Amen and Tari are the main reasons behind that. I will stick with the idea that Amen should be starting in place of Brooks and Tari should be getting 30+ mins off the bench. Amen needs to be guarding the other teams best perimeter player from the start of the game not coming in after they have torched FVV, Jalen, and Brooks for ten minutes. Last night was another example. Harden was having his way until Amen and Tari got in the game. The Rockets need Jabari to get it together to be a contender. I don’t believe you can correct a confidence problem by benching.amen is young enough to play 35 mins a game easily. FVV is too old to play more than 30.
I think Tari and Amen are untouchable. They are young and we don’t know how high the ceiling goes. But we do know they impact winning at a pretty significant level. We need to start building around Tari, Amen, Sengun, and I guess we are locked into Jalen. That’s our core 4. To me, the same glaring gaps remain: rim protecting big, and perimeter shooting. If we are serious about building a team that fits, we need to swap out non-core players to fill those needs.
This is how I feel as well. Build around those four. Hopefully Sheppard will bring the perimeter scoring, and Sengun is making improvements in his rim protection (top 10 in blocks). Shouldn’t be difficult to eventually add more perimeter scoring and rim protection via trades and the draft.
Looks like amen tari Sengun green and reed are here to stay. We need to find replacements for fvv and bari. Then we are good to go.
I think an unfortunate reality is that we don't have a superstar on the roster, and if we want to get one, it probably involves trading at least one from our core.
I just think it’s way too early to make this declaration. Eason is 23, Green and Sengun are 22, Amen is 21, and Reed is 20. Hell, Sengun is already a borderline star. He is 6th in PIE, and he and Wemby are by far the youngest in the top 10. He’s also like top 5 in rebounds and top 10 in blocks.
I hope you're right, but I just don't see it. It looks very very unlikely to me. Alternatively, we could be like the pistons and win it all just by having a bunch of good players but no stars, which is also unlikely. I'm trying to just enjoy the ride but it's hard for me not to think about it this way.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “superstar.” I could absolutely see a world where, in a couple of years, Sengun is averaging something like 25/12/6. Is that a superstar?
Aside from Sengun, I could see Eason or Amen developing in the Kawhi / Butler mold, basically 20+ ppg with an All Defense selection. Now, the one thing I do think we probably don’t have is a 30+ ppg scorer. Green is obviously the closest, but that would take some massive development. I just don’t think it’s in the cards, but I’d be happy if I were wrong.
