Him being like Giannis and playing the point are two different things. The problem isn't whether he can pass or not but rather whether he can pressure the defense or not. And at his best Amen pressures the defense by being off ball or being a secondary playmaker. When he's crashing the boards or taking backdoor cuts. When he's dribbling the ball he is unable to put as much pressure on the defense to force them to react. Last 3 games before the Spurs the Rockets played below average offense. You can check the offensive ratings in those games to confirm it. The Rockets went 2-1 against a contender, a lottery team, and an lower-tier playoff team in the East. That doesn't prove Amen is the right PG for the Rockets to win a title.
No problem. i said before this game that Wemby was going to be a problem for Amen and that Reed and Jabari were going to have to step up. Amen's dominant first half surprised me. Amen absolutely needs to shoot better, but we can win with this roster with one more consistent shooter and a better coach. It's probably too much to assk of Reed this season with this coach.
Most of those guys can shoot? Okogie is a career 30.7% 3 PT shooter. Sengun can’t shoot. Bari is so damn streaky and quite frankly I don’t think 34.7% is a good shooter especially when you factor in he has no other offensive skill set. DFS has been straight ass. The only one that can shoot is Reed but when he’s off he is virtually unplayable as you have pointed out. You can keep crying about rotations all you want but Amen not even being willing to take a wide open 3 is a larger issue.
And I’ll say it for the thousandth time, you aren’t going to be a good offense when you can’t shoot. FVV in the playoffs was the only reason the Warriors didn’t wipe the floor with us.
I agree. We dont run any pin down screens. Offense is just give the ball to KD for pick-n-roll action with Sengun -> gets ball, pump fake or kick it out to Jabari for a brick. Tari/Bari/Amen starting together is a nightmare for spacing! Tari needs to be our 6th man along with Reed. DFS is ass right now so I dont see us moving Bari...we'll have to attach a couple draft picks to move the DFS contract. I think it's doable, but Stone has no nuts to shake things up especially Ime has a hard on for wings who hustles.
Jabari misses wide open 3s all the time! Ime should've called a timeout to encourage Amen to shoot the open 3 - not like anyone else was making their shots in the 2nd half
[Highlight] Compilation of the Spurs using Wemby as a free safety and guarding Amen Thompson like he has covid
First half, Wemby was not on Amen much. Second half, Wemby wasn't on Amen much either. It isn't that Wemby is a problem for only Amen. He's a problem for the entire team when he's camped in the paint. Very hard to get good shots when defenders don't have to worry about their man getting by them. Reed sucked too. Granted, I thought maybe Reed would help remedy the issue some, but not like he's playing.
I dont think Amen will ever become a good shooter. A lot of people point to Kawhi, but he was never as bad of a shooter as Amen, maybe except his freshman year in college and that would be a growth year for Amen. But even then, his form looked a billion times better. Also, as ball handler Amen is attempting 0.3 pull up threes per game shooting 15%. He will at least kinda take catch and shoot threes, but when he has the ball in his hands the threat of him making a shot from beyond the arc is basically 0. And even when he gets into the lane hes gotta be wide open. Per the stats he won't shoot unless he's open or wide open. And even then, compared to other nba guards hes essentially a non shooter. I just dont see him going from this reluctant and bad at shooting to becoming even a Giannis or Rondo level shooter. If he does, great...but the Rockets should proceed as if he won't. I think maybe give it one more off season and if Sengun doesn't take a significant leap as a 3pt shooter they gotta move him.
He puts in the work just as much or more than anyone else on the team. Saying he isn't willing is a long stretch. The problem is, it looks as if he didn't start working on his shot until he made it to the NBA. I have no doubt he's going to get better - his free throw shooting improved a lot - but he's out of position and needs to shoot the open mid ranges so he can improve or the Rockets won't make it far in the playoffs.
That's precisely why this team needs an experienced point guard to fill the void left by FVV. Reed isn't quite ready, maybe next year ....
We also miss him running the point - protecting the ball, setting up the offense, getting guys good looks - last year they missed them or Jalen got 25 shots. No one on the team has that skillset and it's a problem.
For who though? Nobody on the team knows how to work a PnR. KD does a bit but he doesn't like to spam plays for some reason.
I agree with the bolded parts completely. I think this front office's mission needs to be to add as much shooting as possible around Amen and Sengun, without sacrificing too much defensively. KD was a reasonable attempt at that, but I think Stone and co. otherwise mostly failed. Clint could have instead been a stretch big signing. DFS was injured for so long and has been a bad shooter since returning (hopefully he will get back his jump shot). We didn't really add any shooting at all aside from trading Dillon & Jalen for KD. I also think the top priority for both Amen and Sengun should be to become passable jump shooters who keep their defenders honest, and if one of them can't do that within the next couple of seasons, there's going to have to be a breakup. That said, I still think Amen is our highest upside young player and our most complete young player aside from his lack of an outside shot, and people knee-jerking to the way San Antonio defended him are being silly. Dude is an insane athlete with good size/length who can attack the rim with the best of them, play phenomenal defense, hit a wide variety of shots within 10ft (not just dunks), handle the ball very well for a guy of his size, great rebounder, sees the court well and has good passing skills, plays hard and hustles 37 minutes a night. Jump shooting matters more than ever in the NBA, but it's not the only thing that matters. You can still build a strong lineup with one non-shooter in it, tons of teams still do. Amen isn't the Achille's heel here, if there is one; it's overall roster construction and the fact that he's being paired with Sengun. The good news is they're both age 23. Lots of players have developed jump shots as they move into their mid 20s. I wouldn't break them up yet, but it is something to have in the back of our minds as a possibility moving forward. P.S. We were never going to win a championship this season with or without KD. That's not me saying it's impossible, but the odds were always very low, and having KD only made them slightly higher, if at all. Posters need to stop obsessing about that possibility and recognize that we're still a team with a very young rotation that is still developing. Winning a championship with this core is and was always going to be contingent on how players develop from their early 20s into their mid 20s. We don't have a late-20s MVP like SGA to carry the younger guys.
Let’s try not to panic about one game in which we played well for much of it. I don’t think Amen exposed - I do think, perhaps, our roster around him got a little exposed. If we are building around Amen and Sengun - which we should - AND we are trying to win now - which we should be - then we need to get more shooting at the deadline. We have a decent foundation, but much of it is inconsistent with regard to 3 pt shooting, in large part due to age.
Ime’s adjustment as the HC of a contending team The one minute Amen didn’t play in the 4th was the scrubs coming in with 50 seconds left after we were blown out
