You know, I like Sengun, I just wished he had an outside shot and could protect the rim better. But every time I see him, I see Sabonis. And when I think of Sabonis and Sacramento, I see an avg team at best. And today's game is not centered around centers, it's a guards league, unless you have a Jokic or a HEALTHY Embiid. If I'm the Rockets, this Summer, I would go in a different direction. Last night was the first time, where I didn't believe in any of our young core. I know every team has droughts but this is ridiculous.
Adelman is a much better offensive coach than most, but he never got a team to the finals because they were soft.
He doesn't have to accurate. If he shot 32% - 33% on 3 - 4 attempts, it would open the lanes. That's one thing I loved about MDA, he would be more angry if you wouldn't take the 3pt shot. When Alpi FAKES at the 3pt line, it drives me crazy.
Id be happy too but Jokic couldn't do that until his 6th season. Season 5 he was shooting 31% from 3.
The Rockets aren’t as talented as the Thunder nor are their two best players better than Tyrese Halliburton and Pascal Siakam on the Pacers. If they don’t take advantage of their soft upcoming schedule, I’ll be concerned. As for their offense, Sengun is not the main problem. The problem is they have one guy on the entire team who is above average at three-point shooting this season in Dillon Brooks (38.8%) with Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr and Tari Eason hovering around league average at 35-36%. Fred VanVleet is at 34% on 8 attempts per game. Either Sengun or Amen Thompson have to develop a three-point shot this offseason because it is really hard to consistently score with two non three-point shooters sharing the court together in today’s NBA.
Why will Amen not go over the screen but it will still be up to Sengun to stop the 3? If both Amen and Sengun are trying to stop the 3 who is guarding the roller? Sengun is both stopping the 3 and stopping dribble penetrations? Huh? From what I can they dont switch with Sengun, Sengun remains on the big and its up to Amen to fight thru screen and contest 3.
I understand your point but at the same time most defensive centers also cant score and handle like Sengun, like give the ball to Jabari and ask him to create in isolation he wont even be able to back down his defender and end up with a contested mid range jumper. Sengun does a lot for our offense if you take him out sure you help the D but then the O drops down several levels unless Jalen is on Super Saiyan mode. Its not a coincidence the Rox lost all the games Sengun didnt play. At the end of the day what matters is your net contribution irrespective of offense or defense. Teams have indeed been hitting 3s at alarming rates against the Rox, 37% for Sac, 45% for OKC and 40% for Pacers. However can all of these be blamed on Sengun? I havent seen data that suggests Sengun is the one leaking all these open looks from 3s. In the games against Pacers and Kings he played 35+ mins and had the highest plus minus among starters. In the game he didnt play against OKC thats when OKC shot 45% from 3.
Teams are really targeting and making Sengun work on D. He does well enough most of the time , and played really hard in that last game... but he was limited . Sengun really needs to work on his outside shot and keep getting better on D and staying limber. idk how you best build around him. I think you need to see how our Jabari keeps growing . The double big lineup was OK for us last night , just didnt have enough shot making. Jabari needs a few more games to get back . Tari and Amen i think are both a little beaten down at this point. They still give us alot , its just not as consistent right now. Green has always been inconsistent. FVV and dillon are huge lynchpins. And dammit, Ime youre not playing Tate enough ! But adams is looking spryer , sheppard had a good game the other day and holliday is always servicable. I do think we should keep playing through sengun , but he needs to be limited to 30 mpg . maybe even like 26 . We are at our best when he is a plus defender and is attacking on offense. I think you can survive stretches playing Adams at the 5 , i think we can do well with jabari/tate/green/tari at the 5 sometimes. Im interested in seeing more double big and bigger lineups with sengun. I do think other teams will always try to get him in PnR .
Yeah agree - I don't think Sengun is the reason why we are losing regular season games. The defense has slipped across the board. My concern with Sengun is not how he fares in the regular season - he is a great leader of this team on both sides of the ball there. It's how he is able to show up in the playoffs when team strategies are a lot more focused and persistent to exploiting the weakest links in our defense. It's going to be unflattering to him AND Jalen if I'm being honest but I think that's what we are trying to discover with this year's team - how will those guys get exposed so that it informs what we are potentially looking for to strengthen the roster overall as we start to look into what options are available to us if we are willing to consolidate talent and picks this offseason. This is just the necessary step to transitioning from the BPA strategy to assembling a real team. We have mostly done a good job of getting value out of the draft - but at some point you gotta mix and match pieces to build a more stable and consistent team. I think one of Jalen or Sengun might be gone after this offseason and it might not be about preserving our best player(clearly Sengun), but what can get us to a better overall team when we make our players available.
