Christian Wood bringing the ball up is counter intuitive to our team's strength

It’s honestly on the coaching staff, they are probably like “surprise them by dribbling the ball up the court and take advantage of any mismatches!” Derp derp!

 

Wood hurts the team as a 4. Denver would have to adjust if he was playing a 5 but Silas wanted Theis to guard Jokic all night it looks like.

 

Wood and Wall for Simmons

 

And yet his defenders say he's a unicorn and a future all-star. He has no guard skills, he's just a soft big man. Anybody with more than half a brain cell can see our young athletic guards are one of our big strengths yet Wood slows down our transition game constantly by thinking he's a guard when he's not even close to the level of speed, handling or passing needed to be the guy bringing the ball up court.

 

You'd need to add another player worth about 20m for that trade to work - never going to happen.

 

He reminds me a crappy version of when we had Mo Taylor on the team years ago. Puts up numbers but it does not result in winning. Now we see why Det did not push to keep him.

 

It’s crazy to me that people are still bashing Wood after we won a game in which he scored 23 points with 11 boards. Put your agendas away for one day.

 

Taylor didn't shoot threes, didn't make 2's at a high percent, and didn't rebound. Wood only has one of Taylor's 4 worst vices which is bad defense. Wood does not hinder the Rockets ability to score points the way Taylor did.

 

Christian Wood just being on the team is counterintuitive to what we’re trying to do

if Wood is still here past the deadline, then Stone has some explaining to do…

 

I haven't ran the data but I wouldn't be surprised if the guy Wood guards on a nightly basis performed better vs Christian/Rockets than what he averages during the regular season.

 

nice work! Deserves its own thread

…

oh, wait

 

This is such a glaringly obvious flaw in our offense that it should literally take one timeout to fix the issue. Instead we've watched him dribble the ball up court at a snail's pace probably 100+ times this season. Either Silas is inept and encourages Wood to play point forward or he's afraid to reprimand him on this habit because he's afraid Christian will throw a fit and refuse to check into the game again.

 

I haven’t run data either, but I know the Rockets are a way worse team when Wood doesn’t play.

 

He's only missed 3 games this year and the team went 0-3. If you're referring to the 20 game losing streak that he wasn't a part of last year then I would offer up the 15 game losing streak he was very much a part of this year.

The team is worse without him but is that because he's an invaluable, game changing player....or because the guy who replaced him in the starting lineup (e.g. Plan B) is just horrifically bad?

 

He's not "invaluable," but he is very, very good.

 

He was playing at an all-star level last year prior to his ankle injury but he's been more "good" than "very, very good" this year.

 

Option C, he's still one of the best players on the team even if he has a flaw (defense) that the Rockets have no remedy.

 

Yup