I like TJ McConnell. Not sure he's good enough defensively to start full time. Good playmaker though. A platoon with him and Amen might not be so bad, but I think if we got a guy like McConnell I'd just let Amen start (maybe only 25-28 minutes a game though). I don't think we need to add two point guards though--we need make sure Amen gets at least 20 minutes a game running the point so he can start to adjust to NBA speed of play. If we pick Amen I just want some kind of veteran who can play in front of him for 2 years tops before either being traded or just leaving in free agency. Here's my ranked list in order of preference: 1. Sign CP3 on a 1-year contract 2. Trade for Mike Conley 3. Trade for Tyus Jones 4. Sign FVV to something like a 2-year max contract (or 1 year + max player option) If we can't pull off a deal to add a point guard at least that good, I'd just let Amen start and maybe add a backup point guard like McConnell or Carter.
Am ok with TJ or Jevon. When people reference some of the Org's desire, the 'vet' in vet point guard should not be under counted. --- If you get Amen and he has to learn on the job, it likely will be at the expense of someone like a Jabari. I rather Amen runs point with the 2nd unit to keep his mistakes and damage radius limited. I'm at peace if our 4th pick busts, but NOT OK with affecting growth of others. Last couple years of read n' react, 4 or 5 out, KPJ PG experiment, all resulted in growth stunts. Rockets fired Silas because they do NOT want to keep repeating what they've been doing. --- Back on the vet free agents: FVV - might be too over priced. Harden - might be staying in Philly. Chris Paul - I'm ok with throwing big money at him for two years, but if he wants to ring chase, we're not right for him. Conley - throw a really big offer? Even if he's happy in Minny. --- TJ or Jevon, mid tier vet guards who might be ok with short deals but get paid for their troubles. Sounds kinda sweet (and realistic). We need PG who can get everyone else in the right spots are run structured basketball. Have to know and see how Green/Bari/Sengun/Tari play in a legit system so we know what the extension actually looks like. A VET PG role has to get filled ( and doesn't have to be long term ). After two years you can get different vet guards or maybe someone like a Tyty glows up. Moves can be made at that later time.
The way I see it we need 25 minutes from a vet PG and 25 minutes from a vet C (rim protector). This is because we have two good backup PG's (KPJ, Tyty) and we have a starting calibre C in Sengun. If I had to choose between the two, I would rather sign an excellent rim protector than an excellent PG. For the PG position, a league average PG would suffice as a 25-minute starter. We just need someone who gives the ball to Sengun/Green/Jabari, plays defense, hits open 3's. We don't need that person to be excellent at creating shots for themselves - in fact I think that would be a detriment to the team. Don't forget every successful starting line up needs 2-3 role players. Who is our KCP? Who is our Aaron Gordon? Who is our Kevon Looney? Robert Horry? Mario Elie? Sengun and Green would fail miserably as role players, that's just not who they are and it would be very stupid to put them in a position of failure. Star-minded people have that stuff deeply embedded in a way that a basketball coach can NOT fix, so we shouldn't waste our time and their time. We have a shortage of role players. We don't have a serious shortage of shot creators. Sengun and Green are clearly shot makers. Jabari was better at hitting contested 3's than open 3's. There's not much room left for someone to come and hold the ball a lot or take a lot of shots. The ideal thing is to get two guys like Brook Lopez and CP3 who are not dying for minutes and shots anymore, can make shots when needed, know how to play around stars. We need these guys to bridge the gap till our core is closer to 25 years old which is when players start hitting their full potential. To be honest I'm very excited about the rumors I'm hearing about who we're targeting except Harden and Dillon Brooks. We need some adults who have self-discipline. That's what would complement the 8 young players we have who have never been given the resources or the opportunity to meaningfully turn effort into wins. We've messed up their feedback loop and it's our duty to catch up on that stuff and see what we've got in these guys. Green specifically is a monster in hiding. If I asked you to build a team around Jalen Green that would hinder him as much as possible, you would struggle to come up with worse surroundings than what we gave him for 2 years. It was unquestionably the worst situation for his success, defensive development and scoring efficiency. This guy barely had more experience than a HS player and it would be ridiculous to have expected him to develop more than he did under these circumstances. We literally suffocated the floor, clogged the paint, marginalized our shooters, and gave him no team or interior defense to help him recover from defensive mistakes. To spend 3 years amassing 8 young players and then go sign someone in FA to take over the lead role on the team is a really dumb idea. We could have achieved that with 1 year of dumping contracts, we didn't have to wait this long and draft this many players to do that. Give these guys the chance they deserve, it's going to blow your mind how different the team looks when you replace the worst role players in the NBA with the best role players and when you replace a laissez-faire coach with Ime Udoka. Can't wait.
We need someone who understands pace (when to play fast vs slow), space, shot clock, urgency, getting people in the right spots, leadership, toughness. It's not just some spreadsheet that's going to tell us the answer.
Ime can only be as good/successful as the players he inherits. I can't stress enough, the importance of needing FA vet guards to run a competent system. Just running the same 4/5 same young core out there to just "learn" is not efficient and wishful thinking that they just automatically improve on their own. We've tried rolling out 4 of 5 young guys out there. (Gordon being that one vet). The core learned but very slowly and often still lost. 'Definition of insanity'... So do something different. Getting a FA vet guard does NOT mean giving up on the young core. Quite the opposite. Past couple years was the blind (young) leading the blind (young). Why was Silas so slow at opening the playbook, I'm not going to call the young core stupid, but they obviously aren't savants in absorbing the info. So Silas stuck to the simplest of concepts and system. But the downside is everyone progressed slowly. We got new coaches but need on court coaches to correctly direct traffic for the core, until whomever the young future PG is get caught up to speed. --- Think whatever line of work you're in, where you are the vet with x years of experience. Should your manager let the new intern come in with no experience, to be the 'point guard's and direct the show. Not just be bad and inexperienced at their own play, but dictating how you (and rest of your team) do your work.
Is this truly an option? Let's do the "math". From what I hear out of Udoka and Stone, we're set at some positions: Sengun Jabari ? Green ? Green and Jabari have to be given a legit chance to be our most prolific shooters. Green and Sengun have to be given a legit chance to be finishers and if they come through that's plenty. Two of these guys have not looked good defensively so they're huge question marks (Green and Sengun) for half the game. You can't survive with 3 poor defenders on the floor if you want to make the playoffs, so by process of elimination the 1 and the 3 have to be good defenders and since we already have a player who is not a floor spacer (Sengun) there's also no doubt the 1 and 3 must be able to shoot. Can't really survive with 2 non-shooters on the floor either. So both have to be 3&D players at minimum. At the 1 in specific - aside from 3&D - we're lacking someone who can make the variety of passes we need. This is because Green/Jabari/Sengun are radically different scorers. You REALLY need a PG who knows how to hit everyone where they like when they like. That means PnR, corner 3's, passing into the post, lobs, everything. Our core has a very diverse skillset with little overlap. If our PG is no good at passing into the post for example, we'd be screwing Sengun. Getting some shooters off the bench is fine but the starting line up has fundamental role deficiencies. We need that floor general who has a diverse skillset and an ego-less team mentality because he's 4th option at best. A guy who likes to lull the defender to sleep might be skilled but that would be catastrophic for our core. That's THREE guys waiting around for the ball, getting it late while the defense sets. Even if you're open, late in the shot clock is not the same as early in the shot clock. That's a fact. So with or without shooters, we need that floor general to give this core a chance. I think it's a mistake to base next season on what happened last season. The data is so flawed, we literally never had a player good at passing to the post so we actually haven't seen Sengun's potential. We haven't had a guy who sets up the offense within a few seconds on a spaced floor, so we haven't seen Green's potential. We didn't have a guy who's good at hitting corner 3pt shooters and keep feeding them to keep their confidence high, so we haven't seen Jabari's full potential. It's time to take these things seriously. We need a floor general. Improving the shooting and finishing around our current PG's would improve the situation, but it's a band aid rather than a solution. We will always need a good floor general with this core. Floor generals are as much about setting up the offense as they are about managing the confidence of the players around them, ensuring they are mentally connected with the team. This is such an exciting time for us and this core really deserves a mature, intelligent PG. It's going to make a huge difference in efficiency and motivation that really can't be quantified by looking at last season's muffled stats.
A floor general is meaningless if all of his hard work in "setting others up" results in a bricked shot - this applies directly to Jabari Smith who was horrible in wide open shooting. To ignore that fundamental flaw with this team and then instead expect a different outcome because of WHO is making the passes is interesting to say the least. I agree this team needs more 3&D players though as those will be the type of players that extract the most from the current roster and each individual skill set on the team even with the existing point guards. Im fine with Amen Thompson if only for his transition aspect and if you could promise me he wouldnt be out there glory hunting and forgetting that this team has already invested a ton into guys drafted before him. Sengun gets fed as much as you can expect for a post player on a team that has up to now never employed that philosophy. Sengun should more than likely initiate MORE offense via the high post next year which means you dont need a "floor general" that would end up being a highly drafted decoy or corner shooter in this scenario especially if said prospect is not good at shooting the ball. I think the problems with this team are way deeper than just poor point guard play.
Under no circumstance should KPj be playing PG for a team trying to win. If Ime decides to go in this direction I guess we have to trust him but we've all seen KPj trying to run the point for a few years now. Might as well just have Green do it. (I dont want either to do it). KPj off the bench with Amen is actually fun sounding and a place where he can actually thrive. Our second unit would actually be serviceable and be what Silas was trying to do last year but unable because he didn't have anyone like Amen on the team.
What system are the Rockets going to be running that's materially different from what they ran last year? My guess is it's going to look very similar and have a similar distribution of playtypes, if you don't change the personnel. Mabye they'll play with more pace like they did in 21-22. Other than that I don't see any change incoming absent new players.
https://sports.yahoo.com/portland-i...-holds-interest-in-bam-adebayo-145358329.html One of the more interesting names on the trade market is Memphis point guard Tyus Jones. The Duke product has emerged as one of, if not the top reserve floor generals in the league, providing the Grizzlies with starter-level production whenever Memphis All-Star Ja Morant has been unavailable during their shared Grizzlies tenure. Jones could prove to be a valuable piece for Memphis after Morant was handed a 25-game suspension for what the NBA labeled conduct detrimental to the league. The Grizzlies, however, are exploring trade opportunities to help Jones land a full-time starting position elsewhere, league sources told Yahoo Sports, while Memphis has prioritized upgrading the team’s wing depth. Small forward Dillon Brooks is expected to sign elsewhere in free agency, where Houston continues to be the destination most often mentioned for Brooks by league personnel.
We have to agree to disagree here. I think you are not taking a few things into consideration: - The word "General" in floor general is very important. It implies a person who has the ability to command respect, uphold hierarchy and execute the best possible play (open, early in the shot clock) rather than just an acceptable play (open, late in the shot clock). - The game is as much psychological as it is physical. Confidence matters, we saw this with Jabari to end the season. By your reasoning, there is no logic for why someone would make contested shots better than uncontested shots (vs league average), but that actually happened. Your PG telling you to take the shot and not throwing his hands up when you miss matters A LOT. Confidence is a big deal. - Rhythm: you'll hear shooters talk about this all the time. Rhythm matters a lot. The way the pass arrives matters A LOT (this is why Westbrook's passing doesn't lead to improved shooting for his teammates). Getting force fed the ball when you're hot is important. Speed and spin on the ball matters. We did not have this at all. A PG's time on the ball being high is poison to the team's rhythm. Have a look at Russell Westbrook and Stephon Marbury's careers to understand how getting an assist doesn't necessarily mean you're a good passer. The more important bottom line here is: the organization has placed their faith in the core and have said so over and over again even when interviewers have steered away from it. The team does not believe Jabari, Sengun or Green are what they were last season but they do believe that we need a vet PG. It's a clear indication of what they are thinking. Everyone knows Jabari is not really the shooter he was last season, but I can see you're in the minority in thinking that it's possible we'll see a repeat of that. Everyone knows Green is going to finish a lot easier at the rim with improved spacing, which will make defenders sag off, which will open up his 3pt shooting too. Everyone knows Sengun is going to be used more and can still receive better post entry passes. Everyone in the organization is confident about this and you should see this as good news.
I really hope they can add Reaves or Vincent. Pritchard already knows the system and that is very underrated.
Did you consider TyTy Washington to be a "floor general" in last years draft? Have you seen enough to confidently say that his abilities are not what this team needs? You're making assumptions into what I posted among some other things. I've said Smith is a good shooter when he gets brought up, but If he repeats on his performance from last year then BUST will clearly be a topic of discussion and his subpar play had nothing to do with anyone other than himself. Not sure why he gets a pass for missing wide open shots? Those are supposed to be automatic from him and most any other professional basketball player. I dont believe that a better passing acumen is going to help that - its a case specific issue for most players here that just snowballed and manifested as a team wide flaw. Im focusing SOLELY on missed wide open shots as defined by the NBA since you dont need Magic Johnson to create those. Sengun also needs to show up to camp with an emphasis on incorporating an outside shot and Jalen needs to be more efficient. If this team were just an average shooting team last season it would have influenced more positive outcomes. I'll defer to whatever path Udoka feels is best, but I do believe that you dont need traditional roles to win big games anymore. Combo guards can get it done.
