I like it. https://www.theringer.com/2025/09/2...pson-houston-rockets-fred-vanvleet-injury-acl And then, of course, there’s Sengun, still only 23 years old, who in my opinion is the most primed to make a facilitator leap and the safest bet here. He’s fresh off an All-Star season and a banger of a performance for Turkey in EuroBasket, where he functioned in this exact role as an offensive hub. I’d go so far as to say that he was Houston’s best manipulative passer even before the VanVleet injury. Durant’s addition and more minutes for Sheppard could also upgrade Houston’s spatial threats and have an effect on the types of help that teams are comfortable throwing at Sengun. In single coverage, he’s an effective enough scorer to force defenses to send other looks. Alpy will certainly need to make some progress on how quickly he sees and anticipates that help. He has had a tendency to stick on the ball for a beat too long—but it’s also fair to note that defenders didn’t always respect Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green, perhaps (just speculating here) mirroring Sengun’s own lack of trust in them at times. His teammates converted only 30.1 percent of their looks from 3 when Sengun passed out of hard double-teams.
Amen getting more ball time is silver lining #1, silver lining #2 hopefully will be Ime realising that he needs to get out of his comfort zone on offense and let the Senhub commence. It's another one of those "just let the people with more offensive capability than you do their ****, coach" situations that I hope we'll see with Durant this season where I'm going to be super disappointed if we just run that same trash ass Ime style "offense" with that much talent on the squad. Silas was absolutely unadulterated trash, but he did let Alpi at least have the reigns to break out the sauce with a flashy bit of playmaking, time for Ime to learn to do the same.
