Warning for the reading-challenged: it's a long post. Offensively, the Rockets have a major identity crisis going on. There's no chance that this will improve with experience. We have to thank Ime for the work he's done on the defense and ask him to now tend to the offense. Our rotation is almost 50-50 split between two types of players that just don't fit together. Kind of like if you had someone like Steve Nash who dominates in high pace playing with Shaq who dominates in low pace. What made Nash great was attacking early and fast with the full force of the starting lineup. What made Shaq great was playing slow, careful and getting the ball in the post. The team would struggle to have an Identity and you would have to turn Nash into a one dimensional shooter. Shaq just needs a safe PG. Nash needs athletes, track stars. Can you win with Shaq and Nash? Of course. Are you getting the most out of them? Absolutely not. There's too much friction. We need to reduce friction. SLOW IT DOWN GUYS: Sengun FVV Brooks Adams SPEED IT UP GUYS: Amen Tari Green Whitmore Landale Uncle Jeff I'M NOT SURE: Jabari Sheppard Tate To be honest I was close to putting Sengun in the "I'm not sure" camp. Passing big men typically perform well in high octane offense. I wonder if in such an offense we would see a decline in Sengun's points get offset by a significant increase in assists. We're always trying to make the fast players slow down and that's wasting a ton of athleticism. OTOH if we play fast, Brooks and FVV get marginalized while Sengun has to give up some post scoring. What is our future though? Do we want to cater to the old guys or the young guys? The fast guys can learn to play slower gradually and while their jumpers improve. The slow guys will never get faster though. This starting lineup has failed so badly: Sengun Brooks Amen Green FVV This halfcourt starting lineup has been spectacular but doesn't incorporate Amen: Sengun Jabari Brooks Green FVV I really don't want to discover this problem in the middle of the season but with Amen hopefully becoming a more prominent part of the offense, we're going to have to address the elephant in the room. It feels like we're going to need to choose a direction if we want to be a cohesive team like the Celtics, Thunder or Pacers. Synergy is the key here. Which direction do you prefer?
Whatever it was, it was good enough to land the no 2 seed. I'm a big fan of a balance team. I think the Celtics and Thunder are probably considered balanced. But I haven't really studied them.
IMO even though it’s not the exact same situation, holding on Fred is like OKC holding onto CP3 and prioritizing him because he took them to the playoffs. They traded him to the Suns and let Shai develop for 4 years. If Fred comes back he needs a reduced. Very reduced role
I understand the sentiment, but to be successful you have to be able to do both. The game slows down in the playoffs and you need to be able to execute in the half court. Hypothetically with a different roster perhaps someone like Jalen would perform better with less defensive attention in the GSW series and perhaps speeding it up. But in the reality, FVV and Sengun had the better series on our team, and a guy like Amen succeeded as well. As always, this team is very young, so patience is difficult for fans that may want to 'fix' a problem with major changes, when development over seasons will show significant improvement as we've seen the past two seasons.
You're reading the pace backwards, the Pacers are one of the fastest teams in the league, the lower numbers are the slower teams. How could you possibly look at that list, see New York above the Pacers by miles and conclude those were the faster teams? lol
You don't actually. Are you not watching the playoffs? The entire series between NY and Indiana was literally a war of pace and who could utilise their style. It was all any of the announcers and pundits spoke about "if Indiana score x amount then NY lose, they have to slow the pace down" because it's all actually about playing into your style and being able to execute that by imposing your will upon the game and controlling it more than the other team. That's why style clashes exist, and the kicker is actually that no style is superior, just the team which executes their style better will win.
I mean, do you watch the full playoffs or past finals? But we can agree to disagree, but you do still need to do both. Nash never won a championship with the seven seconds or less offense. There can be exceptions by typically the game always slows down in the playoffs and you need to be able to execute half court offense. The playoff pace has slowed down from the regular season from 98.8 possessions to 95, even OKC and Indiana have slowed down a possession. Boston won last year at 20th pace in the league, 11th in the playoffs. New York is mediocre defensively and Indiana was 34-14 since January or a 70% win team, so they evolved from the regular season to now. They also have Haliburton hitting all time clutch shots to win, so there aren't decisive blowouts based on pace. I'll move on after this as well.
Maaan! I have said this for the LONGEST, our roster is mixed. We need to INDENTIFY who we are going to be moving forward. That's why Indy is in the NBA FINALS now, they traded Sabonis and decided to go with a faster pace lineup.
For me the question is about personnel first, and then game plan around them. We need to choose whose team it is. For me, the answer is obviously Amen. Yes, he has some development still to go through. But this league is very much geared towards jumbo playmaking wings. If you have one that is possibly also the best defender in the NBA... well.... build around that. Amen as alpha with our young bloods of Jalen, Tari, Bari and even Cam running the wings. Yes please. Alpy/ FVV are a package. They work well together, but yes, they reduce our overall pace. Those are the guys I would be happy to move IF a decent return (Players and picks) was available. Otherwise we continue to play slowfast.
I would simply say just put the ball in the basket no matter how you do it. Let the shooters who are in the team now play and let their skills play out. We witnessed in the playoffs that the game mostly slows down due to the intensity on both sides of the floor. The team should play to exploit opportunities to play fast when they can, but slow when they have to. A versatile team with good, reliable shooters will get this team over the hump.
Your team ideally has to be able to do both when you're a 60-win team. However, we can't do any right now. That's not balance. That's the absence of a plan. Just throwing your most expensive players out there. We have to start building one of the two styles. Which one should we get good at first? In general I don't have a preference for either style, I just think we should make a choice based on whichever we have the compatible young players for (I think we have more fast-ready high value prospects). Then we develop the other (slow). Our current starting lineup can't do any of them. We're not balancing, we're sucking at both. The proof of course is that FVV runs the offense and the coach has said out loud that he can't push the ball. He's too slow and has never been that guy. Really only Amen and Green can push the pace. I suspect the coach wants to play slow. If he wants to play slow, we need more shooting in the starting lineup. You can't play slow and have 2 non-shooters against set defenses. I genuinely think we're in no man's land right now. No visible plan, no strategy, no identity. I'm ok with either but whatever we pick we have to commit to it. Starting lineup can go slow with more shooting, bench unit can go fast with less shooting. That's at least an Identity and we'd be working on learning both. Don't you think?
I don't agree with this at all. The game doesn't just slow down. The better team slows it down or speeds it up. Of course there's more defense being played so overall pace is down, but relative pace is still in play. The Pacers are still the fastest team. Do we want to master forcing a fast pace on other teams or a slow one? We won't be good at it the next day but we definitely can't be the team that's inviting the opponent's pace and taking whatever poor shot they leave us to take. Good teams impose their will and get some of what they want.
As I pointed out, a versatile team is better than choosing either, or. Even the Showtime Lakers did not play fast all the time despite Magic and his superior athletes who could fly. The team should play fast when the opportunity presents itself but it should also play depending on what the defense gives it. The only teams I know that could impose their will on their opponents regularly were the MJ Bulls, the Bird Celtics, and the Magic Lakers. Even the champion Warriors could not run all the time but had to take what the defense gave them.
A great offensive coach like Carlisle knows that synergy can generate more production than the sum of parts. There casual fan says MDA inflates your offensive numbers. That's just getting more out of your team. Against the Warriors we should have ran them out of the gym. I believe it was a huge strategic mistake. They have the star on an old team with no depth. We're the young team with great depth, very unselfish. We need transition. We need to leverage our athleticism. We need to attack defenders on their heels. Without a 30ppg scorer and lacking shooters, I don't get why we don't take advantage of our few strengths. You have to learn to play fast and slow - why start with the one that suits FVV/Brooks rather than the one that suits most of the young core?
Apologies but this is simply false. It's common knowledge you can see it in any series throughout NBA history, teams impose their preferred pace. If you're dead set on that I respectfully withdraw from discussing. The coach has chosen to play slow and we try to slow people's pace down. Why not start fast instead? These are options. Of course it would be amazing to be amazing at both but reality is we have to start somewhere. We are not good at any. The starting lineup cannot excel at either one. Playing slow requires strong players with great handles and great jumpers. We're a couple of years away from getting that from our young core. We have to do something in the meantime that takes advantage of our strengths. No one stops us from pushing hard in transition.
I'll make additional responses later on as well, as I need to focus time on other priorities right now. But for the sake of the discussion, I'll reference this and other data later. The game is truly different in the postseason historically and now, and you need to be able to execute in the half court and have versatility. "Because the playoff schedule is spread out with days off between every game, players get more rest and coaching staffs more preparation time. Teams can build game plans to expose opponents’ weaknesses and hide their own, a luxury not afforded by the frantic regular season calendar. If a player’s go-to moves on offense are scouted and taken away, they may not have sufficient counters. If a player can’t defend a certain action, they might get played off the floor and subbed out for a teammate who can. In the postseason, the style of the game is distinct, too, in measurable ways. Here are a few examples. NBA PLAYOFF GAMES REALLY ARE DIFFERENT, DATA SHOWS 1. Pace Slows In all but two seasons since 1980, there were fewer possessions per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. In 2024, for example, teams had 98.5 offensive possessions per game in the regular season and only 92.6 in the postseason, one of the largest disparities in league history. Increased focus and effort limit opponents’ fastbreak opportunities, and tighter half-court defense leads to more drawn-out possessions. As the postseason goes on, the intensity ramps up further, slowing down the game even more. Seventeen of the past 20 NBA Finals have been played at a slower pace than the rest of the playoffs. 2. Teams Shoot More 3s Stingier playoff defense makes it more difficult for teams to generate open shots close to the basket. Indeed, paint touches have consistently declined in the postseason throughout the player tracking era since 2014. As a result, teams settle for more long jumpers. In all but two years since the 1980 inception of the 3-point line, a higher percentage of shots were taken from 3-point range in the playoffs than in the regular season. The past few seasons, however, this trend has become much less pronounced. 3. Teams Make Fewer 3s Teams choose to live and die by the 3-pointer in the playoffs, but shooting percentages go down when the pressure is higher. Of the 224 playoff squads since 2010, excluding those in the 2020 playoff bubble, nearly three-quarters (72%) shot worse from behind the 3-point line during the postseason than the regular season. 4. More Isolation Offense As robust defenses shut down the plays teams have used throughout the season, superstars must rely on individual brilliance. Teams have relied more on isolation offense in every postseason since 2016. Relatedly, there are fewer passes and fewer assists during the playoffs. 5. More Fouls The aggressive postseason defense that limits transition opportunities and shots around the basket while forcing teams out of their offensive sets does come at a cost: more fouls. The notion that the refs “let ‘em play” in the playoffs hasn’t historically been true. The percentage of 2-point shots that yield free throws was higher in the postseason than the regular season in 19 of the first 22 years this century, per PBP Stats. Notably, the past two years were exceptions. In the 2022-23 regular season, the foul rate on shot attempts inside the arc skyrocketed, as refs gave offensive players more leeway to initiate contact and “draw” fouls. In the 2023 playoffs, though, officials swallowed their whistles more and brought that rate back to normal. Halfway through the 2023-24 regular season, after foul rates reverted to the previous year’s highs, the NBA responded to criticism by allowing more defensive physicality, and that carried over into the 2024 playoffs as well. In the 2024-25 regular season, the foul rate has been much closer to the first half of 2023-24 than the adjusted post-All-Star break norm. We will see how the referees decide to officiate contact in this year’s playoffs, but either way, it will be a whole different ball game from the past six months."
I've always preach the commonsense: two weapons is always better than one weapon, even if the second weapon is not nearly as good as the first. Most good teams have more than one way to beat you. That's how you win in the playoffs.
You need to be able to play in the half court, you don't need to be able to play both fast and slow, and almost no team changes their style to move between 2 opposites. Please though, show me one example of a team who plays like you describe? Boston last year didn't, their style is super consistent and doesn't remotely swap between Knicks slow and Pacers fast, ever. Neither did Denver, or in fact any champion I can remember. What all of those teams DID do, is execute their style better than the other team. I fail to see why you think "you have to play both fast and slow" and "you have to be able to play half court offense" are synonymous with each other, they're not, at all, like remotely.
The question is: if you have no weapons, which one do you develop first? Is there a right answer? Is fast better than slow or vice versa? Obviously not. Champions can be fast, slow or in between. What I'm urging is whatever we do first and whatever our starting lineup wants to push to start a game, it should be based on our young core. We need to stop floating aimlessly. If Amen or whoever is your guy, it's time to build the offense around them. We have to commit. Every lead scorer gets that benefit. I don't get why we have to make it hard for our guys. It's so unusual. Otherwise what's an offensive identity? Everyone has to make shots. There still has to be a strategy and identity.
