6’5 is on the taller end 6’1 Schroder 6’3 Christopher 6’3 Gordon 6’3 Wall 6’4 Green 6’4 Porter Jr 6’4 Nix 6’4 Tate 6’5 Nwaba 6’5 Mathews 6’5 Martin Jr Guys over 6’5 Queen 6’6 Garuba 6’8 Sengun 6’9 Fernando 6’9 Wood 6’9 Only 2 play, almost completely staggered SmAl BaLl iS OvEr, ByE dUrYeL MoRi
Rockets look so desperate to find the next Harden. Guards =/= (doesn't automatically) equate skilled players. Is it not lost on the Rockets that wings/bigs are more skilled now than the 90's. When losing to teams like the Raptors, you hear Silas say "their length bothered us". I wish he said that to Stone.
To be fair, the Raptors length bothers everybody, They have 3 6'9 long-armed quick-handed quick-footed defensive studs who can guard 1-5 Then Gary Trent is like top 5 in the steals this year, Boucher and now Thaddeus off the bench, Birch and Aichuwa. Them boys playing D.
DD, it's the year 2022. Why are you still so insistent on looking solely at height while completely disregarding wingspan like we're in the 1990's? A guy with a 6'9 wingspan and a sturdy build like Christopher plays a lot bigger than his listed height. He's very much like Eric Gordon in that regard. Not only can Christopher play the 2 guard (and that's his listed and natural position btw) but he can also play small forward if needed.
Awesome. WHAT A FREAKING GREAT DRAFT WE HAD. I can’t believe how much people are looking for negatives when there’s so much more talent in our core than there should be after just one season tanking.
Because HEIGHT matters......look at GS, their SMALL ball lineup has guys 6'7" or taller...and one 6'3"..... Small ball only works when your smallish lineup is taller than 6'5".......that is not small ball - you can't rebound at that height unless you are Charles Barkley, you are just too short. Name one.....ONE successful team that is playing small ball with guys as short as ours. We need to call it POSITIONLESS basketball - which requires HEIGHT to be effective. DD
I'm not arguing about small ball here. I'm talking about evaluating what players are capable of on an individual basis. And Josh Christopher, like Eric Gordon, PJ Tucker, etc has the length and strength to play much bigger than his height.
Ok, but you can't have a TEAM of them, you can hide one or so, but overall you need height in other areas to cover things up, like when we had a 6'10" Robert Horry at SF...... We are too short....we need taller players - 13 of our players are 6'5" or shorter....out of 18, and one of the others is Queen at 6'6" in the Gleague....we have exactly 3 bigs. Wood Sengun Fernando That is it......we need skilled bigger players...6'8" or better. DD
That's a bigger discussion for another thread (and a topic I have zero interest in). This thread is about Josh Christopher.
Both you guys are right. Josh is a solid 2/3, who should wind up at 6'5" - 6'6" 225lbs... He'll fill out that frame And, yes, we need to get longer/athletic up front. Across the board, 3 - 5.
How do we deal with the fact that Christopher deserves more minutes at the 2? Are we ready to acknowledge that he’s our best shooting guard prospect? What do we do about this because right now we have like 5 shooting guards getting minutes.
Another long team with good D is the Clippers. They have a Zubac but their guards and wings are still long and switchable. It's a copycat league, ppl used to copy Morey on the analytics and 3-ball ... that was a decade ago. I wished Stones looked at Ujiri's blueprint or the clippers. It's like the Rockets stopped innovating (or at least kept pace). Teams don't have to play tall / long 100% time but when other teams bust out their big lineup, we're so rigid that we don't have many ways to deal with it. Stone uses words like optionality, but apparently not doesn't apply to lineups.
