This offense is straight offensive

In the end, this team just doesn't have enough players who are naturally gifted at offense. Sengun is such a guy, but currently more suited to be a #2 on a good offense. FVV even during his prime was a #3 behind Siakam and Kawhi in Toronto. And he's unfortunately a step below that now. Jalen has been hailed as that guy for years now, but he can reach that level in maybe 1/3 of the games. Everyone else, Amen, Reed, Tari, Jabari, Brooks are lower-usage players on offense right now.

It saddens me to say this, because I was always a big Harden supporter, yet thought FVV was the better-for-this-team signing two years ago. But in retrospect Harden would've actually helped make this team, if not a contender, at least more of a threat in the playoffs by having someone defenses actually fear.

 

I agree with you accept about Harden. His mentality doesn’t fit this team. Now someone like Kyrie would have been nice over FVV.

 

This team's offense is ass because of the roster construction.

I feel like Stone has one guy/team that picks the lower FRPs and he himself picks the lotto picks.

Unfortunately Stone seems to just rely on ESPN mock drafts for lotto picks because there's no way there is such a huge variance on the guys we pick in the later 1st round being so much better than the actual lotto picks.

Jalen, Jabari, Reed all have not looked the part (of a franchise player) and Amen has huge weaknesses still that will take years to develop.

If it wasn't for Sengun, this rebuild would have essentially have been labeled a failure already. And even with Sengun, he's not guaranteed to be a future top 10 player.

Our offense in year 5 of this rebuild is still relying on vets FVV and Dillon Brooks to have above average shooting nights. Both of these guys are supposed to be gone by end of this year contract wise (obviously Brooks ended up getting a longer contract), which means Stone originally intended for our guys to be developed enough to take over. Clearly that is not the case right now.

Even in the game vs an injured OKC, we had to rely on FVV and Brooks to go prime Curry and Klay to save us.

This team is in a dire need of a trade for a young all-star level offensive player to carry the load.

Also, the way Ime runs this team is not sustainable. Yes you can achieve playoff intensity defense for a stretch of games but players get burned out since it's a long ass season so your offense can't be complete **** when that happens. And **** Tilman for saying we have the deepest roster in the league, dude must not watch the Celtics, Cavs or Thunder. All those teams have a deep roster if not deeper than ours but with none of the offensive problems that we struggle with.

 

Honestly he looks fine in Clippers with even a worse supporting cast. And not like Kyrie was any less of a headcase. Regardless whether it's Harden or someone else, the Rockets need a real playmaker. Not caretaker like FVV but someone who can make defenses sweat. Otherwise I don't see this offense being better than average at best.

 

A lot of this team's offense is predicated on Tari/Amen running after a rebound/steal/block.

 

We are last in assist rate and assist ratio. There are teams with similar TS% as us averaging significantly higher assist rate. There are teams with similar offensive rating that average more assists than us. We have the 6th lowest turnover % in the league, it should not be hard to have an average assist to turnover ratio.

Ime came in here preaching unselfishness. You and I know that this group of 6 core player on average is very unselfish, coachable and hardworking. Brooks and FVV are supposed to be here to teach those values too.

A bunch of y'all keep defending an offense that is one of the worst in the entire NBA at TS%, Assist Rate, FG% and 3PT%. Don't BS me about players not making shots because we are also 6th worst in potential assists (43 potential assists). That's only 2 assists higher than Silas final season (41). It's worse than the Detroit Pistons this season.

You're being disingenuous if you insist that this roster's offensive talent is maximized at these numbers. Flat out: there are less talented offensive teams averaging better offensive numbers than us. High offensive rating with a low TS% will have no effect whatsoever on improving spacing. They're not going to guard you closer just because you're elite at rebounding. They'e going to guard you closer when you're not one of the worst shot making teams in the entire NBA. There's no more rebounds we can grab since we've maxed out, so what do you suggest we do between now and the summer with this team?

Players saving his ass with rebounding and you guys dare give HIM credit for rebounds, the most effort stat of all effort stats, and the one that requires the least amount of tactical coaching.

The iceberg is here now. I've been warning you about it for a while. Let's not sail straight into it. There's always a "we're doomed, nothing will work" guy on the ship, but the captain of the ship cannot be that guy.

Do something. Do anything different. Hell bench Jalen Green if you think that's what this is about. Bench him. Just try it. I think you'll look stupid very quickly doing that, but I will at least respect you for trying something.

 

That is why I do think they are pretenders because usually you would need a better structured system to contend.

But somehow they made it work.....which is miraculous itself but injuries happen......

 

Harden would be a more creative stop gap than FVV but a stop gap all the same.....

Find the next Harden.....Morey would have said.

Harden's supporting cast ball watches too much, you would need the 2nd hub and off the ball movers.

 

In a nutshell, a B Minus....because there are some good pieces.....just not good enough to contend.

And Stone is not really a trader kind of GM, just a contract guy.

The most creative guy is the Euro guy who was taken 16th, not closely enough.

 

You are vastly underrating Sengun's value to our team. Sengun is better than you may believe. Out of all qualified centers this year he is top tier.


Ranked #7 in PER

PER: Player Efficiency Rating is the overall rating of a player's per-minute statistical production. The league average is 15.00 every season.

Ranked #2 in VA

VA: Value Added - the estimated number of points a player adds to a team’s season total above what a 'replacement player' (for instance, the 12th man on the roster) would produce. Value Added = ([Minutes * (PER - PRL)] / 67). PRL (Position Replacement Level) = 11.5 for power forwards, 11.0 for point guards, 10.6 for centers, 10.5 for shooting guards and small forwards

Ranked #2 in EWA

EWA: Estimated Wins Added - Value Added divided by 30, giving the estimated number of wins a player adds to a team’s season total above what a 'replacement player' would produce.


https://insider.espn.com/nba/hollinger/statistics/_/position/c/sort/VORP

 

The biggest problem with the offense is we don't have players that can consistently punish poor closeouts. The majority of that is caused by poor shooting so the defenders don't close out aggressively but even when they do most of our guys don't have the right combination of handles, size, and finishing ability to make a play. It reminds me of when people would run PJ Tucker off the 3pt line, he was just lost. We need guys that can make a play when their teammates are doubled.

Some of the historically great bigs like Jokic may finish better over double teams but a lot of that is related to size and I don't think there's much Sengun can do about it.

The FO is going to have to take a chance on some young scorers that are average/mediocre defensively and Ime will have to work to improve them.

We really could have benefitted from Reed lighting it up in his minutes...

 

Reed unfortunately is not looking to shoot at the moment

 

I think our offensive futility is a combination of the wrong mix of players and a coach that does not or cannot adjust to his players skillset. Boston had a 114.5 offensive rating in Udoka's 2021/22 season.They had a 118 rating in 2022/2023 the following year. So wth superior talent Ime did an ok job. His successor improved their offensive numbers by 4 points a game which is significant. With better personnel Ime could probably coach us to an average offense. Is that good enough?

 

That's a really creative way to trash a general manager who has done an amazing job. Just make stuff up so that you can take credit away from him for the positives while blaming him for the negatives. Reminds me of modern politics.

Out of curiosity, which GM are you going to point me to that veers radically away from the mock drafts in the lottery? At this point, most of those are compiled by people who are pretty damn good at it. And the top guys are all literally talking to NBA execs about what their boards look like. It's not surprising that they're not far off from how it actually goes.

We have 7 young guys on this team that a whole lot of teams would love to have. And he did that in 3 years. And don't kid yourself, even a guy like Jalen Green has shown enough in stretches that there is a team or two out there thinking "He could play like that all of the time if only he were in the right system."

Stone has done an incredible job. And believe me, I was skeptical. I thought Patrick Fertitta would be the new James Dolan. But here we are. We have our deficiencies, but the turn around has just been absolutely incredible. And I still think the superstar that can turn things around might already be on the roster, but if he's not we're in a great position to go get him.

Again, y'all just wild with the ways you find ways to be unhappy.

 

I think we can just get a talented lead assistant or an elite bball IQ playmaker, same as we did with MDA/Bzdelik or like Lebron/Lue. Can be successfully delegated.

I agree with you that at this moment Ime is one of the worst offensive coaches in the NBA and is using his players athleticism on the boards to cover his ass and they will fatigue sooner than any other team in the league because of it.

However, I've noticed that there's a new phenomenon in coaching where coaches develop too. Never used to happen. Suddenly Mike Brown and Thibs are leading elite offenses despite not having elite second scorers. I think Ime will fall in this category.

I believe in Ime to become an elite coach.

 

One of the issues I have seen with this offense is not only the spacing in the sets they run as I have talked about on here but because their players simply are not finding shooters on the perimeter. They aren’t naturally good passers or aware as if they have blinders on.

Take the Boston game. Jalen came off high screens from Sengun. But just as how most teams play the Rockets they drop the big then their zone wing or corner defenders converge on the dribble drive. Jalen had to get thru the dropped big but he always had other defenders in the vicinity as well. Multiple times he had shooters in the strong side corner or wing and also weak side wing. But he was dead set on trying to score. But instead of being aggressive and driving to the center of the paint to make contact with the option of passing to corners or wings as D collapses he often goes to the sides the either misses, gets blocked, or pass out.

Sengun has the same issue when getting the ball in high or mid post when he makes his dribble drive move the wing collapses on him. He had several shooters open in weak side corner or wing but missed them in several sets.

FVV doesn’t make cross court passes to the corner or wings when open. That’s why SGA or Luka are so good and why their teams shoot well. They find these shooters. Rockets simply don’t have the personnel.

And we already know Cam’s issues going 1 on 4.

I wish i had video to show yall but screen capture apps don’t work with NBA.Com. It’s a personnel issue and I hope Amen or another PG that comes in can fulfill this role. But it’s also a team philiosophy situational thing as that’s on coaching. But coaching can only go so far since players can’t simply execute these passes.

 

I don’t put too much stock into Mazzula. He inherited a team Udoka built and added shooting. Remember that 22-23 team added Brogdan. They also added Muscala in the second half. And they got Derrick White for a full year. Udoka only had him half a year in that Spurs trade. Plus guys like Hauser became a sharp shooter and had a bigger role. He basically played the same style with Heavy isos with Brown and Tatum and surrounded them with shooters.

As I mentioned above the Rockets personnel just don’t pass or aren’t good passers. But their spacing is weird too for some reason so that’s on the coach. And a big part of their struggles is how defense play a combo 3-2 or switch zone on us.