He's a very good player, he just isn't fitting all that well given our other roster constraints. He might work as the #2 option on a team with a lot of shooting and playing next to a Mobley, Holmgren, JJJ type of PF/C who can protect the rim for him and just let him focus on rebounding and offense.
Alpi drops a triple-double on 84.2% shooting (81.2 TS%, 86.8 EFG%) next to Durant's 40 and Rockets fans are still in the comments performing autopsy on his defense. Meanwhile, Reed went 5/17 with a -22.7 net rating and 64.8% opponent EFG%. Jabari Smith put up 6 points on 2/10 shooting in 34 minutes. The entire bench produced 9 points, 4 assists, 2 steals, 1 block. The team went 11/41 from three. The roster recorded 0 charges drawn, 0 offensive loose balls recovered, and 12 total deflections as a team. Good luck winning any game with that. But sure, Alpi's defense is the reason Rockets lost. Your guy ran the half-court offense with 8 screen assists, a 40% assist rate, a 5.0 AST/TO ratio, 13 rebounds, and only 2 turnovers on 22.8% usage. If he also played defense good enough to satisfy the scapegoat committee on top of that, congrats, you've a top-5 player in the league, and you still probably barely won. Defense is a collective hustle and effort. When almost every rotation player allowed above 60% opponent EFG% and the team generated zero charges and zero loose ball recoveries on offense, the problem can't be one guy who gave you 33 on 19 shots. Spend more brain power asking why the rest of the roster can't cover his gaps on the other end in such a offensive dominant game.
And that’s more of a rare game from senguin: his TS% is abysmal for a center when you factor most of his shots are within 5 FT. He can’t hit his FTs. He forces the point guard issue and often turns it over speaking of for a center, that’s one of the positions you can’t be a bad defender..of which he’s the worst. Can’t guard his man and provides little to no help defense even.
I would rather give Sengun another shot at improving this offseason (and have Amen get consistent with corner and straight away 3s) and get Dickerson off the team. But we're going to need to attach picks or players to get him off. Reed should improve with another offseason of training. Amen as well. I dont mind running it back with FVV but you cannot under any circumstance leave the tumor in the body. I just want this season to end which is crazy to say.
none of those metrics matter. Im not talking about individual performances in one game or this game per se. I am talking about overall performance and fit with this current roster. This has been talked about quite a bit from fans. I also didn’t say anything about other players not having deficiencies. The topic of discussion between me and the other fan was about how this team plays offense and the deficiencies with the different combinations of players including Sengun who has been a poor defender this year and unable to stretch the floor while being used as a main offensive hub alongside Durant.
Disagree, that would be the worst case scenario he shot 60% from 3 last game, he would regress to the mean in both scenarios . The only reason I’m not being super hard on him is he isn’t doing the timid BS
We sorely missed Adams man. When he went down, it’s like one of our legs got cutoff literally and figuratively.
He’s still doing dumbshiit from time to time like his TOs and reaching fouls, but it seems like he’s not the only one on this team.
He reminds me of Markkanen in terms of poor defense and a little undersized. He has always been paired with more physical or bigger players including Kessler or Nurkic to hide his defense. Only difference is Markkanen is Z stretch 4. Again his shooting limitations makes it difficult to play him in this era of basketball.
he didn't need to take 14 3's fam. he could have focused on facilitating and/or pump fake into the mid-range. especially when both KD and Alperen were on absolute fire.
Depending on an oft injured center was a roster construction issue. He is also the reason we had to roster Capella. He is great as a 15-20 min backup center, but if your season depends on Adams you are not in the conversation as a contender. Same as depending on one of the 5 worst PG’s in the league. We are going to waste another year after this one on the old guys, before having to do another mini re-build starting in 27. If they gut our young core and picks for Giannis, I will have to weigh my Rocket fandom of 40 years.
There were a bunch of technical issues with the streaming platform last night so Ben and I are going to go live at 10:30am today instead to discuss the game. Knock on wood, everything will work.
There has to be more to why Houston is the Houston it is now beyond the "Alpi sucks on defense and therefore we suck" narrative, innit. Unfortunately you have to live with these poor defensive positions from Alpi and have to find ways to compensate for them when there is no other second offensive gravity player on the current roster. Let's zoom out quickly. Beyond this game, Alpi is actually quite low in TS% all year long given it's a center position. That is caused by his mediocre FT shooting and being pushed finishing with almost forced positions. (also caused by his lack of having reliable shooting outside of the rim) Unlike many other centers, Alpi can't get easy layups or other creators making possessions for him. Once in every 3 games Reed manages to play PnR with him. The actual standard play is Houston gets to the half court, whoever has the ball, if they don't have a position advantage they look for Alpi and pass it to him. Alpi pushes his ass back, looks for Durant coming out of a screen. If the opponent is stuck to Alpi's ass or decides to stay in double team on Durant, Alpi drives inside, Durant passes the ball to him, and that's Alpi's only easy points. Unfortunately Durant chokes half of these passes too. So what do you have? Durant iso, since he can score anywhere on anyone unless hardcore double teams come at him, but that leads to full stagnation of the team and Houston still loses or gonna lose in playoffs only with that. Second, Jabari is near the box, give him the ball and he will shoot with mostly near zero passing ability and vision in that position, or if he is hot he will come and put up threes. Third, pass the ball to Alpi, opponent double teams, Alpi passes to a cutting Amen or outside to Reed, and Houston lives and dies with these percentages. If Reed, Tari, or Jabari hit, Houston will likely win. That's all. Extremelyyy predictable, very little creativity. And unfortunately your best creative player is Alpi on this current roster. Meanwhile, his passing IQ is very good, but actually his pass quality as in the pass landing on the shooter is pretty mediocre this year, which leads to worse shots from three pointers. Houston has a dilemma here. Alpi is not the player Ime envisions for his ideal gameplay, but at the same time he is forced to play through Alpi. Whenever Alpi sucks defensively with mediocre offensive performance, he is benched or targeted in press conferences. There are many nights Alpi ends up with the fourth most minutes on the team, which indicates exactly that. Yeti Ime is forced to play Sengun partially due to this lack of creativity all around, only compensated by playing Adams at the 5 bringing that physicality to the center position on both ends meanwhile leaving Alpi to guard the weakest offensive player of the opponent as much as possible. This worked until Adams got injured and also the negative secondary effects of that strategy got exposed. But eventually this dilemma creates choices to be made. Either you have to double down on the senhub strategy, give that signal very clearly to him and suck up the bad plays from Alpi and forget the over-accountability punishment toward him, which is exactly how Alpi is used on the national team. Alpi unlocks extra flair when that confidence is given to him, ofc making you sometimes lose games with that over confidence. Or double down on the Durant's timeline by using Alpi as an asset to trade while he is having top-20 player value at the moment. All this indecisiveness and lack of Fred is making Amen's actual role and defensive dominance far from ideal too while Amen is a much better player this year and putting up high scoring numbers. Yet it's a shame he is not near the best defensive player convos anymore unlike his twin, similarly with the twin terrors era impact also being passed due to a general crash in confidence, team harmony, and belief in the coaching and play.
Some people didn't want FVV and Adams. FVV and Adams are out with injury, giving those people what they wanted. The Rockets ended up not as good as their narrative suggested, and FVV and Adams are still blamed when the Rockets lose. Excuses are made that FVV and Adams would not be good enough to make the players that they want to play (who obviously aren't ready to be contenders by themselves) contenders.
If Sengun got a shot, he would still be a difficult fit, because he is not a 4 as much as people want to pretend he could be. He can’t guard PF’s and he is not a rim protector. Even with a better rim protector at the 4, it would be difficult to hide Sengun on defense. I think he has great potential as an offensive player, but his all-around game will keep him from being a top player for all that pay attention to both sides of the floor. It is very difficult to be a serious contender with poor interior defense. That being said, I wouldn’t trade him for a paltry return. GSW is the only team, I can think of that won without a rim protector and they did have a big that was a perennial DPOY candidate and, maybe, the best coach in the game.
Yeah Draymond plays 5 in those Hampton lineups and Looney, Speights, Bogut etc were good enough to rebound and provide size in the paint. I agree and have always said Sengun is an odd player. A little undersized in terms of weight and wing span and slower than the typical 4. Jokic despite being a poor defender most of his career is bigger, longer wingspan and his offense is too good. I have said it for years that Sengun is one of the main if not the singular reason why this team struggles and why they play the way they play
