He said he did not like the "fancy passes". The team is still very young with the Alpi, Amen, Reed core all still 2-4 years from their primes. If the team fires Ime and brings in a coach that would embrace Senhub, like Mike Malone, this team will take off when they hit their prime and challenge OKC. Plus KD, who was a huge mistake and a chemistry killer, should be gone by then(hopefully this offseason).
You only watch one side of the ball. Amen also had 22 by the way. They did need Reed and Jabari to hit their 3’s, but the defense and rebounding was pathetic, especially Sengun’s. Reed could go full Stockton and this team would still be 2nd tier with this coach and this roster. We will be even worse when Reed goes back to 20 mins off the bench next year when FVV is back.
Agree with all of this except next season Reed will not come off the bench with Fred as the starter. Reed will improve and Fred will not live up to the idea of Fred. In fact, everything about Fred will be worse than before.
Man, come on....don't be that guy..., Amen was great, but we needed to hit 3s... If you haven't noticed teams like the Bulls play that 3 is greater than 2 game, and unless we hit a decent percentage of 3s we are going to struggle to keep up. Both Alpi, KD and Amen had high percentage 2pt shots....and we STILL LOST THE GAME...... 3s are more important than 2s........we need more 3pt shooters.......you can't win a ring in the NBA with a 2pt oriented team, mathematically they can't keep up. I am sure you noticed we caught up when we hit a few 3s, then we couldn't finish the job because while they made 3s we did not. DD
This drives me crazy because I feel like this proves you aren't paying attention to the games, DD. You have homework to do - I'm serious. Others stepping up would have helped the final outcome but Houston had this game at the end and Sengun alone is the reason why we lost. Go watch the last 4 minutes of the game - don't follow the ball, watch where Sengun is, watch what he is doing, watch where he is pointing and where his teammates are pointing as they communicate on the court. He was personally involved with giving up at least 13 points in the last 2 minutes because he was either unable to guard relatively average players on the perimeter(5 pts) or he was just plain slow to get back into a defensive position(8 pts) - in a game we lost by 8 points. Copy pasting something I dropped in the game thread but: Here is what I saw from Sengun in the last 4 minutes - bad pass out of bounds (TO) - 3:42 (Bulls made 2 FTs on the next trip so this turned into Bulls points) - bad lob pass to Amen (TO) - 3:19 (we got the ball back on this possession from a TO - Alpi was there but it looked like Sexton just dribbled it out of bounds) - Sengun nasty And One dunk - 2:59 - misses FT!!!!! - 2:59 - he let his man get an easy dunk(linked above) - 2:37 - good assist but Amen is fouled - 1:40 - he tried to run out on a Giddey 3p attempt that he missed and Houston didn’t get the rebound so Sengun slowly trotted back while Giddey hit the wide open 3 in a must win game - 1:21 - then he was the last man back while his man was under our hoop(you can see him pointing it out as the ball is flying into Jalen Smith's hands) - the defense had to collapse on Alpi's man so he didn’t get an easy dunk but then the ball was thrown out to Buzelis for the 3 just as Alpi is crossing the timeline. - 1:00 - then he gets shook by Giddey causing KD to help which gives up an open 3 by Smith - :38 - then he takes a bad angle as the paint helper and isn’t able to stop Buzelis shot at the rim while he was shooting over Reed - this sealed the game. Buzelis should have never been able to lay it up that close to the rim considering Alpi had a foot in the paint the whole time - :10 The way Chicago generated offense in the final minutes was almost entirely based on Sengun’s weak defense. Their whole offense in the last 3 minutes was push the ball to Alpi's man if he didn't get back and if he did get back, get Alpi switched on to their primary ball handler....and we aren't even talking about what happened before the big dunk - he missed a free throw and turned the ball over at 3:14 AND 3:42. You can't come in here and say with a straight face "the team needed someone else to step up besides KD and Alpi" when Alpi allowed 13 points, 2 TOs(one of them turned into points from the other team), missed a FT and contributed one bucket and one FT assist in the final 4 minutes of a must win game you lost by 8pts. You gotta actually watch games and pay attention to these things if you are going to come back here and comment as much as you do - otherwise it's really hard to take anything you say seriously. ....and ALL of this comes at the expense of - Alpi doesnt help you AT ALL when you are down and need to get a defensive stop and hit a 3 - seriously why is he even in the game? Our last meaningful possession in the game was an out of bounds play where Alpi gets the ball at the 3pt line and is standing there with no one guarding him at the 3pt line while he waits for a Durant pin down to be run and all 3 Bulls are just trying to guard KD. Was there really no one else who can shoot a 3 who could be trusted to pass the ball to KD after that pin down?
Whatever. You can hide behind any "advanced" stats you want, but anyone who actually watches Rockets games knows Alpi is not "fine on defense". He is target #1 down the stretch (except when Reed is on the floor).
Yet, we hit 1 or 2 more 3s and we win the game regardless of all that. JVG said it best...."It is a make or miss league" Truer words were never spoken, you can win a championship with a mediocre defense, you can't win without good 3pt shooting. DD
