There was a post on another forum about the best benches in the NBA. I wasn’t blown away by anyone’s bench compared to ours. Udoka has spoken highly of our depth and that was before we replaced KPJ with Bullock. I imagine our bench will be spearheaded by Amen. Jabari/Landale/Tari/Whitmore/Tate/Bullock taking the remaining minutes. That’s a potent bench with a lot of toughness. Udoka seemed to like giving his bench plenty of minutes in Boston. Is there a chance we end up outperforming most bench units? Who has a better bench? Would be a great advantage if we’re chasing playoffs.
In all honesty, I think we'd be hard pressed to say we have one of the best of anything in the NBA until we start to see more positive results (hopefully) this season. We've been absolute trash tier since Beard left, let's not jump the gun until we see actual improvement, summer league and preseason aint ****.
I'll let you know after we start playing real starting lineups and teams. We've played a bunch of teams missing starters or starters playing only 1 or 2 quarters or not playing normal rotations. Even tonight, we're playing against a partial starting line-up for the Spurs, and without Jalen, so we have a bench player in the starting lineup. Although this is a good time to see how Amen and FVV play together. I also wanted to see more of the Jalen/Amen backcourt which we got to see a bit of already.
I feel like we have the most talented bench in the NBA for sure. I use the word talent for someones natural skill and potential. Others use it in place of skill but I feel like those are different things. It's probably safe to say we don't have the most skilled NBA bench, but talented for sure. I think that might change by the end of the year. Rockets are in a much better position than national media gives us credit for. People give these conservative estimates on the team but I feel like Silas was just that bad of a coach that having IME here can be a 20 win shift.
It's weird to say a bad team like the Rockets have the strongest bench but the reality is very few benches will roll out top lotto talents like Amen and Cam Whitmore lol. In fact most teams right now are top heavy you have 3 max dudes, 3 well paid players and then vet mins and rookies. So yeah by season's end I can see the Rockets having the best or one of the best benches in the NBA since our bench lineup will have Tari Eason, Cam Whitmore, Amen Thompson, Bollock, Tate and Jeff Green. Other than a couple teams like the Lakers I don't see better bench units.
One thing I've thought about is whether with the quantity of young dudes with athleticism we have, we'll be able to run some teams into the ground while harrassing the hell out of them on defense, but that defense I'm hoping comes throughout the lineup and not just from the backups. In other words, when we bring in our bench, they just keep up relentless pressure and have the other team looking like the Pelicans who seem eager to quit (lol). We'll see here in a week or so.
Short answer: No. Long answer: Hell no. A little realism wouldn't hurt. The Rockets bench unit as it is right now not even top20 in the league.
I think we did but Porter the heart and soul of the team is not here. He was truly a great teammate. He had everyone's back. Unselfish, hard worker, who played the right way. Such a great influence on the team, both on and off the court. Always kept his cool and never got razzled or upset under pressure. You always knew the ball was safe in his hands because he'd make the right play. Never took bad shots and always got others involved. The pick and rolls. The outlet passes. The smart plays. They will truly miss him.
Important insight. At some point, our 2nd unit may outscore the other teams 2nd unit fairly regularly. I think they need some seasoning and cohesion first though.
Rookies and young players do cool things but usually the other teams score more points than they so while they're out there. Our bench definitely will have amazing potential and cool moments but the actual production might not be so good.
They are decent as a bench unit but this is really only an artifact of having so many young dudes on rookie scale contracts. The reason we would have a more talented bench is because most teams have 2-3 max guys and we just have some overpaid role players who while good for our development process, also are going to be much worse than the average starting 5…so yes, we have a decent bench but also a worse starting 5 than most teams today because many of our guys are only just now learning to play the right way. A few preseasons games isn’t going to wash away the stink of Silas not preparing these guys the last few years. ….we got promise for sure - but unless you have Lebron talent, you can’t skip steps and we don’t have those types of talented generational players so we gotta put the work in.
All these high expectations amongst Rockets fans lately, just don't be disappointed if we don't even make the playins this season. The West is completely loaded this year and we still have Wemby and OKC in our conference, who will both be tough future rivals.
