Houston Rockets - 11W in Last 12. They are legit.

[scrabbarista]

10 in a row for H-Town with a very impressive win at OKC.

And Alpie back soon.

I think we enough of a sample size now to say their swashbuckling form is not a fluke.

It's actually very difficult these days to win 10 games in a row in a league full of parity (the good teams outweigh the bad ones which is refreshing)

Yep, they haven't been winning on accident. A lot of poor opponents, but Houston was running them off the floor. The process has been good.

[VanWest82]

I always believed in Jalen, but his late season turnaround is unlike anything I've ever seen in NBA.

[turnaroundJ]

wow they've been hot. bringing in vets really really paid off. it's a team with a mixture of veteran leadership and youth/athleticism/defense. amen needs a jump shot though.

i don't see why green and sengun can't work together

[Harry Palmer]

Two things about their quality/record:

1) I thought they rushed the rebuild by adding vets. Part of that was I wasn’t sure they had The Man yet, with Green’s D being a major obstacle to his path, but Udoka has really turned that around and I was probably wrong or just greedy.

2) League parity is pretty high right now, so it only makes sense that this recent stretch of not great teams was naturally offset by what must have been tougher than average opposition before then. It tends to even out, and as scrab said, they weren’t edging out bad teams, almost every game was a blow out, and mostly missing 2 of their best young players.

[doogie_hauser]

Two things about their quality/record:

1) I thought they rushed the rebuild by adding vets. Part of that was I wasn’t sure they had The Man yet, with Green’s D being a major obstacle to his path, but Udoka has really turned that around and I was probably wrong or just greedy.

2) League parity is pretty high right now, so it only makes sense that this recent stretch of not great teams was naturally offset by what must have been tougher than average opposition before then. It tends to even out, and as scrab said, they weren’t edging out bad teams, almost every game was a blow out, and mostly missing 2 of their best young players.

I have a Rockets supporting mate here in Australia who has been thrilled by what FFV and Dillion Brooks have given the Rockets in terms of rock solid leadership and performance.

I still think Sengun is the Rockets main man, but Jalen G is by no means not a too shabby Robin to Alpie's woman.

Ime has also been a great appointment for them (despite my distaste as for why he lost his job in Boston)

My friend was absolutely in shambles 12 months ago (and for a couple of previous years before that)

Houston's surge does give hope to fans of other currently perinnel struggling franchises in recent years like The Hornets, Wizards and Pistons that things can turn around if you get the right people in charge and make a couple of good F/A signings.

[reamily]

The process is for next year or two sengun will be the main big up until tari and jabari smith grows.. they can even put cam as a 4 for them to be come a complete team

[RollingWave]

There’s a couple of factors in their scheme lately that’s also helping, if you look at how FVV is approaching the offense recently vs what they were doing earlier it seems like Udoka was deliberately telling the team to play slow and in a setup geared towards minimal mistakes and risk taking, which helped the defense not giving up many transition points but generally resulted in a pretty ugly and slow offense as well

They appeared to start taking the training wheels off around the ASB and deliberately tried to play faster, personnel drove this to some extent but it seems coaching schemes mattered more

One observation is that they cut a lot less earlier in the season and often had terrible shooters like Amen and Tate as the corner guy , this seems to be intentional so he keeps the guys Ime trust the most on defense on the top of the half court so they can more easily get back, thus they often only have Sengun down near the rim when shots go off

Nowadays they tend to both trust Jalen to also be a effective guy stopping fast breaks and whoever is crashing and cutting to get back that they let those things happen more and also now you see it’s a lot more Fred, Dillon, Jabari taking the corner threes. Unsurprisingly this group has a better chance of making those shots

I think if this is the general way they’ll approach things then Sengun and Jalen together should be just fine and we’ll probably be shocked how good they are together next year ( assuming this is closer to Jalen real talent level) because even though Sengun had more assists per game this year those who have been watching him theses few seasons don’t think he’s actually generating much value from passing as we’ve seen he could, but if they’re going to play more free with a good Jalen I suspect we’ll not only see more assists from Sengun but they’re actually far higher value add assists

[MoneyMo]

Are they better without Sengun?

[reamily]

Sengun if he is able to slim down but not able to lose his lower body strength can still be deadly in a fast pace game but nevertheless can be relied upon to score if houston decides to slow the pace..

So the right question is.. Is sengun ready to play fast .

[K_chile22]

Sengun if he is able to slim down but not able to lose his lower body strength can still be deadly in a fast pace game but nevertheless can be relied upon to score if houston decides to slow the pace..

So the right question is.. Is sengun ready to play fast .

They were playing fast with him post ASB before he went down, think he doesn't need to slim he mostly needs to get better/quicker with outlet passes adn work on attacking as the trailer in transition. In the halfcourt he also needs to get into screening actions quicker, very methodical this year (partially by design imo as Udoka wanted to cut a lot of the CTE ball the young rockets were used to playing). In the halfcourt if Jalen can hit threes off the dribble at anywhere close to what he's showing now and continues to be a great finisher which he has been all of 2024 imo you cannot guard a Jalen-Sengun pick and roll without committing three guys towards it, then other guys just have to make shots

[HotelVitale]

wow they've been hot. bringing in vets really really paid off. it's a team with a mixture of veteran leadership and youth/athleticism/defense. amen needs a jump shot though.

i don't see why green and sengun can't work together

I agree it was a good idea, but only because of their particular situation—their roster was already stocked with many (nearly too many) good prospects, and they had limited control of their own picks but also some other lotto picks coming in.

For most teams choosing to use tons of cap space to level up from rebuild to treadmill team is still not a great move. Is it nice to have some exciting wins and not be embarrassingly bad for stretches of the season? Sure, but in general that’s not worth the short term buzz unless you have a solid plan to have your youth l as you out of that middle zone. Which is not an easy thing to do.

[K_chile22]

wow they've been hot. bringing in vets really really paid off. it's a team with a mixture of veteran leadership and youth/athleticism/defense. amen needs a jump shot though.

i don't see why green and sengun can't work together

I agree it was a good idea, but only because of their particular situation—their roster was already stocked with many (nearly too many) good prospects, and they had limited control of their own picks but also some other lotto picks coming in.

For most teams choosing to use tons of cap space to level up from rebuild to treadmill team is still not a great move. Is it nice to have some exciting wins and not be embarrassingly bad for stretches of the season? Sure, but in general that’s not worth the short term buzz unless you have a solid plan to have your youth l as you out of that middle zone. Which is not an easy thing to do.

They also didn't impact long term books too much. FVV is expiring after next year and Jock+Jeff are non guaranteed every year so they can get to max space if they need to in 2025 easily. Dillon deal seemed questionable at the time but think they could easily find someone to give up something for him now. They had a very good off-season between those guys, Ime and Amen+Cam

[reamily]

Sengun if he is able to slim down but not able to lose his lower body strength can still be deadly in a fast pace game but nevertheless can be relied upon to score if houston decides to slow the pace..

So the right question is.. Is sengun ready to play fast .

They were playing fast with him post ASB before he went down, think he doesn't need to slim he mostly needs to get better/quicker with outlet passes adn work on attacking as the trailer in transition. In the halfcourt he also needs to get into screening actions quicker, very methodical this year (partially by design imo as Udoka wanted to cut a lot of the CTE ball the young rockets were used to playing). In the halfcourt if Jalen can hit threes off the dribble at anywhere close to what he's showing now and continues to be a great finisher which he has been all of 2024 imo you cannot guard a Jalen-Sengun pick and roll without committing three guys towards it, then other guys just have to make shots

The problem.is currently in half court game senguns floor space disrupts jalens offense he becomes an inefficient slasher in trafficas it was evident last game that he still has issues with that.. but having a jabari at 5 stretches the floor makes jalen have more margin of error to.dribble.. and during this streak did you jalen take a spot up three pointer?..once he learbed that he will hard to stop because he has an excellent first step and with average vision he can fin an open team.mate if defense collapses

The malik monks, buddy hields and jr smiths have excellent spot up game jalen green will struggle in 6th man role with that game..the flooring is more jamal crawfordesque..with finishibg abilities

[HotelVitale]

wow they've been hot. bringing in vets really really paid off. it's a team with a mixture of veteran leadership and youth/athleticism/defense. amen needs a jump shot though.

i don't see why green and sengun can't work together

I agree it was a good idea, but only because of their particular situation—their roster was already stocked with many (nearly too many) good prospects, and they had limited control of their own picks but also some other lotto picks coming in.

For most teams choosing to use tons of cap space to level up from rebuild to treadmill team is still not a great move. Is it nice to have some exciting wins and not be embarrassingly bad for stretches of the season? Sure, but in general that’s not worth the short term buzz unless you have a solid plan to have your youth l as you out of that middle zone. Which is not an easy thing to do.

They also didn't impact long term books too much. FVV is expiring after next year and Jock+Jeff are non guaranteed every year so they can get to max space if they need to in 2025 easily. Dillon deal seemed questionable at the time but think they could easily find someone to give up something for him now. They had a very good off-season between those guys, Ime and Amen+Cam

Yeah, think it was a good gamble. Even at worst--if FVV and Brooks failed to gel or were butting heads with Ime or the young guys--they could still move either or both for at least neutral value and go forward with a more regular rebuild year. There wasn't a lot to lose, esp in a year in which moving down like 8 draft slots matters so little.

I just don't like the idea floating around realgm that lots of teams can and will now do the same thing. I guess some impatient owners might want to use that as an example for accelerating rebuilds, but it'd be a bad idea/gamble for most teams. If you don't already have a big stash of high-level prospects, or don't have ways of refreshing them, it's usually gonna be a pretty bad strategy (or at least an unnecessarily risky one).

[dirkdiggler4177]

Two things about their quality/record:

1) I thought they rushed the rebuild by adding vets. Part of that was I wasn’t sure they had The Man yet, with Green’s D being a major obstacle to his path, but Udoka has really turned that around and I was probably wrong or just greedy.

2) League parity is pretty high right now, so it only makes sense that this recent stretch of not great teams was naturally offset by what must have been tougher than average opposition before then. It tends to even out, and as scrab said, they weren’t edging out bad teams, almost every game was a blow out, and mostly missing 2 of their best young players.

The reason why they rebuild so quickly is that they don't own their picks in 24 and 26. 25 is top 10 protected. With that said, the only player with a long contract is Brooks. FVV got a team option in his third year.

[HotelVitale]

Two things about their quality/record:

1) I thought they rushed the rebuild by adding vets. Part of that was I wasn’t sure they had The Man yet, with Green’s D being a major obstacle to his path, but Udoka has really turned that around and I was probably wrong or just greedy.

2) League parity is pretty high right now, so it only makes sense that this recent stretch of not great teams was naturally offset by what must have been tougher than average opposition before then. It tends to even out, and as scrab said, they weren’t edging out bad teams, almost every game was a blow out, and mostly missing 2 of their best young players.

The reason why they rebuild so quickly is that they don't own their picks in 24 and 26. 25 is top 10 protected. With that said, the only player with a long contract is Brooks. FVV got a team option in his third year.

They also have picks coming in from Brooklyn starting this year, so they knew they'd have some young guys coming through the door.

[gmoney411]

I agree it was a good idea, but only because of their particular situation—their roster was already stocked with many (nearly too many) good prospects, and they had limited control of their own picks but also some other lotto picks coming in.

For most teams choosing to use tons of cap space to level up from rebuild to treadmill team is still not a great move. Is it nice to have some exciting wins and not be embarrassingly bad for stretches of the season? Sure, but in general that’s not worth the short term buzz unless you have a solid plan to have your youth l as you out of that middle zone. Which is not an easy thing to do.

They also didn't impact long term books too much. FVV is expiring after next year and Jock+Jeff are non guaranteed every year so they can get to max space if they need to in 2025 easily. Dillon deal seemed questionable at the time but think they could easily find someone to give up something for him now. They had a very good off-season between those guys, Ime and Amen+Cam

Yeah, think it was a good gamble. Even at worst--if FVV and Brooks failed to gel or were butting heads with Ime or the young guys--they could still move either or both for at least neutral value and go forward with a more regular rebuild year. There wasn't a lot to lose, esp in a year in which moving down like 8 draft slots matters so little.

I just don't like the idea floating around realgm that lots of teams can and will now do the same thing. I guess some impatient owners might want to use that as an example for accelerating rebuilds, but it'd be a bad idea/gamble for most teams. If you don't already have a big stash of high-level prospects, or don't have ways of refreshing them, it's usually gonna be a pretty bad strategy (or at least an unnecessarily risky one).

I actually think it's a good strategy that more teams should use. Two of the best teams in the league right now are the Celtics and Thunder and I'd argue that their young guys development was speeded up by playing with vets and learning how to win. Teams play bad basketball for too long and end up wasting young talent but allowing them to develop poor habits. Jalen Green was close to being too far gone but thankfully Ime, FVV, and Brooks came along the year.

[HotelVitale]

They also didn't impact long term books too much. FVV is expiring after next year and Jock+Jeff are non guaranteed every year so they can get to max space if they need to in 2025 easily. Dillon deal seemed questionable at the time but think they could easily find someone to give up something for him now. They had a very good off-season between those guys, Ime and Amen+Cam

Yeah, think it was a good gamble. Even at worst--if FVV and Brooks failed to gel or were butting heads with Ime or the young guys--they could still move either or both for at least neutral value and go forward with a more regular rebuild year. There wasn't a lot to lose, esp in a year in which moving down like 8 draft slots matters so little.

I just don't like the idea floating around realgm that lots of teams can and will now do the same thing. I guess some impatient owners might want to use that as an example for accelerating rebuilds, but it'd be a bad idea/gamble for most teams. If you don't already have a big stash of high-level prospects, or don't have ways of refreshing them, it's usually gonna be a pretty bad strategy (or at least an unnecessarily risky one).

I actually think it's a good strategy that more teams should use. Two of the best teams in the league right now are the Celtics and Thunder and I'd argue that their young guys development was speeded up by playing with vets and learning how to win. Teams play bad basketball for too long and end up wasting young talent but allowing them to develop poor habits. Jalen Green was close to being too far gone but thankfully Ime, FVV, and Brooks came along the year.

I get why people say stuff like this but the arguments for it usually don't work out well, always ends up seeming like something some people just really like to believe. In this case your evidence is a few young players developing well on good teams (Tatum/Brown, Chet/J Dub) but then you have to set aside the hundreds of prospects who didn't end up succeeding much while on decent or good teams. Also not sure why FVV and Brooks get 100% credit for one great three-week stretch that Green's had, while the rest of his season (which was extremely disappointing) wasn't on them; even if he keeps this up, why wouldn't he like many many other top prospects have made a leap on his own in his 3rd year? Given that the vast majority of high-level prospects who succeed do so or show signs while still on bad/rebuilding teams. Hard not to see that as simple confirmation bias of an idea that you already want to believe.

Also why are we assuming players across the board developing 'bad habits' on teams that win like 25 games instead of 35? That seems like an idea people get into their heads about 'losers' and 'winners' but it seems like at best this is more a question of coaching and culture more than anything else. There are plenty of bad cultures on treadmill teams and plenty of good coaching/cultures on sort of tank-y teams, and again the outcomes don't tend to suggest that being on a decent team is better for development. If you look at the Process (which I sat through the entirety of), the Sixers ended up with a couple huge successes and some major busts at the top of the draft, and they also had a ton of 2nd rounders and undrafted guys wash out but also ended up with some huge successes. Did Jerami Grant, Robert Covington, TJ McConnell, etc vastly outperform their draft/undrafted spots because being on a bad team allowed them space to develop, or did the Sixers have just enough 'culture' to allow that to happen, or would those players have really been successful no matter where they got opportunities? I don't know for sure, but it's enough to cast some doubt on the idea that players will develop significantly better on decent teams--let alone that this bump is worth what you're losing in cap space, draft picks, etc.

To be clear, I do think it helps to have simple roles for players on solid teams--in my years of following the draft, that seems like the best recipe for over-performing draft picks--but even then the bump is pretty modest and it definitely won't make okay prospects into boom picks.

[CptCrunch]

It certainly makes Sengun look overrated.

It's totally Sengun's fault that his team is winning at 90 percent clip without him. Your argument implied that Sengun is holding back his team. Otherwise the Roxs would be winning at an even higher rate with him.

Let's not forget about how Sengun is causing Green to not play like a top 10 player. Jalen Green, the dude that everyone was writing off as a bust weeks ago, literally 3 weeks ago.

[One_and_Done]

It certainly makes Sengun look overrated.

It's totally Sengun's fault that his team is winning at 90 percent clip without him. Your argument implied that Sengun is holding back his team. Otherwise the Roxs would be winning at an even higher rate with him.

Let's not forget about how Sengun is causing Green to not play like a top 10 player. Jalen Green, the dude that everyone was writing off as a bust weeks ago, literally 3 weeks ago.

You're being sarcastic, but I'm not sure ir's totally unrelated. The team can play a very different style with Snith at the 5.