When one player plays bad..it might be on the player when everyone on the team shoots 30% and chucks it maybe it’s the system funny enough, the rockets played against GS the same way last year, it’s why they went after KD
He wasn’t double teamed all night. That is an extreme over simplification. Reed cannot create his own space or create for others on ball. It has been obvious from the start of the season, that teams will crowd him when he is initiating the offense once the playoffs began. He is getting bullied all over the floor and it’s not gong to get any better with this idiot coach. The only hope for this series is for KD to come back and park himself on the 3 point line along with Reed or Tari, and Jabari and have Amen and Sengun play PnR or let Sengun initiate the offense from the low post again with KD, Jabari, Reed or Tari, and Amen on the perimeter either spotting up or cutting. A decent coach would have been working all year on a motion offense with multiple screens both at the point of attack and off ball to free up Reed to shoot and Amen to drive. Whether Durant would have participated willingly in such an offense is disputable. This dream that Sheppard is going to suddenly be able to overcome his physical limitations during what has always been the NBA’s “playoff basketball” defense is dream casting. Reed should be used as a spot up threat from the perimeter off the bench in this series. No way he will be able to shake off the physical Lakers perimeter defense without a total change in how the Rockets have played all year. Amen, Tari, Durant, Jabari, Sengun to start Reed, Okogie, DFS, Capella off the bench with a sprinkling of Holiday and Tate. Pretty much Reed and Sengun should play very limited minutes together.
Yes he was, they doubled Reed with the ball - trapped him all game long for the most part - he created fine for guys that can't shoot, his metrics show him just as good and better in most cases than FVV. Look everyone here knows your AGENDA is Amen - well Amen honestly should have been bringing it up much more often and use Reed as a finisher, because Amen SUCKS as a shooter - and Ime is using them both in the inverse of what they are good at..... Yes Reed had 4 turnovers, but he also had 8 assists and who knows how many BRICKS after great passes by him. Reed isn't a finished product but he played decent last night and we win if Okogie or Amen could hit corner 3s. DD
I went back and watched the game. Reed was doubled for the first time at 3:47 mark of the 3rd quarter and turned the ball over. Late in the 4th quarter both guys went to him on a PnR with Sengun and because of a late reaction he shot instead of passed and missed the shot. That was it as far as double teams are concerned. 4 out of 5 of Reed’s made 3 pointers were assisted by Amen and 1 by Tari, Further, corroborating why at least for this year, Sheppard should be off ball spotting up where he is most effective. You and BTG always accuse me of being an Amen only fan so I watched the game again just to make sure I wasn’t seeing what I wanted to see. It turns out that it is the exact opposite. You are seeing what you want to see not what is actually happening on the court. Ime was spamming Reed/Sengun PnR all game and it just wasn’t working, mainly because Sengun sets terrible picks and they were simply switching leaving Reed trying to shoot or pass over a taller player in a packed lane. Amen and Sengun should be initiating the offense most of the time. Amen on top and Sengun on the low post to free up our good spot up shooters, Reed, Jabari, Tari, and KD.
We are saying the same thing, Amen should be bringing it up, and Reed should be running off screens... DD
I agree with you, but you should take stock of your emotions regarding Reed. If you are going to accuse other people of being a fan of one player over the team, then don’t make stuff up about your favorite player instead of actually taking note of what is happening on the court. I can only guess you saw that one play where they swamped Reed at the half court line and it set your narrative for the rest of the game. This year with this team and this coach, Reed should be spotting up to take advantage of his elite skill which is shooting. Reed is not a creator at this point in his career and trying to make him one takes away the spacing he can provide. When Reed initiates it pretty much makes Amen and Sengun moot in the offense. This is exasperated in the playoffs where holding and manhandling is tolerated especially by the league’s favorite teams. Unfortunately, we know what Ime’s reaction will be. He will blame the players and send KD out to spam ISO’s the rest of the series, instead of adjusting.
While Reed didn't have a good first game, if he hit 2 more 3's, he'd have been the best player for the Rockets on offense....that's a problem. Tari Eason had a good game, literally everyone else was dogshit. It wasn't a one guy issue, it was a collective team ******** of the bed which is largely the fault of poor coaching. They have absolutely no strategy and it shows.
I talk alot of crap about Sheppard and Sengun but how can I know how good a player is when the coaching is this trash? It's crazy how archaic Ime is in his thinking and gameplan
Exactly, It's what I was saying in a different thread, Ime is a coach that is allegedly good at defense, but apparently he has no clue how to run a defense if it doesn't have 5 all nba defenders on the court at all times. He has no clue how to make any adjustments to make up for less than a perfect situation.....and he has ABSOLUTELY no clue on offense. His offensive strategy is to have 5 super athletes run iso over and over again and get all of the rebounds until they finally miracle the ball in the basket. It's pathetic. I don't know how this con artist got a job as a coach, but it's beyond time for that to end. If you need all 5 players on the court to be amazing defenders to run a competent defense, you don't know how to coach defense. If you have no clue how to coach offense whatsoever, which is a given, and you don't know how to coach defense, you have no business being a head coach.
And he surrounded himself with his buddies as opposed to actual quality NBA assistant coaches. Unfortunately for us, there’s a sharp drop off in X’s and O’s from Ime to his #1 assistant. At the bare minimum we force new assistants on him next year.
The fact that Ime is incompetent when it comes to x's and o's isn't even my biggest problem with him, his rotations are a hate crime against the game of basketball. Amen and KD were #1 and #2 in the entire league in minutes played this season....and not a game goes by without a WTF rotation checking in and playing **** basketball. He's got an unhealthy obsession with guys who can't shoot and will put 4 of them on the court at the same time and wonder why the team can't score. Also he's just completely random with who he plays and how he plays them....there's no way to get in any kind of rhythm. A guy will start to get hot shooting the ball then get benched for an entire quarter. A guy won't play for 3 weeks then he'll play 30 minutes a game for a few games randomly. I know for a fact if FVV comes back next season, Ime will try to play him 40 minutes a game until he gets hurt again. Ime has no business setting lineups or rotations, he's too incompetent to do x's and o's....honestly I can't think of a single valuable thing he does well.
Homie just likes to b*tch about the two light skin brothers and forgets that rest of the team was ass also. I mean how was all defensive first team amen last night? Freakin Rui Hachimura.
Absolutely. Sengun was the biggest issue. Being punked by Ayton is ridiculous. Ime has no clue. The team defense was horrible. Amen had a bad game in my opinion, especially on the defensive side of the ball, but if you are going to play Sengun and Reed at the same time, the coach has got to come up with a plan. Amen can’t guard the whole team. Offensively, Amen would have had a great game in the regular season. He is going to have to understand that unless he plays for LA, OkC, GS, Boston, or NY, he can be tackled in the lane without a call. He needs to keep attacking every chance he can get. Eventually the media will fall in love with him and the league will have to follow suit.
Yea, I've never seen a 6'2 guard gamble so aggressively on defense in the nba. Because of his smaller wingspan he has to literally launch his body at the ball to get the steal whereas a guy like Tari or Amen can just use their length to reach while defending. My guess is at lower levels he had enough athleticism to get back in the play most times. In the NBA, you really only see that style of defense be successful with lanky forwards who can get back in the play more easily. He needs to adjust and just stay solid.
I didn't watch the whole game but i already see what you are saying with Sengun's screens . I call it the "ghost screen" because Sengun never initiates any contact with the opponent. he sets an invisible screen and proceeds to roll immediately without physically hindering the opponent. It annoys the sht out of me and Ime has had 82 games to correct this OBVIOUS problem. It all comes back to the fact that Ime is an absolute clown.
He missed wide open threes, layups and couldn’t take advantage with one on one with their bigs. Also got a 3 blocked. It’s ok to admit he didn’t play well https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CF...Playoffs&TeamID=&flag=3&sct=plot§ion=game
