Go get a real young star or a top 3 pick in this draft. I don't care who stays anymore. My attachment to anyone on this particular roster is negligible at best.
There has to be major changes. Losing to Kennard and Marcus Smart is inexcusable. We have had Top 4 picks for 4 consecutive years and it still feels like we are in limbo.
FVV/Reed/Amen/Jabari. KD is just prohibiting the growth of the young guys IMO. I don't hate the trade but it didn't work and it won't work moving forward. Ultimately they're going to defer to KD and everyone will grill them for not doing so. That won't happen if KD is gone. This team isn't winning anything with KD as its best player. Bigger question is Amen. The organization needs to decide if he's the guy (and if Reed is his truly his sidekick). Jabari fits with them so he stays. If you don't think Amen can ascend to superstardom then none of this matters because you need a superstar to succeed in this league and he's the only player on the team that has that ceiling. Chance that Jabari could still develop (less than 1%) or Reed becomes the next Steph (less than 1%). The whole "Amen is just a connector piece and needs to play defense and dunker/weak side" is an argument I'll hear and if that's the case then we are truly ****ed and the rebuild was a failure. Trade everyone for picks if thats the case and try to get Boozer, Dybantsa, Peterson or one of the PGs (Acuff, Brown, Flemings). Or you could trade Amen and Sengun for Giannis and get a small title window with an aging veteran group which has worked for exactly one team in the last 40 years (Boston).
If I'm in the front office, run it back with the starting lineup of FVV/Amen/KD/Jabari/Sengun However, I'm trading away our entire bench except for Reed and going down the list of top 3pt shooters you can sign or trade for: Luke Kennard (47.8%) - free agent Bobby Portis (45.6%) - $14M next season Cam Spencer (44.9%) - $2.M next season Jaylon Tyson (44.6%) - $3.4M next season Rui Hachimura (44.3%) - free agent Ayo Dosunmu (43.9%) - free agent Ja'Kobe Walter (40.9%) - $3.8M next season Max Christie (40.4%) - $8.2M next season Collin Sexton (40.1%) - free agent The above list are some of the top 3 point shooters who are on team friendly contracts or will be a free agent. Interesting stat: the Houston Rockets has only one 3pt shooter in the top 15 this season and it was Kevin Durant at 41.3% -> our 2nd best 3pt shooter ranked #39 who is Reed Sheppard with a 3pt percentage of 39.4%...that's the main problem with our team
My first move would be to get rid of Ime - ideally by digging up more dirt on him (if he can't even make a basketball adjustment, does anyone really think he can adjust his hound dog behavior?) and terminating his contract. 2nd move, get a new GM - ideally someone with a strong track record of finding undervalued players and for developing talent. Once the new GM was in place, we then interview coaches with the key questions being: 1) Asses of the Rockets offensive and defensive schemes over the past 3 years. What worked in your opinion? What didn't work? 2) If no changes to the roster occur, how would you "level up" this team? 3) If we could sign one impactful FA, what type of player would you add to the mix? Once the coach is in place, I'd want him to spend the summer watching tape and determining which players can be improved and which ones can't. If that coach says "I don't think Alpi will ever be efficient even if he has more space in the paint and gets set up for more easy buckets," then Alpi's gone. If that coach says "I don't think Amen has any offensive potential beyond dunks" then he's gone too. I still believe that if we played Alpi with 4 shooters and at least a couple of players capable of making quality passes to him inside, he'd look so much better. The idea that this team was "built" around him is such utter nonsense (this team wasn't built around anything - calling it a patchwork quilt would be overly generous), and any "Senhub" offense is simply the result of having nobody who can set up other players on the roster. I would much rather have a real PG who runs the offense and gets everyone else the ball in their idea spots (especially those guys who don't seem to even understand where their ideal spots are). Whatever the case, the Ime era needs to end.
If it were up to me I'd give it one season of just building everything around Amen and letting him play through the lumps and see what it looks like at this point. Unless Sengun has a monster rest of the series I'm feeling kinda done with him. Maybe he'll prove me wrong. But yeah, barring that--get a new GM, get a new coach, get a stretch 5, get more shooting at every position. Trade away all of the veterans. Let the defense slide, who gives a f*ck, we're not contending next season anyway. Give Amen like 30% usage sink or swim, instead of the 20% he got this season. See what happens. Either he'll show out with increased space and a central role or he won't. Odds are it'll crash and burn. Don't care, do it anyway.
Extend Amen, resign Tari, keep the young core together and reboot. Let Fred come off the bench. Trade dickerson for parts. Get a new coach cause Ime is not gonna be down with developing our guys. Get a new GM. If you keep stone then get a president of basketball ball ops that he has to report to. Tank until you have something.
If (when) we trade Sengun, we won't get back "trash." Who will we get? Don't know. But not trash. I do think those summer league games and then going straight into the regular season really made his Tractor Feet even slower. So he appears to have plateaued or regressed. But there are teams that would trade for him.
Sengun and Amen. But the way Sengun has played this series so far...I wouldn't hate trading him. He showed up for last years playoffs. This year? Not so much. I'm not eager to blow it all up. But if I had to choose who to focus on keeping, it's those two.
I just hope we don't bring back Tari. Sorry dude but you've turned into utter trash and even if you have nights where you return to form, the fact that your range is THAT wide is concerning.
A top 3 pick? So far we have drafted jalen green who was a dud, jabari, reed.. with top 3 picks. Nahhh if we trading we need a disgruntled star we can build a championship team around. Our scouting department needs to start packing up their desks. Only Eli should stay.
We’re cooked. As long as we keep Jabari I’m good. I want to see how many playoff series losses we can get up to that we would have won if we just had a basic Donte Divencenzo instead. I think we can reach 6 or 7. Will it all be worth it in the end? I think so, I have a feeling that’s a championship role player, I decided this one time 3 years ago after I saw him make a shot.
I would Trade Sengun for Sarr and Coulibaly. Then I would trade Amen for a top 5 pick(Acuff, Flemings) and do a total reset!
I'd be fine if they just got rid of Ime. But preferably I'd like to move on from Sengun, Fred and Ime.
