A good problem can still be a problem
It’s Five Out, back from the dead, or at least hiatus. We’re still not close to basketball starting, but we’re close enough to start thinking about real basketball things. Jog to the corner, mini-camp style.
This is just an exploration of the decisions facing Ime Udoka and the Rockets coaching staff this season. I don’t pretend to have the answers, I simply, in this piece at least, want to define the question in stark terms. It’s one thing to say “Play X, Y, Z more!” but with what minutes? It really is an issue with this year’s Rockets. Something will have to give in certain spots, at some point.
One – The 240 Conundrum
Two hundred forty minutes in an NBA game that doesn’t go into overtime. No matter how you look at rosters, lineups, positions, rotations, wishes, hopes and dreams, that’s how many minutes there are to be played in a game by all five players on the court. It’s immutable (barring overtime).
Most teams are looking for ways to fill that time when their top six or seven players aren’t on the court. The Rockets? They’re looking for ways to find more minutes, to get their collection of young talent into games, while still playing veterans and contending for at least the play-in, if not playoffs. The Rockets’ plus-minus as a team last year suggests 46 wins, not 41, so if the team is maturing and can win some close games on the road and improve due to young players maturing, 50 wins isn’t crazy at all. But how do you do that AND play all the young guys?
Two – The Centers
Alperen Sengun is currently on an absurdly good trajectory for a young big man. Alpie turned 22 in July, yet is entering his fourth NBA season. His age-equivalent seasons are on par with another non-American center you might have heard of — Nikola Jokic. By advanced metrics, he was the Rockets’ second best player last season, after Fred VanVleet. He’s simply got to play real minutes. Let’s say he plays 32, minimum.
This leaves 16 minutes for Steven Adams (who appears to be healthy) and Jock Landale, who was the Rockets’ third-best player last season by on court plus-minus, among the true centers.
There’s also the idea of playing Jabari Smith as a smallball center, or Tari Eason, or Amen Thompson.
How do you divide this up? All 16 to Adams, who is known for his offensive rebounding, ruggedness and crushing screens? A few minutes occasionally to Landale? Reducing Alpie’s minutes? What about the athletic size/speed mismatch that is Amen Thompson? When he took down some center minutes, good things happened.
Jock, despite living up to my thinking of him as “The Practically Perfect Back Up Center” by the second half of the year when he got healthy, may have to just warm the bench.
Jeff Green played A LOT of center early on last season, as while Sengun was good, Landale, still being hurt, wasn’t. And while Boban might have been a great backup in the 1990s, he just wasn’t fast enough for the pace of the current NBA. (Happy trails Boban, you were a delight.)
The Rockets also have Australian shooting big Jack McVeigh and undrafted FA N’Faly Dante on the roster. Unless McVeigh is just lights out with his shooting or injuries strike hard, it’s hard to see either him or Dante getting minutes.
Three – The Forwards
Dillon Brooks. Tari Eason. Jabari Smith. Amen Thompson. Cam Whitmore. AJ Griffin. JaeSean Tate. Jeff Green.
We have the SF and the PF position here, so 96 minutes total. Where do they go?
Brooks is almost certainly going to start and play at least 30 minutes to begin the season. Same with Jabari Smith. So that’s 60 minutes of 96 down, leaving 36 for Amen Thompson, Tari Eason, Cam Whitmore (if playing at SF), Tate, Uncle Jeff, and I suppose AJ Griffin, though his Summer League outing wasn’t especially affirming. He CAN shoot though, so that’s something.
Let’s shift Cam purely to shooting guard for the purposes of this examination.
Tari probably needs more than the 22 minutes he got last season. It’s entirely possible he could take over Brooks’ role with little issue and more upside. Brooks started last season shooting very well and ended up not shooting well. That could have been an injury, but he ended up shooting slightly better than his career average overall, so maybe not? Maybe that’s just Dillon Brooks?
But if you play Tari 22 minutes again, you’ve got all of 16 minutes for the ball of energy and athleticism that is Amen Thompson. Is that ALL he gets? Do you cut Brooks and Smith down under 30? Maybe you do.
It quickly becomes apparent that Brooks is something of a road block here, and possibly, depending on how he looks, Jabari could be one too. Everyone talks about the time bomb under Jalen Green, but there’s a smaller timer on Jabari as well. He needs to do more “I’m a third pick” stuff. Fortunately, he’s still only 21, and this is season three.
We haven’t even discussed Uncle Jeff, Tate, Griffin. I’m assuming they basically don’t play, or play very specific matchups, for now.
Four – The Guards
Here we find Fred VanVleet, Jalen Green, Reed Sheppard, Cam Whitmore, Aaron Holiday, Amen Thompson playing point, and maybe AJ Griffin, though he certainly didn’t look quick enough to guard VSL wings.
VanVleet is a winning player, and by player plus-minus, the Rockets’ best player. He’s also, by miles, their most expensive player. Fred ended up just outside the top five in minutes played last season, finishing sixth. Fred isn’t a big guard, and he’ll be 31 at season’s end. Ideally, you’d like to play him about 32 minutes per game, not 37. Can you though? That remains to be seen. The Rockets were a mess with VanVleet off the court last season.
Again, we’ve got 96 minutes to allocate, and Fred has 32 spoken for, at least. We’ve now got 64 minutes for Green, Sheppard, Whitmore and Holiday.
I truly don’t want to go over the well-trod ground of Jalen Green yet again, so let me just tell you what I think. (You may think differently, and that fine.) I believe that Jalen’s going to start, and he’s going to play at least 32 minutes per game. Unless he’s simply horrible, and someone else is looking clearly better. Even then, a change won’t happen for a month, unless he defies all measure of horror. I don’t think he will, but let’s leave that aside.
You now have 32 minutes for Thompson, Sheppard, Whitmore and Holiday. Maybe you can find another 20 minutes for Amen here if the shooting is ok elsewhere, but let’s call it 10. Sheppard and Whitmore each get about 11 minutes a game. If Amen is eating forward or center minutes, they might hit 16 minutes.
Even though guard isn’t the Rockets richest position, it’s still pretty rich, especially if you include Amen in some form in the “guard rotation”.
Does Holiday even play? Does he start with the back-up minutes and give way to Reed? Would you really play him over Whitmore at off guard, as Ime did with FVV and Holiday many times last season?
Five – Something Has To Give?
I think something does have to give. Does it have to give this season, though? The obvious thing on the guard front is to wait until next year and decline VanVleet’s option. But Sheppard has to show you by season’s end (let’s not be silly about rookie point guards without some evidence) that he can take on the job, and Amen (or someone) can help. Fred’s option is expensive, and at least one of Green and Sengun will likely be signed long term. Maybe both.
Then there’s Brooks. I think Tari Eason, given health, is better right now overall. Tari adding decent shooting would be lots better. That doesn’t mean the Brooks signing was a bad idea, or that he’s overpriced. That was an NBA narrative, not reality. Despite whatever talky men with non-standard spellings of common names might think, I don’t believe the Rockets were bidding against themselves on Dillon. That should mean his deal is tradable, given the sort of play and generally good citizenship we saw last season.
If the Rockets were not in “Phase Two” of their own private Del Boca Vista and were still rebuilding, they could have this starting lineup and bench rotation:
Sheppard, Whitmore, Thompson, Eason, Adams (ok, two guys can shoot, but they’re rugged).
Holiday, Griffin, Tate, Uncle Jeff, Landale, McVeigh
I honestly believe that team would kick the crap out of several of the current NBA rebuilders. Those lineups are the Rockets’ second and third string units.
The minutes crunch is real. There aren’t enough minutes to hand out to players who deserve at least some minutes.
You can talk trades, but you still have to take salary and some players back generally, and if you get someone good in return, they need minutes too.
What the Rockets do about this situation is one of the more interesting stories in the whole NBA, not just in Rockets world.