No Geese A Laying About
We’re halfway through the Twelve Takes of Christmas. I’m sure you can feel the excitement building!
This site, and my writing about the Rockets generally is for, ah, true Rockets fans. Though I’ve moved away somewhat from an earlier statistical focus, I hope I haven’t moved away from being thoughtful about the NBA and the Rockets. You may not always agree, but I’ve been at this a while, and am always trying to present things to you as I see them.
What I want to do now is a general stocktaking, a year end inventory if you will, of the Rockets.
So let’s look at what the Rockets have, and what they might need going forward.
Centers
Alperen Sengun, Steven Adams, Jock “The Disappeared” Landale, N’Faly Dante.
Current State: This is a position of real strength for the Rockets. Alperen Sengun is one of the better offensive centers in the entire NBA at 22 years old. He’s now signed an extension with the Rockets. He’s no longer a defensive liability, but he’s not a great rim protector. Significant improvement can still be expected from Sengun.
Steven Adams has looked less like a stuffed moa in the past few games. Jock Landale has vanished, and seems to have any mistake punished with weeks of pine time. Dante is a project.
Could Improve: Drafting a bouncy athletic rim protector could do the Rockets, especially their high flying second unit, a lot of good. If there’s a cheap trade for such a player, fine, but it’s not an urgent need, just something to complete the center rotation, probably at the expense of Landale, who really hasn’t done much wrong, but doesn’t play much.
Landale is the best spacing center the Rockets have, as he can shoot a three pointer, but he doesn’t play.
Forwards/Wings
Jabari Smith Jr., Dillon Brooks, Amen Thompson, Tari Eason,
Current State: The future envy of the NBA, with even slightly improved shooting. Jabari Smith, after a rough start, has settled into being a very reliable defender, and a more reliable scorer. With a more rationalized offense, he could score more. Dillon Brooks has been, frankly, very good to great. Amen and Tari are truly terrifying.
Everyone in this rotation can play up a notch, and Amen can play basically anywhere.
Could Improve: Shooting. No, really, that’s about it. This is the wing stopper rotation most teams long for: big, switchy, tough, fast, good at rebounding (except for Brooks).
I suppose better shot creation, driving ability, ball handling, because such improvement turns Tari Eason into a kind of facsimile of Kawhi Leonard, and Amen Thompson into, I don’t know what. Perfected point forward Russell Westbrook? More athletic pre-injury Grant Hill?
Guards
Fred VanVleet, Jalen Green, Cam Whitmore, Reed Sheppard, Aaron Holiday.
Current State: Welcome to the problem part of the inventory. We’ll spend more time here.
Fred VanVleet is an organizer par excellence. He’s a better defensive player than you might suppose, as he’s almost preternaturally aware of what’s happening around him, and despite being 5’10, is a thicc 5’10” and thus not easy for very tall men to shift off his center of gravity. He’s also unfortunately a desperately erratic shooter, and can’t get to the rim to score on many occasions. Rockets lineups with Fred are far better than those without. But he’s basically failing in one of the modern requirements of a point guard, which is being able to more or less always create a shot for himself, and a better shot for his teammates due to the threat he poses on offense. Fred simply doesn’t do that in any sort of reliable way. As a short point guard nearly 31 years old, this is unlikely to improve.
Jalen Green is now a good shooting guard in almost every respect, except the most important one: shooting. He’s now a good defensive system guard. He does get beat, but every single NBA player gets beat, just watch. Jalen is still only 22(tm). That said, he simply has to be more consistent shooting the ball. That’s the job title, and he’s not living up to it. There are signs he can be, and still more signs he isn’t nearly there yet. Right now he’s something of a flat track bully, beating up on bad teams, while doing far less against good defenses, generally. The good games are so good, it’s easy to believe the promise, the bad games feature far fewer bad shots, bad decisions, but still end up a stack of misses that looked promising.
Cam Whitmore is perhaps the shooting guard of the future. Cam might have been sent to RGV to make him play defense, or find his mojo, but he’s still, to me, one of the most promising all-around scoring prospects in the NBA. Cam is 6’7”, 240lbs, fast, athletic, coordinated, powerful and only 20 years old. He’s not a shooter so much as he’s a scorer, and I mean that in the best possible way. Those players are rare.
I very much want to see what would happen if you fed Cam 20+ shots per game for, say, 5 games in a row. I suspect it’s a scoring explosion. He’s a walking mismatch for nearly all NBA defenders. Yes, I want to see him play defense, and do more than score, but sometimes you just need buckets, and I have believed, from the moment I saw him in VSL, that Cam Whitmore is simply a bucket. For a team that’s egalitarian and unselfish literally to a fault, Cam might be the solution to the offense doledrums that lead to losses.
Reed Sheppard needs to go to RGV, immediately. He needs to play basketball regularly and find his shot again. Having one of the best NBA shooting prospects not able to hit a shot, almost ever, is so ludicrous only the Rockets could manage it. It seems impossible that someone with the textbook mechanics of Reed Sheppard could lose his shot. The Rockets incredible ability to break the shots of every high level shooting prospect they draft remains an unrivaled team effort from two different coaching staffs and should win some sort of anti-award for consistency of bad shooting.
I have very little worry about Reed’s “Being a PG” stuff long term, and think he’ll work out enough of a mid-range and basket attack package to be a modern PG. He is not too small. If you don’t believe me, go look at starting NBA PGs, and understand, the ones who have been around a while have deeply phony height listings (Curry, Lillard, Paul, VanVleet, etc). There are over 70 NBA players either shorter than Reed, or less than an inch taller. The main problem with Reed right now is being a rookie NBA pg, needing reps and needing to add strength. I believe he’s the long term answer at PG. His vision is astoundingly good.
Aaron Holiday is not a conscienceless gunner. Except in garbage time, and then It’s Going Up. He’s a good defender, an ok passer, and a good catch and shoot guy. As backup points go, he’s fine, until Reed is ready for that job, and more.
Could Improve: Shooting. Also, shooting. Moreover, shooting. This is a far worse problem than for the forwards. Your backcourt simply has to be able to get buckets, unless you’re blessed with a great shooting wing or two, like Boston.
That’s basically the inventory of players, barring a few that don’t really ever see the court. Let me know what you think.