Ime Udoka FAILING To UNLOCK Rockets Roster Talent Of Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson & Reed Sheppard?

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On today's show, evaluating Eme Udoca's coaching and how he is failing to maximize a lot

of the talent on this current rockets roster.

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Joining us now is a good friend of the program host of rockets talk over on the rockets chop

shop channel, Roosh Williams, you can track down on Twitter at Roosh Williams, Roosh.

It has been a minute, but I'm happy to have you back on the program.

We're going to talk a little rockets ball, talk a little bit about email, doca, rockets

coaching situation, talk some of a little bit about the individual players on the squat

and just kind of general thoughts towards this season as a whole and where I kind of want

to start this conversation is obviously coming into this year with the Kevin Durant tray,

all the expectations that come with the acquisition of a superstar like Kevin Durant.

There were some pretty weighty expectations placed on this rocket teams coming into this

year, right?

And then obviously have the Fred Van Fleet injury happen and there's been a lot of adversity

that this team has faced this season with guys and out of the lineup and then you lose

Steven Adams for the year and all this stuff, right?

Which I know I've talked about a lot on this show.

You've talked about it in various places where I want to start the conversation is how

much can we truly hold this season in particular against in particular email, doca and what we

see or don't see from him as a head coach given the adversity that this team has faced

to this point.

Well, I mean, first of all, super happy to be back.

So thank you for having me.

It's been a while.

If anyone's my age or remember the stain song, it's been a while.

And that's the first thing that pops in my head when I say those words.

So yeah, happy to be here, dude.

Really excited.

Yeah, email, doca.

Okay.

Let's just get started.

So, the roster has enough talent on it to be better than they are, right?

They're still, I think they're still third in the West as of recording this Denver lost

today.

So I didn't actually check the standings update, but I think the rockets are two losses

ahead of Denver.

If I'm not mistaken, and they're at least one loss ahead in the lost column of Minnesota.

So I think the rockets are still third in the West.

And again, I don't know where they're at after losing to Miami prior to losing to Miami.

They had the fifth best record in the entire NBA.

So like there's enough talent there to be, you know, even if it looks like fools gold

when we watch it and we don't think this is the fifth best team in the NBA, you have

to give them credit for having that record.

So that means they have enough talent.

Now the issue is, for me, it's twofold.

And I'll be clear.

I don't know if this is solely on E-Mio Doca or if this is E-Mio Doca in the rocket's organization

at large, right?

I think playing a Mentamson at Point Guard has really just been a bad approach, right?

And again, let me be clear, I'm not singling out of Mentamson.

I don't think it says fault.

I think it's the coach and organization's fault for putting him in this role of Point

Guard.

And I think we've heard Rafael Stone talk about it publicly.

I think saying something to the effect of, you know, the rockets profiled him a Mentamson

coming out of the draft as a Point Guard, right?

And like that's the vision they have for him.

But doing that has made it really difficult for the rocket's offense to function, to even

look like it can function, right?

Like I don't expect it to be good.

It's never been good under E-Mio Doca.

And obviously there was somewhat of a talent deficiency for the first couple seasons relative

to like, you know, elite teams in the NBA.

And then obviously you lose for advantage.

So like how do you make the offense function?

It's kind of, he kind of has that excuse, but he also doesn't in some respects.

And so basically you have a Mentamson out on the perimeter.

You have Alperin Shengoon with a Mentamson.

Neither of them can shoot, right?

So two of your three, two of the three top players on your teams and on your team in terms

of field goal attempts, right?

So the shots being taken on your team, right?

They take two out of the three most, the other one being Kevin Durant.

And neither of them can shoot.

And so they're saying, are you saying the rockets franchise player can't shoot?

Yes, I am, but two of them, right?

And he also not defend?

Shengoon has had some issues defending, yes.

A man, and that's the other thing, right?

And so that's the issue.

It's the trickle effects, right?

You put a men at point guard.

Offense doesn't function, okay?

And then you lose all the other awesome things a Mentamson did.

You lose his cutting from the baseline, which was like an automatic bucket, right?

One of the keys of basketball is generating easy shots and being able to score on them.

The Mike Dan Tony James Harden rockets did it with James Harden, you know,

being a machine and then driving and kicking open threes.

That was their version of an open shot and the pick and roll all you to Capella.

This rocket steam gets nothing easy.

They used to get a Mentamson cut lob donks pretty easy.

He's also one of their best offensive rebounders.

And with Steven Adams, they used to also for what it's worth.

They used to get a lot of easy buckets in pick and roll with Fred Van Vliet and Alper and

Chiyot and that's out the window with no Fred.

So yes, yes.

And I'll talk about Shengoon.

Don't get me wrong.

I think it starts with the decision to play a men at point guard.

So you're off the offensive rebounds.

You lose the putbacks, right?

You lose just the sheer threat of what he does off the ball.

And now he's too tired to be the phenomenal, like top three and the league defensive player.

He's still a pretty good defensive player, but he's not the same defensive player.

We saw that against Orlando.

Maybe it was his injury that was kind of popping up and flaring up and giving him problems,

but he was getting beat like possession after possession by Paolo Bancaro.

He's just not the same.

You look at last season in the role in the games that he started.

I think he started 42 games last season, right?

And he was not the point guard last season.

He averaged 16, 9 and 5 times a game, 1.7 steals, 1.6 blocks per game.

He was a lead across the board, TS percentage, 60 percent, a field goal percentage, 56 percent.

All of that is down this season.

I think this season it's like 51 percent from the field, something like that.

And the TS percentage is somewhere around 56, 57, it's just not the same, right?

And so not to put it like on him, because that's not the idea.

It's just philosophically, they can't run a pick and roll because he cannot shoot, right?

They lose the weak side crashing off the ball.

They lose offensive put backs and easy dunks.

They lose his ability to make plays off the ball, which he's actually really good at.

He's way better as a secondary playmaker than he is as a primary playmaker.

And they lose a spot for reach effort on the court because reach effort can actually

do those things.

He can run a pick and roll.

He can take a screen, get double trapped up top and hit a jump skip pass to the other

side.

He can make a flat foot.

It's cross court skip pass to the corner to a shooter.

He can pull up and hit a jumper from three and from mid range.

He can get to the rim and finish.

He's not perfect.

Don't get me wrong.

But he gives the offense numerous threats that they just don't have when they run him in

Thompson at point guard.

And that is what I blame on Imeh Udoca first and foremost.

He has to find a way to get his most talented players on the court.

He has to have guys playing in positions that maximize their strengths.

Otherwise, I just don't understand what we're doing.

And the offense has been so dysfunctional and they've had so many chances to win games

that they've blown because the offense can't generate a decent shot, can't take care

of the ball, so on and so forth.

Yeah.

The the e-mail stuff, especially his insistence on continuing to any to your point, right?

It could be a mandate from higher upright within the org.

It could be something from a fell stone where they want to see this extended run of a

min Thompson at point, although I think that you and I both agree that there is more

than enough data at this point to basically just rule it out.

But the exception being that I still wonder what an a min Thompson at point guard blueprint

would look like in like the Russell Westbrookie honest kind of team construct, right?

Where you just do like the five out spacing, let him go down hill, maybe, right?

But like that's a very specific way to build a team around a guy.

And like I do think that a min Thompson has shown some flashes where it's like maybe

you're confident enough if you were to start bending and catering roster construction around

one guy.

You're like, all right, we think with we think there's something there, but we got to do

it this one specific way.

And the real problem here is it feels like the rockets have not one, but two different

guys where you really want to build a team around them in a specific way.

And that's shingoon and a min Thompson.

And you and I have talked about this before, but it feels like those two guys, I'm not

quite to the point where the rockets have to make a choice between these two.

But if they want to stay on the roster together and if they want to be two of like the pillars

of this franchise moving forward, there's a very specific

context in which you can utilize them both at the same time.

And it requires to your point, a min Thompson playing that off-bow role, playing in the

Dunker Spot playing, cutting out of the corners, crashing the glass, doing all the off-ball

stuff that he's absolutely elite at to allow Alperinching to have his space to operate within

the offense.

But it's also I think at the end of the day for these two guys to continue to coexist

together, one of them, we don't know who, but one of them would have to take a significant

step forward and become a better, more well-rounded player as far as just being a true three-level

scoring threat.

Because at this point, neither of them are legitimate three-level scoring threats.

They're both like, if we're being generous, like one and a half-level scoring threats

if that, right?

They're both great around the, and I can't even say they're great around the rim because

shingoon's numbers have been kind of, have been off unfortunately, but they both work

well around the rim and they both got like some semblance of like a mid-range package

ish, but neither of them are threats from beyond the arc.

And that is kind of an issue.

So that kind of circling back to our point because we kind of got off track here and got

into talking about a men and shingoon specifically, no, you're good.

I mean, this is all, it's all going to be good conversation.

So it is what it is.

And I echo a lot of these same sentiments and have throughout the season.

So it's great hearing it from somebody else.

But I do wonder because of everything that we just kind of laid out, right?

How much of that do you hold against straight Emeu Doka, do you think about it from a roster

construction standpoint?

You think, man, this roster is, it doesn't fit well together.

It's poorly designed, you know, because I do, like, here's my thing, it's, I see a lot

of rocket stands who are like completely out on Emeu.

They're like, I'm done with him, fire him, move on.

To me, I don't, I don't think that's an accurate, like characterization of Emeu as a coach,

like looking at him and saying, oh, he just, he deserves to be fired.

He's a good coach, but he's also not a coach without his shortcomings.

And the issue here is, can those shortcomings be overcome in order to win a title with

Emeu Doka as your head coach?

So like at this point, Roosh, do you still think, or do you think that Emeu Doka can be

a championship caliber head coach with the right pieces in play or the, you know, however,

however you want to define it?

I think it's indisputable that with the right pieces, he can be.

I mean, he took Boston to the finals.

There were two games away from a championship, right?

What that required was trading for Derek White, right?

And that's what I think is his weakness, adjusting.

So he reminds me a lot of everyone says Tom Tibido.

He reminds me of Jeff Angundi, where Tom Tibido came from the Jeff Angundi tree.

Tom Tibido was an assistant under Jeff Angundi in Houston from 2003 to 2007, where his

adjustment is basically beat tougher, play harder, right?

Hit back.

It's like, yeah, and yeah, that, yes, I agree.

That is something that needs to be done.

That isn't adjustment to make, but there is a, there's a point of diminishing returns

on that being like all you got, right?

You can't just call your locker room week every time they lose.

There has to be some tactical adjustment.

And he has not really shown that he makes tactical adjustments in the Orlando game in the

fourth quarter.

Well, in the third quarter, when they put Read in and read went on that run, right?

Read in KD and the third quarter and brought us back and won the game.

Reach up or check into the game with 518 left in the third quarter.

He never checked back out of the game.

A men Thompson came into the game for like a minute or two in the fourth quarter.

Things went south.

He threw a turnover.

Terrible pass turnover.

And then he got beat on defense.

And Eme took him out.

And they rode with Read.

I couldn't tell if that was an adjustment or if that was Eme looking at a man and thinking,

oh, I think he's still hurt.

Let me yank him because he's not 100%.

So I don't know if it was tactical or if it was about the injury, but the short coming

is his inability to adjust.

What I put on the organization in terms of roster construction to your question about

that.

I think they were gambling coming into the season before Fred's injury, right?

The only two like real guards worth playing time on the roster were Fred and Reed.

And we all knew like, oh, man, if Fred goes down, I was thinking, hey, if Fred get like

tweaks and ankle and goes out for three weeks, we're going to be in trouble was not considering

the ACL scenario.

And so he terraces ACL.

I don't even blame them for gambling.

Like sometimes you make the gamble and you get unlucky.

That happens.

What I do blame them for is the lack of reaction to the fact that Fred got hurt.

They had no sense of urgency about replacing that point guard role.

I think they kind of flippantly thought, oh, a man's going to, you know, we're going to

ride with the man and we trust him and I don't think that's been good for him at the point

guard position.

And then they had to trade deadline.

And I understand that they made some moves.

By the way, the Dorian Finney Smith signing has been awful.

And so I would dock management for that.

And then that move itself prevented them from being able to have flexibility at the deadline

to maybe fill the point guard position.

What I put on email though is the inability to look at the guys he's got and to say, okay,

how do I make this work?

Right.

And so to your point, it's got to be a man off the ball.

You cannot run a pick and roll with Shengoon and a man.

You have to have a guard who can run a pick and roll with Shengoon because Shengoon has

to be useful in some way.

Any good basketball team has to be able to run a pick and roll.

So we need a guard who can do that.

It can't just be KD every time.

So you need to reach up around the court.

And then when you can utilize a man Shengoon in the short role, now a man becomes very

valuable off the cut.

And that's like the synergy with which I think you get this personnel to work, right?

But it's not going to work with Shengoon taking the flamingo shot and tired of seeing that

shot.

It's an awful shot.

It's not going to work with a men and Shengoon taking a couple threes a game, which

are borderline automatic turnovers.

It's not going to work with Shengoon posting up and backing down, dribbling the air out

of the ball for 15 seconds, you know, and then taking like a contested fate away.

That is not going to work in the modern NBA without Steven Adams there to clean up the

mess and give you numerous chances to score.

So I put that on email because the blueprints there, we can see what happens when Reach

Shepherd gets a featured role when Reach Shepherd shoots 16 threes in a game, right?

The rocket blow a team out, granted it was the Kings or whoever it was, but you see the

impact he has when those threes fall, the court spreads.

And there are things you can do because of his ability to draw extra attention and then

to pass out of it, right?

And again, he's not perfect.

He has flaws.

We can talk about those flaws, but you have to give your team the best chance in terms

of how they're constructed on the court.

The best chance to maximize spacing and make it all work and running a men's homes

in a point guard with shingling on the floor does not work.

So coming up, we continue our state of the rockets conversation with Roosh Williams.

We're going to get there in just one moment.

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And continuing on here at locked on rockets your daily podcast one for everything Houston

or rockets a basketball it's what and dive back into our state of the rockets conversation

with Bruce Williams.

Yeah, the emails inability I guess to maximize talent at this point, especially when you

look at I guess offensive talent right because you know, shingoon now I will I want to give

email some credit because obviously we went through the silas years and you know Steven

Silas refused to embrace Alper and shingoon and then email comes along and email recognized

he's like, no, this kid can hoop and it's like, Oh, like this is what it's like to have a

coach like empower one of your players, but he empowered shingoon to like an extent right

where it's like, okay, now is so he put the ball on his hands, let him do his thing, but

we haven't seen I guess I guess my point is shingoon individually has been empowered,

but we haven't seen email really, I guess empower the team as a whole or like the five guys

to really flesh out an offensive system that would flourish around Alper and shingoon.

Like this is the thing is we're, you know, we talk about him being baby Yokech and having

that nickname and his elite passing ability and you know, I can't remember the last time

like I mean, there was a game reason, I guess there was one recently where he had like

what the 11 dimes or whatever, I forget who that was against that was the game where it

was like, yes, that's the right, you're right, it was kings and so well, one, you know,

it's like, okay, it's the king.

I feel like you take it with a grain of salt, but also like we did, we saw a version of this

like shin hub point shingoon to kind of like start the season and it's like they just kind

of just abandoned it.

They just kind of went away from it and there was, you know, it feels like especially on

a team without a legitimate viable full-time point guard, although you could argue red shepherd

should be ready to just take that role if email doca would empower him to have the role on

the roster.

Without a full-time point guard with no Fred Van Vley, you would think that they would

lean all the way into their passing hub phenom offensive big man and run all these actions

and you can do off ball like split cut actions and stuff with him and and and Katie and

Reed playing off ball and you can have a min be, you know, the elite cutter that he is

and all this cool stuff.

But instead game after game quarter after quarter possession after possession, it feels like

we did, they often just devolves into Kevin Durant, Alper and shingoon your turn my turn

ISO basketball and the benefit for the Rockets is that those two guys are pretty damn good

and so like especially Katie right Katie is just ease of walking offensive cheat code

and then shingoon on his best nights is a really good offensive player can, you know, carry

an offense by himself that kind of thing.

So they kind of make it work.

But to your earlier point about they don't get anything easy they don't it feels like

everything, they have to work so hard for every bucket, whether it's a Katie bucket or

a shingoon bucket or in a mint house and downhill drive, they don't ever get a bucket

where it's like, wow, that was like really pretty offense and they generated a wild

shot.

They'll get one of those like a quarter if that and and there's these like brief moments

where like the offense starts to string together a bunch of those kinds of plays and you're

like, wow, this feels like basketball, Nirvana, like this is what it could feel like all

the time, but they just don't do it all the time.

And I think that's where email leaves a lot to be desired is just there's very little

creativity or imagination on the offensive side of the floor and you couple that with the

fact that the team as a whole has regressed and taken a step back defensively as well.

It's like, all right, you're not this top tier slug it out, you know, straight out of

the 90s, you know, prison style defensive basketball team anymore, but you also are still

a mess on offense and bottom 10 in half court points per possession in, you know, on the

offensive side of the floor, where, what is this team good at?

Like, what are they elite at?

And I struggled to answer that question like, like, Rouge, if I ask you, what does this

team elite at outside of offense rebounding, like, what, you know, there's not an answer,

right?

No, there's really not.

You know, I would say, if anything actually, I think email empowers them too much or

there's what it looks like.

Now you said, you were specific, you said he doesn't empower them to have like a competent

system.

So I grew up that.

I think he just empowers them to go.

And I think that's kind of a bad thing, right?

It's almost like what my turn, your turn, everyone wins or whatever that phrase was from

last season.

Sometimes you sometimes me always us.

Yeah, right.

That's what it looks like until Kevin Durant decides, like, all right, guys, stop messing

around, give me the ball, like I'm the one that can get this done.

You know, and one thing that really pisses me off is, and then I think this is emblematic

or symbolic of, like, basically, how there is no offensive, like, real, competent structure

is notice when there's an inbound.

You'll see numerous guys try to go to the ball to be like, yeah, inbound it to me.

I'll bring it up the court, right?

On good teams, that's one, two guys max, right, pending different, like, lineups.

But like, with your starting lineup, like, it's one guy, maybe two, right?

Maybe your alternative guy, right?

It's not, oh, yeah, I hate him.

Jabari Smith can be ball, bring it up, like, no, if I'm the coach, my, my instructions

are, no, you're never bringing the ball up, right?

You put that in the men's hands or reeds hands or shingoo, whoever you pick, right?

You see, if you watch a man, he's authoritative, like, he, even if he's on the court with

reed, he will go get the ball, right?

And to me, it's just kind of shows, Tari will do it.

Everyone brings it up.

Sometimes KD does it, sometimes shingoo does it.

It's just bizarre because it's like, look, there has to be a, kind of a, you know, everyone

has to know their role, right?

Amen.

These are the shots you take, Jabari.

There needs to be a hierarchy.

And we saw issues with that hierarchy earlier this season when they couldn't even, when

they didn't even remember that they were playing alongside Kevin Durant at times earlier

this year.

Yeah.

Like with Clint, when Clint Capella's in, it's like, brother, no hookshot ever, all right?

And let's like, it's, you know, it's desperation mode.

And that's another thing, right?

So to your point about defense, I mentioned it earlier, right?

You lose the elite monster on defense, a man, a man Thompson is, and now he's like pretty

good at defense, but he's not the same.

He doesn't play Clint Capella enough.

Clint Capella is not the same Clint Capella.

We all know that.

He can still block some shots.

He can still rebound.

He is still a deterrent at the rim, like he still does that.

And there are certain times when, you know, they just need some athletes and they need matchup

specific guys like against, uh, collilware.

I would like to see more Clint Capella, right?

Not chingun against collilware, for example, a guy that's that long, that's dominating at

the rim.

That's just going over the top of our guys and just finishing, you know, and hurting us

offensive rebounds and hurting us in a game where you're trading possessions down the

stretch, like get the dog in there to protect the rim, to grab the rebound, to put a body

on them, to match the length, right?

Just a lot of matchup specific things, Dorian Finney Smith, like, why is Joshua Kogi randomly

out of the rotation?

What happened there?

He was actually, he's actually been one of the bright spots of the season.

Um, I think he's shooting 39% from three, at least he was before the heat game, you know,

like the career high for him.

He's been actually fairly reliable as a shooter from the corners.

And so it just lack of consistency, weird lineup, uh, rotations.

Sometimes he runs these lineups where I'm like, well, I don't understand what you're

looking at.

And the only thing that makes sense is he's just thinking defense, defense, defense,

and then our offense, they'll figure it out, which to me, if that's the case, that

would be kind of a poor way to think.

I think it was against the clippers, um, in the game that they won before the one that

they blew right before the all-star break.

I think it was that one, um, oh, it actually might have been the one that we blew, one

of the two.

Um, we need to KD, we need to bucket down the stretch and KD bailed us out.

But down the stretch, what we ran was a KD, Jason Tate, two-man game, like four or five

possessions in a row.

And it worked because Kevin Durant is Kevin Durant.

So, okay, great.

And that's awesome.

And you know, Jason Tate will set a good screen in Hill Hustle.

But I mean, are you serious?

Right?

Like, games on the line and I'm watching Jason Tate, two-man game with KD.

Well, that doesn't even make sense to me, right?

Um, so there's just a lot of things, the whole read, I mean, the mismanagement of

every shepherd, you know, like before, what, what, what do you, six and two as a starter

now?

Um, again, before, I haven't crunched the number since the heat game.

But before the heat game, it was like, he was averaging, I think, 17, four and three

and a half rebounds, four assists, three and a half rebounds a game, um, you know, shooting

a high percentage from three as a starter.

And we're just leaving that on the bench for what?

Right?

Yeah.

Again, I cited a men's numbers.

They're actually better when he's off the ball.

But we're just forcing this experiment.

So, um, it's, it's, it's confusing.

There's no identity.

And it's funny because the silver lining is if they just tweak a few things, they're

one of the best teams in the NBA.

It's frustrating.

That, that's, I think that's what makes the conversation so frustrating is because it

seems like they're like so, like, right on the precipice and how, like, how much of this

is just not even a conversation with a healthy Fred Van Vliet or how much, you know, of

this season or, or how many of these other wins that maybe, you know, went by the way

side or turned into a loss or two, whatever, how many of those are mitigated by, you know,

having Stephen Adams out there because they get to stick to that, you know, grind it

out identity they did have, which is they're just going to dominate on the offensive glass,

which those numbers are way down since Adams, right?

And I had the chance to ask Stone an email about that at the trade deadline.

And they were like, yeah, we'll keep, we'll keep, we want that to be a big part of our

identity.

We'll keep going and we'll still be the best team in the NBA.

No, they've dropped like eight percentage points as far as their offensive rebound rate

since that conversation took place.

Like I saw the writing on the wall, it's like, you cannot keep up this historically elite

offensive rebounding stick without Stephen Adams and without Stephen Adams or you're just

going to be an okay offensive rebounding team or without just play Colin Kapello a little

more.

He can rebound.

He could still rebound.

Yeah.

It was a point in time, maybe like a week or two ago, whereas offensive rebounding rate

was actually higher than Stephen Adams, which is just, you know, a small sample size

I get it, but he can do it close enough and, but they don't play him.

It's bizarre.

And they, and I mean, and recently, right, he may have been tinkering with like the

double big lineup for like a few minutes each half with like shingoon Kapella and like

on a paper, I remember coming into the season thinking, man, all right, double big was so

good last year with Adams and shingoon.

This year, they're adding Kapella and maybe we'll see some shingoon Kapella minutes and

Kapella's even more, you know, it provides this, you know, interesting lineup kind of

permutation where you can do some cool creative stuff like you can have Kapella, I knew

he's not, you know, he's not young Kapella anymore.

He can still get up there.

He can still catch a lob or two occasionally, like, I don't, I feel like we've only seen

shingoon Kapella connect on like one or two lobs this whole season if that, right?

Like I think I know there was one for certain there might have been a second one.

And it's like, I feel like a good offensive coach would be able to scheme up like a player

to or a set or two that basically ends with Kapella rolling to the rim and like your passing

phenom big man just throwing a lob over the top, like that, like a little four or five

screening action, like I feel like that would be a should be a staple blueprint of the

rocket's offense, especially now that Kapella has taken over the admins minutes.

And email is still kind of toying with whether or not he likes that double big identity

with those two out there, but we don't see it, right?

There is so much meat on the bone with this team offensively.

And that to me is one of the major saving graces of this season.

I'm just like, all right, like as as tumultuous as this year has been as frustrating as this

team can be at times, there's so much like there's a lot of low hanging fruit and they're

still to your point from earlier, right?

Well, right now they're the sixth best record in the NBA.

So they're they're a game back at the nicks currently.

But sixth best record in the NBA is still the third best team in the Western Conference.

And the only reason we're not talking about them as like a legitimate true blue contender

is because they don't have their floor general out there in Fred Van Vley, but they also

haven't empowered the one floor general that they do have.

So it's like, and that's the most bizarre thing is it's like that, I mean, you lose Fred,

the closest thing you can get to replacing him is read with maybe some more downside,

right?

Not the stellar defense that you get from Fred consistently more, more variants, right?

Possibly a higher ceiling, but also a significantly lower floor.

So correct, right?

You know, like obviously Fred does what Fred does, but we've seen what a ceiling can be.

What what proplexes me is that like they don't do things that you would just think should

be simple.

Like the Katie Shengoon two man game should be a staple of what they do.

It's not it's something they bust out randomly.

It feels like something they bust out in the last five minutes of the game when it's

something they should run like over and over to start games to set the tone, right?

To to to train the defense of like, this is what you're going to see.

And that's what the defense gets set for and prepares for it.

And then you have other counters from there.

They they could run split action.

I mean, they did this and I think against Sacramento.

I can't remember.

Um, they did they did a couple split action things against the Kings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You put Shengoon on the elbow.

You run split action with Katie and Reed.

Hello.

And then guys make decisions and you have a men Thompson off the ball to cut from there.

Or hey, how about Reed running a screen screen and roll with literally anyone, right?

Amen.

Shengoon Katie like there's the there are options and we we refuse to do any of it.

We just do DHOs and then devolve into a Shengoon 15 second post up or pray that Katie

bails us out or we watch a man, you know, try to euro through a crowd and flip it up.

Um, they they are allowing a man.

I mean, dude, it's it's crazy.

Like a men Thompson is shooting and Shengoon's flamingo.

They're shooting their bad mid rain shooters and they're shooting a decent amount of mid rain

shots.

They're leaning into the dumbest, least likely, least efficient thing instead of just

maximizing what we can do with with the talented guys we have and and we say all that.

And if they just, you know, if they didn't blow a 25 point lead to the Pelicans in December

or whatever that was, if they didn't blow a 14 point third quarter, fourth quarter lead

to the Kings, like right after that, if they didn't blow an 18 point lead against the

next a few days or a week ago, whatever it was, they're 40 and 19 and they're a contender

easily.

Right.

It's that simple.

And then you then you think like, okay, well, Fred was healthy.

I think Fred's worth like six or seven wins based on the dumb, the dumb ways we've lost

games this season, right?

And then, and then let's just say it's five instead of six or seven, right?

That's a 42 and 17 team, right?

And that's easily a contender and we're vying for the number one seed in the West.

So it's extremely frustrating.

But that's why I put it on email because they are right there.

They have enough talent, but he has mismanaged reach shepherd and maybe that's an organizational

thing.

I don't know.

The experiment, like, I understand wanting a men Thompson to develop and grow and blah,

blah, blah.

He's not Ben Simmons.

Ben Simmons had real point guard feel, real handle.

Ben Simmons was also six, 10, all right, a men Thompson, six, seven.

You can't just jump over people and put him in the, put him in the locker.

It's six, seven, like you can, but not as routinely and as easily as like a six, 10 guy

or like, he honest, who is enormous, right?

And I would ask this is a men, what, putting a men Thompson at point guard, how does that

make the team better?

Like maybe it makes him better, the numbers don't show that at all.

And I test certainly doesn't show it.

So I don't even think that it's true.

But let's just assume that, okay, it makes him better individually.

How much better individually does it make him versus what it takes away from the team?

That's what I would ask.

And I don't know if you have an answer to that.

I mean, I do.

I don't, well, my answer is what you already said it is.

It doesn't make him better, right?

Because as you already kind of laid out, like all the evidence, right?

It takes so much away from his game.

And I think that is sealing a men Thompson can be a truly elite dynamic, like secondary

creator within an offense.

Weirdly enough.

And I'm curious if you agree with this.

I feel like a men and shingoo actually have a lot of overlapping like strengths and weaknesses.

Like their skill sets are not quite like duplicative of one another because they do things

in slightly different ways.

But like you think about them as like connective tissue pieces and they can both screen and

they can operate out of the short role and they can they can finish around the rim.

And like, you know, I see that like some of the stuff that we see very sparingly from

a men Thompson, like using him as a screener is something that he went to like after I just

say real quick before I forget the frequency with which they use him as a screener is like

a mongol the lowest and that's that in and of itself is bizarre against the spurs when

they put wind beyond them.

Right?

If you remember that, they could have used him as a screener.

Exactly.

I was getting ready to say so sorry.

Yeah.

No, that's exactly what I was getting ready to say.

I saw like e-mail deer and headlights with, you know, Wimby parked on a men and they

they refused to not even once drag Wimby out to the perimeter using a men as a screener

for KD or read shepherd or anybody that was a threat to pull up from deep because you

set a a high screen and roll all the way out in the perimeter.

That's how you drag a big out of the paint somebody who doesn't want to be on the perimeter,

right?

And we didn't see that once.

And then we saw it like a few games later and it was like another team I forget who

was tried to randomly park their big on a men and then they used a men as a screener

like I think like two or three times and two out of the three times it worked.

It converted and it turned into a wide open three that was made and it was like how wow,

what a novel concept like that's so cool.

Why not do more of that, right?

But like even using him as a screener and then hitting him on the short roll and letting

him attack that way instead of him trying to like, I so God, he tween on the perimeter

with his lack of handle and like he's got the explosive first step.

Yeah, but he doesn't really ever truly beat his man on the perimeter like one on one.

Like it doesn't happen a lot.

It's just a lot of like bashing your head against the wall, hoping something will happen.

And that's it's like debilitating watching that on a nightly basis, man.

That's going to do it for another edition of Locked On Rockets.

As always, thanks so much for checking out the show.

Remember the best way to help us grow the show is to listen every single day on a podcast

platform review, choosing and then like, comment, subscribe on YouTube.

But as always, thank you so much for watching.

Thank you so much for listening.

And we look forward to having you back right here at Locked On Rockets, your daily

podcast home for everything.

Houston Rockets basketball.

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