An extremely inappropriately late season preview
Who pens a season preview one month into the season? As I said on Twitter a few days ago, I’m completely hung over from the Astros’ World Series victory and have been having trouble getting myself to focus on the other major professional sports team in town (I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the club on Kirby). With over a week having elapsed since the final out against the Philadelphia Phillies, and after having watched another Jalen Green explosion on Saturday night against the New Orleans Pelicans, I’m ready to dive head-first back into basketball. And after having penned way too many stream-of-consciousness threads over on Twitter, I decided it’s probably best just to put pen to paper and ink out a preview of sorts over here, regardless of how awkward the timing might be. (This is not even mentioning that Twitter may cease to exist by the time this hits your inbox.)
What is the objective of the 2022-2023 season?
Had you asked me this question back in October, I would have unequivocally responded that it was to ascertain the compatibility and plausibility of the team’s top prospects while not jeopardizing the team’s odds at another top draft pick in this, the last year for the foreseeable future during which the Rockets will control the rights to their own draft pick. Please take note of the distinction between “not jeopardizing” and “maximizing” - they’re not synonymous. I did not and do not care the least about micro-level questions pertaining to scheme.
Coming into the year, I considered there to be a clear pecking order between the team’s top prospects, with Jalen Green being a clear first, Jabari Smith Jr. being second, and Alperen Sengun being third. The question for me was how these three players could fit together and how chemistry could be developed amongst them.
Of those three, Sengun has a clear limiting characteristic with his lack of size, length, and mobility leading to an inability to defend the rim and the perimeter. Green currently is a poor defender in his own right, but being a guard, this isn’t limiting in 2022 in the way that defensive weaknesses on the part of a big man are. And while Smith does not look like he will be able to create his own shot anytime soon (if ever), this is only limiting as to his own personal upside as a player - it doesn’t cap the ceiling of the team, so long as there are other shot creators on the floor next to him as there almost certainly will be and already are even in the team’s current infancy stages.
Thus, after a sensational 2021-2022 rookie campaign which saw the 19-year-old Sengun emerge as one of the most precocious post players in basketball, in light of the aforementioned achilles heel, I thought it would only be natural and logical to prioritize Sengun in 2022-2023 in a manner which would allow the club the opportunity to gather as much data as possible on the young big man. That is to say, after trading its starting center (Christian Wood), I hoped the team would start Sengun, play him 30+ minutes per game, play through him in the post, and give him all he could eat, determining if he could handle being a fulcrum on offense and also whether there was hope as to whether he could ever be palatable defensively as a starting center in the NBA. The circumstances for such a scenario were ripe with the team having drafted Smith and Tari Eason, the type of long, aggressive defensive wings who could help mitigate Sengun’s limitations. It also helped that due to the nature of Green and Smith’s respective games, playing through Sengun would not be anathema to the objective of those players’ development.
But instead, what we’ve seen so far, with head coach Stephen Silas opting to start journeyman center Bruno Fernando (due to his supposed otherworldly prowess as a lob threat) and still limiting Sengun’s minutes, and only starting Sengun begrudgingly with Fernando injured, is almost a prima facie determination by the coaching staff and/or organization that Sengun cannot be the long term answer for the franchise at center. We’ve gotten all of the standard lip service about lineup parity, but as the season has transpired, the decision has only proven to appear more illogical with time. This is the season—with nothing on the line in terms of draft capital—to be attempting to find out whether one of the most talented post-up players in the league, with his defensive flaws, can be a long term central focal point of a playoff team in the franchise’s future. Next year, with the team needing to make a push for the play-in (due to owing its pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder as a result of the ill-fated Russell Westbrook trade), it will be too late for such macro-level experimentation. Building one’s offense (and defense) around a plodding big man, in today’s day and age, in my opinion, is not something that can merely be phased in over time. It requires preparation, planning, and personnel acquisition, particularly in the offseason. To me, that lack of urgency indicates that the decision has already been made and the coaching staff either doesn’t know what it has in Sengun (despite the lip service we’ve been given to the contrary) or doesn’t believe in his talents as a means to team-building in the modern NBA. It’s incredibly disappointing.
The Jalen Green Watch
Everything for this franchise hinges upon Jalen Green, the 19-year-old who was selected ahead of Evan Mobley by the Rockets to serve as the heir apparent to James Harden in the franchise’s rebuild. Green of course exploded to close out his rookie campaign averaging 28.1 points over nine games on 48.6% shooting from the field and 42.7% on 10.7 three-point attempts. At the time of writing, Green is averaging 21.8 points per game in 13 games, despite a few duds, shooting 42.6% overall from the floor and 37.5% on 8.0 attempts per game. He’s done it sporting an extra layer of muscle on his athletic frame and a tighter handle, clearly having improved upon one of his biggest weaknesses entering the draft.
The beauty of Green’s game is that he can coexist almost with anyone, in almost any system (ironically, unlike Harden, the franchise’s last cornerstone), with his ability and willingness(!) to roam off the ball and spot up and also, of course, his on-ball chops attacking the basket off the dribble or out of the pick and roll. Green has been frozen out down the stretch in certain games where he clearly should be the primary option—most recently on Saturday night against the Pelicans—but I actually don’t find this detrimental to his long term development. While the early added extra reps would help, I don’t know that there’s really a need to rush to get him extra crunch time opportunities when they will naturally come at a later point in the rebuild. That is assuming they do come and there is a clear hierarchy in place. (More on this in the next installment).
We are very bad yet again
As I said earlier, on Sunday morning, I’m not sure what I was expecting up to this point in the season, but it is very fortunate to see the team faring as poorly as it is to date. Literally everything in terms of fortune can change in the NBA with just one ping pong ball. Ask the Boston Celtics who toiled in mediocrity until Kevin Garnett’s arrival in 2008 after pinning all of their hopes upon Tim Duncan’s arrival in 1997.
This is where I revisit the dichotomy from the introduction between “not jeopardizing” and “maximizing” lottery odds. In Year 3 of a rebuild, it probably would not make sense to bench Green for key games for lottery positioning purposes (i.e. “maximizing”); but the team also would not trade for a veteran point guard, an action which would optimize win probability and “jeopardize” lottery odds.
I’m now at 1300 words so it’s time to take a break.