00:00The Rockets have been 27th in offensive rating since the start of the 26th year.
00:06And the question I had, or the thing that I've been pondering on,
00:10is there any changes, any tweaks that could be made to get this offense in a better place?
00:16But as we were talking about this before the show,
00:18we were actually looking at the Clippers and going,
00:20what are the Clippers right now?
00:21Because Kawhi Leonard has quietly been one of the best, if not, actually, let me roll that back.
00:27He's been the best basketball player in the world for the last couple of months.
00:31And so now he comes into Toyota Center tonight,
00:34but he comes in with a team that is lesser around him
00:38because the Clippers have sold some pieces off,
00:39including a dude that we know very well, James Harden, to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
00:44And I want to get into the Harden thing, but you got into this segment talking about
00:49the 27th in offense.
00:51I think they're 27 through 30 in most offensive categories.
00:57Since January 1st.
00:59And you asked the question like...
01:01They're only like 15th in offense since in February,
01:04the few games that they've had in the last week or so.
01:06But you asked the question like, what can they do?
01:08What can they do to sort of straighten out the offense
01:11and get some sort of coherence with what they're doing?
01:15I think that ship has kind of sailed.
01:18I mean, the only thing they can do is get better.
01:21You know, we talked about trade deadline
01:23and some of the things that they could have done before the season
01:27and is Fred Van Vliet going to come back and all that.
01:33It's here, man.
01:34I mean, you're not going to the grocery store.
01:36The pantry, you've got to open the pantry and figure it out.
01:38And that's what would worry me, you know, as a Rockets fan
01:42because it's too much of a reliance on KD to get stuff done.
01:49And I think that does tie in with James Harden and Kawhi Leonard,
01:53which we'll get to here in a minute.
01:54But what can they do?
01:56They can get better at point guard.
01:58Is that going to happen?
02:00Who on this Rockets team do you feel like needs to get better, though?
02:04Shen Goon is going to be the obvious answer to me.
02:06You know, he's not the player.
02:07He's really good.
02:08He's an all-star.
02:09But he's not the player that he was for this team last year.
02:11I don't know why I'm thinking I'm in Thompson.
02:13I feel like if he had pretty much the, I guess, the year he had last year,
02:18especially towards the end and all that stuff,
02:21I feel like if we had that type of I'm in Thompson this year,
02:25I feel like they'd be a little better.
02:27But, Reggie, aren't they just asking him to be someone else?
02:29They are in some ways.
02:30And I think we also, I need to be better about being fair to a man Thompson.
02:34A man Thompson, he's up about four points a game this year.
02:38Obviously up when it comes to assists because he's had to do more of that
02:42from 3.8 to 5.5.
02:45So, really, almost two whole assists a game more.
02:48He has not had, he's had like a half rebound a game drop or whatever
02:53from the previous year, which makes sense because he's playing
02:57a little bit further away from the basket at times.
02:59More shots, pretty good field goal percentage.
03:01He's not knocking down threes, but he already wasn't doing that
03:04particularly well anyways.
03:06Like, he actually is in some ways better than he was last year.
03:10Is this the I'm expecting, though?
03:12Because he was the pretty girl on the block around this time last year.
03:19And, you know, I thought he was going to take that next step to be, you know,
03:23I don't want to sit here and say superstar, but a star.
03:26Yeah, that's what I was expecting.
03:29And when they got Kevin Durant, I'm thinking like, okay,
03:32you got a three-head monster pretty much.
03:35Well, I think that's the issue is that for him, the question I always had with
03:39a man is how do you see a further jump for him?
03:43And now he's had to undertake an entirely different role, which takes him away
03:46from the strengths, some of the strengths, rather, that they had for him.
03:50And I think they've had to lean a lot on KD because of some of these circumstances.
03:55So some of this is just putting guys in roles for them to flourish
03:58and not being able to put them in those roles because of necessity
04:01of the way that the team is built.
04:03I think that one of the places where the offense can get better is just right now
04:08they're searching to some degree, which I think is good for this time of year.
04:11It should be what you're doing.
04:13But with them being so bad, they might need to just kind of hit the button.
04:16And when I say that, I mean, we've all played a video game where you're playing
04:20Madden and you're like, this is the play that works for me.
04:23I'm going to run Mesh, and I'm just going to keep running Mesh
04:26because this is the one that works.
04:27I do think that they might need to get a little bit to that relatively soon of,
04:32all right, you have the things that work a little bit better
04:33than some of the other stuff.
04:35Do those things more, right?
04:37Do a little bit more of, I like it when you have some read KD pick and roll,
04:42I like even some of these 5-1 pick and rolls that they run at times.
04:48Definitely have more of these actions that create tension with the defense
04:53because read is coming open off of a screen or something to that effect.
04:57I think that they might need to lean more into some of those things,
04:59and especially they need to get going faster, right?
05:02There's so many times where they're going, and by the time they get the ball
05:05where they want to to initiate the action or get it to KD on the high block
05:09or whatever, there's 8 seconds left, and you're making it much harder.
05:13You're making it much easier for the defense to go,
05:14I know you can't make 2 or 3 passes now, so I can lock in on what you're trying to do.
05:18Some of this needs to be you need to pick up the pace to some degree,
05:21and maybe it's not even pace, but get to what you're trying to do earlier
05:24so that at least you have more options to try and get yourself a good look.
05:27Now, I agree with that, but I also feel all those things that you said,
05:30that's basketball 101 stuff, you know, pick and rolls and high screens
05:36with the center and all that, those are things that can work
05:40because they have the talent to do it, but they're more easily identifiable
05:44and defendable, especially by the good teams.
05:47So I think it really comes back to what I said, like who is going to change
05:53the way they play to be able to initiate things, whether it's from the inside out
05:58like Shen Goon or from the perimeter like a Reed Shepard or a Men Thompson.
06:03I think the main one there is your all-star center, Shen Goon.
06:08Well, I got a couple of names on what, you know, some things that could change,
06:11and some of this, it sucks because it's the nature of the game
06:14and this isn't actually a change schematically or whatever.
06:17You can knock down some shots.
06:19There's so much that happens with the defense when they know that you're not going to knock down shots.
06:24And number one of the guys that I'll bring up is a guy that I have a lot of love for,
06:27and that's Doreen Finney-Smith.
06:28This has not turned the way that it needed to, in part because he came in injured
06:33and he was finding his flow.
06:34But I think that you've had enough time where I was hoping to see more flow by this point.
06:38And defensively, you're still seeing some of the blow-bys,
06:41but really the big thing that hurts me is you're not knocking down open shots when you get them.
06:45And they're getting a decent amount of open shots.
06:47We talked about this, I believe, yesterday.
06:49Tari Eason has knocked him down at a pretty high rate,
06:51and now he's had enough of a sample size to go,
06:55oh, he actually is shooting really well.
06:57He's in the mid-40s right now knocking down three-pointers.
06:59Who else on this team can you say that of?
07:01And that means the team can sag off of them and can help off of them,
07:04which makes the job of Amin Thompson and KD and Alperen Shangoon
07:08that much harder when there's an additional player that's creeping in defensively
07:11because they know that guy in the corner or Jabari Smith Jr.
07:14aren't knocking down three-pointers at a high enough rate.
07:16I do feel that speaks, again, to the personnel and KD, the reliance they have on him.
07:22And that ties in, and we probably don't have enough time to get into it here,
07:25but I do want to mention it.
07:26You know, the Harden trade from the Clippers, who they faced tonight,
07:30the Rockets faced tonight, Harden isn't going to have to do what KD does.
07:35With Cleveland?
07:36With Cleveland.
07:37You know, they have Donovan Mitchell.
07:39They have other initiators and other guys that are willing to arrest it.
07:42And I think, ultimately, what can they do offensively?
07:44They need to find someone other than KD to rely everything on, to put everything on.
07:49Yeah, you don't have anybody else for whom they are a system.
07:53Donovan Mitchell, he is an offensive organizational system.
07:56Yeah.
07:57And James Harden, I think, to give him his credit over the last couple of years,
08:00he's found a way to play a type of basketball that when he's off ball,
08:04he can be off ball and still add in.
08:06But then when he's on ball and when that other, you know, creator's off the ball
08:09or off the court, rather, he's still that system.
08:12When it's KD on the floor, he can be that system.
08:15And even then, I don't necessarily love that it's a tough shot die
08:18and he's just an elite shot maker.
08:19But when he's not, it's very evident that there's no real system
08:23that is built around a player or that anybody that can really do in a highway.
08:27And Alper and Shang-Goon should be one of those.
08:29And you would have hoped that you would have found some level of development
08:32of Reed in that way or a man in that way.
08:35And so those are the places where I'm hoping to see continued development.
08:38But at this point, this late stage in the season,
08:39some of my hope is dwindling, I'm going to be entirely honest.
08:43So it'll be interesting to see how the Rockets handle the Clippers coming into town
08:46because at the very least, I know Kawhi Leonard is going to make it tough on,
08:50I don't know who he would guard.
08:51Maybe he ends up guarding KD.
08:53But teams have made it really tough on KD just generally.
08:55You can't enter passes into him,
08:56so it's going to be incumbent on everybody else to do some of these other things.
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