Houston Rockets Most Important Playoff LESSONS From Warriors Series | Is CHANGE Needed?

Houston Rockets Most Important Playoff LESSONS From Warriors Series | Is CHANGE Needed?

On today’s show, the Houston Rockets season postmortem. What we learned from their playoff experience against the Golden State Warriors, and is change needed going forward with this team? It’s all coming up right here at Locked on Rockets. This is mission control Houston. Ignition sequence start. 6 5 4 3 2 1. What’s up and welcome to another edition of Locked on Rockets, your daily podcast home for everything Houston Rockets basketball. As always, I’m your host Jackson Gatlin, native Houstononian and credentialed media member. I’m also the host of Locked on NBA Thursdays. Be sure to follow along wherever you listen to your podcasts or on YouTube. Just search Locked on Rockets where the best way you can help us grow our show is to listen every single day on a podcast platform of your choosing and like, comment, subscribe on YouTube. As always, thanks so much for making Lockdown Rockets part of your day every single day, whether it’s on your way to work, on your lunch break, in the gym. Thank you so much for being an everydayer. And joining us now is your weekly co-host, the Podfather himself, Rocketswire editor and host of the Logger Line podcast, Ben Dubose. You can track down on Blue Sky, Ben Dubose. Here for our Rockets season postmortem. And uh we’re going to we’re not going to focus on the season in its entirety. In fact, we’re going to spend the majority of this show focused on kind of just the thoughts on the playoffs in particular, right? What we learned from this postseason experience for the Rockets and whether or not change is going to be needed for this team moving forward. And Ben, I I do think it’s important because I feel like we did learn a lot about this team from this postseason. So, we’re going to just make this a pretty open-ended conversation. I want to tee it up to you first. What do you think you learned or what do you think was the most important lesson learned for this team from this playoff experience against the Warriors? Well, and in this case, it dovetales with the seasonl long theme because the biggest takeaway I had, this half court offense is just not close to reliable enough to be a legitimate championship contender even if they’re number two in the West. I went out of game seven honestly less upset than I expected to be because the way it went down with 74 points with barely over 2 minutes left in an NBA game where they were unloading the kitchen sink and to their credit they played extremely hard. The effort was there. They did everything that they could possibly do and yet they had 74 points and unlike you know 2018 against those Warriors you had the 0 for 27 shooting outlier. They were three of 14. It wasn’t just that they were shooting poorly. They couldn’t get off three-point looks at all because the only counter they really had if it wasn’t a good night for Jaylen Green or the half court offense wasn’t working for any number of reasons, then the only counter they had was Steven Adams in the double big. And to Steven’s credit, he played extremely well in that role. But at some point, if three of your five players are Steven Adams, Alen Shenon, and Amen Thompson, all non-spacers, at some point the court is going to get clogged, especially if Jaylen’s a little tentative. And even if he’s not tentative, quite frankly, he doesn’t have much of a mid-range game at this point. So, he’s not really forcing defenders to respect all areas of the court himself, even though he does have range. At some point, it was going to bog out. It did in game seven. I expected a better outcome in game seven because, you know, the second half of game one, all of game two and game five at Toyota Center were dominant Houston wins. But in hindsight, the better way to look at the way that series transpired, game one was a clunker. To a large extent, game three was a clunker. It didn’t feel like it. But from an offensive standpoint, it was. It’s just the Warriors were so dreadful offensively the first 18 minutes of that game, no Jimmy Butler, that the Rockets played with the lead for a lot of that game. But offensively, it was a terrible performance. And in game seven, it was just, you know, looking back, it feels like they were due for another one of those. It happened for the first two and a half quarters, game one, happened for most of game three, happened for pretty much all of game seven. It’s a recurring theme we saw throughout the season. It felt like largely independent of opponent in that the Rockets had this gear in which they could compete with and beat really good teams, but they could also lose to some bad ones if it was a night where things weren’t working out. We know how important Jaylen Green is to this team. In part because of his production, but also because there’s not really an alternative for someone else to do what he does. And in this series, it felt like, you know, the Steven Adams double big was the only real counter they had. And by the end of that, it looked like Steve Cerr had a few more answers. They adapted to it. And in contrast to 2018, 2019, I didn’t leave saying hash Houston sportsman, if only we’d gotten a better bounce or a break had gone our way. No, these Rockets just weren’t good enough in the half court offensively. And at some point in the playoffs when you’re playing a good team and you’ve got to win four times out of seven, that’s going to catch up with you. Or, you know, if Scott Foster just had never been born, that would have been nice, too. Well, yeah, but that’s what I mean. That’s another Yeah, that’s another what if no what if this I I hear you, man. And look, you know, I I really wish like if there’s a if there’s a diehard every day out there that really wants to go back and parse through like all 82 games of like, you know, all the games where the Rockets offense just bottomed out and they lost because their offense like stalled out for an entire quarter or a half or whatever or at the end of the game where they just couldn’t put points on the board. You’re right. This was a conversation we’ve had time and time again on this dairy program talking about and I I still remember so many of the times I pointed to this is going to be the end of the Rocket season. The rock the offense is going to be the reason this team loses. Whenever they get to whatever the playoffs looks like against whatever their opponent is, I feel like we’re going to talk about this offense being the problem. And it’s not that it’s any one facet of the offense, right? We’re not going to we’re not going to sit here and point fingers at oh it’s all Jaylen Green’s fault or it’s all Alin Shingun’s fault or it’s all it’s not it’s not any one thing and that’s the problem is it’s so multiaceted but it does kind of boil down to the one big dilemma here and this is why you see so many Rockets fans advocating for change or a a big swing this off seasonason for a star level player is when the going gets tough when games are tight you need to be able to give the ball to a guy who can just go get you a bucket All the best teams have a guy that they can give the ball to and say, "Go get us a bucket or go do something that is going to generate a highlevel possession for us, a high quality possession so that the role so that a role player can get a bucket, right?" And to your point about the three-point volume in game seven, right, that was one thing that was so jarring to me is it was the Rockets literally just weren’t even generating the shots. And hat tip, credit to the Warriors defense, right? Their defense has been or was sensational in that series. It was great to close out the season ever since adding Jimmy Butler, the best defense in the NBA. But so much of it does boil down to the Rockets really and I think Rafel Stone hit the nail on the head in this discussion in his uh in the end of season press conference is, you know, this Rockets team did outwork everybody all season long. That was their identity. They outworked everybody. They crushed the offensive glass. They generated those second and third chance opportunities. that identity. It’s not that it didn’t translate to the postseason. It did. It’s just when everybody else is playing harder, you lose that competitive edge, right? And so suddenly they lost their competitive edge. And what made them so special in the regular season and then they didn’t have anything else to pivot to. They didn’t have they’re not a great shooting team. They don’t have a a lethal perimeter threat, at least not consistently outside of, you know, game two, Jaylen Green, you know, and Fred Vanble did step up, you know, a little bit there in games in games five and six, of course, but, you know, that’s that’s not even Fred’s ideal role on the team, right? Yes, he was able to elevate in a couple of those games, but you saw what happened when he kind of came back down to earth in game seven. So, the Rockets just did don’t have a a true counter to your point for what what that Warriors defense was able to do to them in the postseason. And I think that’s where you kind of get into the idea of like, okay, how can you reliably run this thing back next year? And I know we’ll talk about is change needed a little bit later on in the show, but at least that was I agree with you. That was my big takeaway is the offense needs something more. Whether it’s you add more shooting, whether it’s you go out and make a big swing for a big player or you just change some things up, right, and try and, you know, add some new wrinkles to the offense because this Rockets offense isn’t one that’s predicated on on motion and movement and you’re not really taking advantage of Alper and Shingun as a passing hub in the middle. Like, there’s a lot of things that could be improved upon with the current group of guys to make this offense better. Well, and we can acknowledge that Alprin Shingun was not efficient in that series against the Warriors. His true shooting was about 49 and he said as much postgame after game seven that this season was below his standard offensively and he should be better. But I would point to game one in that even when Shingun made the shots against the Warriors and he was 11 of 18 with 26 points in that game one loss, you still had many of the same problems because the Warriors were okay giving up those twos if they’re squeezing the Rockets from the three-point line and guys like Steph and Buddy are getting good looks on the other end. And so I don’t say that to necessarily give Shingun a pass. And certainly overall, we have to if we’re talking about his series play, we should note his great defense and playmaking. You know, clearly the floor with Alp is a lot higher than it is with Jaylen. But I bring up the context of game one to say even if Shenun had made a few more of those bunnies inside in game seven, I don’t think it really addresses the underlying issue, which is that you need some sort of perimeter creation shotmaking in the modern NBA to get the three-point volume that you need. And the Steven Adams double big band-aid worked very well at times, but it’s important to remember that it was in fact a band-aid. The solution is finding more shooting, finding more shot making, and that’s what disappointed me the most is that it didn’t really feel like there was much of a counter for Mim Rudoka to Jaylen Green’s lack of scoring in this series. I would have loved to have seen more out of Jabari Smith Jr. He shot like 46% from three, 68% true shooting. Yet, he averaged just 20 minutes per game for the series, and 12 in game seven. There was clearly no hope of Reed Shepard or Cam Whitmore in this series. I’m not going to say he should have played one of those given where they were at. However, there’s a reason why a lot of fans advocated throughout the year for more Reed minutes or more Cam minutes so that they were potentially options if you needed them. if this shot creation issue reared its ugly head in the playoffs, but because they weren’t given high leverage opportunities during the year, it wasn’t an option in the playoffs. Tari E, I guess I can accept. I had heard that they didn’t think the Warriors were a great matchup for him because if Tar’s propensity to gamble a little bit defensively and before you know it, the whole team can be out of position. I guess you can also argue maybe you could trade for someone at the deadline and have a little bit more depth down your bench. The bottom line for me, it just felt like for Eayoka, Rafel Stone, the entire basketball operations department at Toyota Center, they had the starters, that was plan A. And if that wasn’t working out for one reason or another, then Steven Adams and the double big was plan B. Just acknowledge that you’re not going to make enough shots and just try to be super big and grab every offensive rebound and eventually through sheer volume or getting fouled, you can scratch across and claw your way to the points that you need. there wasn’t really a an option outside of the starting lineup to try and play modern NBA basketball with shooting, scoring, shot making, playmaking. That was the disappointing thing for me and that’s ultimately what they need to address going into next season. Coming up, we’re going to continue discussing what we learned from this playoff experience for the Rockets. Ben brought up a really good point that I want to piggyback off of here in just one moment. First, today’s episode is brought to you by Door Dash. NBA fans, you know what time it is. Playoff season means big performances and even bigger rewards. Door Dash is bringing the heat with a slam dunk deal for Dash Pass members during the 2025 NBA playoffs. 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And continuing on here at Locked on Rockets, your daily podcast, home for everything Houston Rockets basketball. You know, Ben, one thing that has been a little frustrating to see in the aftermath of the series, and I I will fully acknowledge that and and you did we did as much right there in segment one, right? Shingu needs to be better, and he knows it needs to be better. He had a completely down year, you know, with his efficiency, his touch around the basket, put a lot of focus on the defensive side of the basketball and and that turned out incredible. Right. We know, we have a body of work the first three seasons of Shingun’s career to know that this season is not who he is shooting the ball around the rim, that his touch is significantly better than what it was. And that’s why I have optimism that he’ll focus on it this off seasonason. he’s got the the foundation of this new defensive identity of his part of his game. Um, but using this series or this season as like a referendum on Shingun and his ability to be, you know, an offensive option at times. My thing is the best version of Shingun is not him being your leading scorer. It’s not he the best version of Shingun is him being your second or third leading scorer and him leading the team utilizing his playmaking ability, right? utilizing him as a hub, utilizing him to generate double teams and and swing the ball and get those wide open opportunities for the role players on the team to to scatter the defense. And that’s when the Rockets are actually at their best. But for that version of the team to exist, it requires that one or two other guys step up as the actual leading scorers of the team. Because to your point, right, game one, Shingun was feasting. He was working. He was 11 of 18. like it but but it didn’t matter because nobody else could get involved because Shingun was getting his but they were content to just let Shingun go to work, right? Trading threes for twos, all that. And that goes back to something that got said at the press conference that I actually really disagree with, right? The, you know, Rafel Stone mentioned that the Rockets are not a team built around any one player offensively, be it Jaylen or Alpin or Fred or Amin. And that might be I guess that might be true like in the context of this past season, right? But that’s not that shouldn’t be true in a winning context. Like you need to have and this has been a problem for this team and this has been one of the overarching problems with the offensive side of this team. They have no hierarchy, right? The whole sometimes you, sometimes me, always us. Like it does work in theory sometimes, but it’s also bitten them in the ass more times than it has. Like it’s just it’s a pro it’s a problematic approach I feel like for an NBA team where you don’t know who you’re going to at the end of a game. You don’t know what your best offense is ever. Like they just seem so scattered. It seems like they step into each game and they just kind of hope oh does Jaylen have it this game? Does Alpie have it this game? Does Amen have it this game? Maybe it’s Jabari this game. Maybe Fred. And then you know within the context of a given game they’ve done a pretty good job over the course of the regular season and even a little bit in the postseason, right? riding the hot hand, figuring out who’s got it going and catering to that player a little bit more. But it would just feel a lot more concrete if they had a better established identity. Right? Jaylen, you’re Jaylen’s the number one option. Shingun’s the number two option. You know, Fred Dylan number three or Amin number three option behind them or however you want to fit, you know, factor it out. And obviously, that’s not a concrete, you know, inflexible plan. you you don’t want to just say, "Oh, well, Jaylen has to get 25 shot attempts every game, no matter what, whether he’s got it going or not got it going." But I just disagree with the notion that a team in today’s NBA can be built with the idea that, you know, you don’t know who your best player is or you don’t know who your number one and number two options are. Yeah. And one thing I heard postgame that I think was a little misinterpreted. So several players on the Warriors, most notably Draymond Green, talked about the the defense against Jaylen Green and said they wanted to take him out of the series. That that was their focus. Well, number one, that can’t be a blanket excuse because if it was that easy, then you’d see Denver tonight taking out SGA. It’s not that easy. these top players have counters. So, it shouldn’t be used as a catch-all excuse to begin with. But secondly, I think that quote was a little misinterpreted in that it’s not Draymond and the Warriors saying that Jaylen is necessarily the Rockets best player. What they are saying is that if they take away the option of peak Jaylen, which they did, they don’t see another route that the Rockets can score enough to win four games out of seven. That’s the bet there. It’s not saying necessarily that, oh, we think Jaylen’s the superstar talent. No, it’s that the way this Rockets team, at least for this season, was put together is that if you prevent Jaylen from scoring at a 20some points per game on at least reasonable efficiency level, then this team otherwise just is not going to have it. That’s the bet they made. And ultimately, it was a it was a good one for Steve Kerr. And that’s where it goes into, you know, broader game planning, roster construction. It’s a little frustrating in that, you know, the season as a whole, Jaylen was definitely better than he was in that series, but let’s not act like that he was a, you know, an A1 guy throughout the regular season. He led the team in scoring, but it was 21 points per game on, you know, mid50s true shooting. It’s better than he’s done in the past. It was solid, but it’s not so clear-cut a top option for a good NBA team that wants to win in the playoffs that you shouldn’t have alternatives. And that’s where it gets a little bit frustrating. And that’s where, you know, be it changing up roles in the off season or looking externally. It was predictable that at least in a game here or there that Jaylen would run into some of these issues. So, what’s your counter going to be? That was always the question for me. You know, in a perfect world, it would have been Reed Shepard or Cam Whitmore. Two other young guys who have a lot of talent, shotmaking ability that do it in slightly different ways. I guess the Rockets determined about midway through this season that they weren’t going to be ready this season. But then there’s other things you can do. As mentioned in the first segment, you can find a way to run more offense through Jabari Smith, who can rise and fire over anybody and shot really well in this series. Maybe you can use him as a poor man Kevin Durant. Maybe you can look at the trade deadline to acquire a little bit more depth so that you have options for these situations. Maybe going into the offseason there’s trades or free agent signings you can make. I guess what it comes down to for me is that for this Rockets team to succeed, they needed Jaylen Green to produce at a very high level. And to some degree, this has led to, you know, overkill. And maybe dude, not not even a very high level. They just needed him to produce at a moderate level to be able to succeed in this series, I suppose. But given his um his track record, it was inevitable that there were going to be at least some blips. And there were more blips than I think any of us, including Jaylen himself, wanted. But I also don’t think it was reasonable to expect that when you look at the full body of work from this season. And so that’s where I think some of the backlash is overdone and that yeah, Jaylen had a bad series. But, you know, beyond just how the Warriors defended him, I also think it gets into just broader game planning and there just was no counter from the Rockets to try and make up from that for that production in other ways in terms of modern NBA basketball. The only counter they had was going super big and emphasizing the hell out of offensive rebounding. there was no counter when it came to running functional halfcourt sets that can, you know, succeed at volume and at the math you need to win in the modern NBA. And that’s where I’ll I’ll go back to that point very quickly and then, you know, I want to get get in a couple thoughts here. Um, as well, we’ll we’ll spill this over into the final segment too before we get to kind of, you know, the big question is is change needed? Um, you know, the idea again that this team isn’t built around any one player, it’s clearly not built around anyone player. It’s a fiveman, you know, game for a reason. But the Rockets offense is very clearly built around the idea of one of Jaylen or Fred being your primary ball handler, initiating offense and utilizing the twoman game without Alberin Shingun, right? Or then Alper and Shingun doing the work by himself, either be it, you know, facing up and, you know, attacking in isolation or posting up and drawing double teams that way. The Rockets do have very clear pathways for what their offensive identity was throughout the regular season. You go look at in all the all the different onball reps that Jaylen Green got this season, all the different reps that Alper and Chingun got this season. And that’s the problem is they very much built like that that was their win condition is they needed Jaylen to produce at a at a certain level that he did throughout the regular season, right? To his credit, he had the best regular season that he’s had in a Rockets jersey. He improved in a variety of ways. still wasn’t on the best efficiency, but he was the leading scorer and they they relied on that throughout the regular season and the recipe for success was there. When Jaylen played well, the Rockets were nearly unbeatable in the regular season. But he wasn’t able to rise to that occasion except on one occasion against the Warriors in game two. And then outside of that, he wasn’t able to perform to the level that the Rockets needed him to. And that became kind of a deciding factor in the series. You’re not going to sit here and tell me that, oh, Dylan Brooks needed to do more authentically or Amin Thompson needed to show up more and in, you know, he’s a year two, he’s a sophomore, right? Like, like you want to use y the whole age excuse thing, right? Like a men Thompson is two years younger than Jaylen Green as far as tenure in experience goes. You’re not going to put this on him. You know, maybe you make the argument for Fred, but but that was never going to be Fred’s role. It was never supposed to be Fred’s role in this team to be the heavy hititterter, big gun offensive weapon. That role is Jaylen Greens. That is the role of the star two guard on the team and that’s why he and Alpour and Shingun got paid the big bucks, right? They got the contract extensions. They are the guys that are paid the most to deliver. And yes, Shingun’s efficiency was a little poor in the series, but he did so much outside of that and even still found a way at times to convert and get tough buckets against one of probably this generation’s best defender in Draymond Green. And that’s where the you walk away feeling really disappointed is that Jaylen Green wasn’t able to do that at least a little bit more in that series unfortunately. Coming up, I do want to get into a couple more points about what we learned from this playoffs for the Houston Rockets as well as is change needed. We’re going to get there in just one moment. First, today’s episode is brought to you by Amazon Fire TV. Did you know that your Fire TV is also an Xbox? Turn any TV into your gaming and entertainment hub with Fire TV Stick 4K devices. 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And final segment here at Locked on Rockets, your daily podcast, home for everything Houston Rockets basketball. All right, we’ll go kind of a little rapid fire here on a couple of the things from the playoffs that we learned. Um, you mentioned Jabari earlier, Ben, and I do think there’s like the Rockets need to find a way to kind of reintegrate more Jabari moving forward. Like I don’t want to say that I don’t want to say that he’s was forgotten about, but I do kind of feel like he was forgotten about at times. And we talk about a team that was in such desperate need of some shooting. Um he provides them size. Like there’s a reason why the sample size of the starting lineup with Jabarius Jr. instead of a min Thompson had a better plus minus rating than it did with a Min Thompson because there’s just certain advantages to having him out there that provides more spacing, more room to operate for Jaylen, gives him driving lanes. It gives Shingun more room to operate in the post. another outlet to kick out to if they start collapsing the defense, different things that Jabari provides. Uh, and then I will also say I I think that even though the double big lineup was kind of a band-aid fix that the Rockets went to late in the season and then really relied upon probably a bit too much there against the Warriors because it was the only counter that they had. Um, the double big lineup does present a very interesting idea for how you may consider building this team or or the roster construction for this team moving forward. I do think that there’s I I don’t I’m not going to say it’s a foregone conclusion, but I do have a strong suspicion that Steven Adams will be back in a Rockets jersey next season, which means we will likely still see in the future more double big lineups with Adams, with Shingun. Um, and that can continue to be a thing. But I think it provides a very interesting angle to consider from a roster construction standpoint. Do you look into the long-term future of finding a big and it’s it’s not easy to find another Steven Adams. They don’t exactly grow on trees. I maybe they do down in New Zealand, but um anyways, like I I don’t know if you go out there and find another guy like Steven Adams, but the idea that Shingun can coexist with another big is really really interesting. We brought it up around the trade deadline with the idea of pursuing a guy like a Rob Williams type. We’ve brought up the ideas of how Boston played when Eay went to the finals with them with Al Horford and Rob Williams in the starting lineup. So, I do think that is something that we learned is that the double big is legit and can be deployed in a variety of ways. It’s not just a counter for when another team goes big. They use double big against a very small mobile team and it worked. So, I think that’s an important note to take away from these playoffs as well. Yeah, absolutely. The way I would frame it, it’s a useful club to have in your bag. And so, be it Steven Adams or someone else in that role, the fact that if the matchup calls for it, that Shingon can not only hold up but flourish in that role as a four alongside Steven Adams. It’s a very useful club to have in the bag, but it it shouldn’t be the only other club you have in the bag, which is what it felt like for Eudoka and the Rockets this off season. That’s what needs to change. It needs to be an option, not the only option if plan A, which is that starting lineup, doesn’t work. Yeah, he left all he left all his other drivers at home basically. Yeah. Yeah. Well, his other irons, you might say, drivers, whatever. I don’t play golf. I don’t know how this works. Okay. But, um, the other takeaway I had, you touched on uh Fred Vanfleet earlier. I think seeing that, you know, I think Danielle Lerner called it playoff riser was the term that she used. That’s what’s so important to see that he still has that gear in him because ultimately that’s one of the biggest reasons that you keep Fred Van Fleet in his 30s. The comparison I threw out in the logger line earlier this week and it’s not perfect, but in a lot of ways the ideal usage of Fred Ben Fleet should be something along the lines of how Oklahoma City and Phoenix used Chris Paul next to Shay Gilis Alexander and Devin Booker earlier this decade and that he’s the stabilizing force, but he’s there to sort of guide and accentuate the young guy that’s next to him in the back court. And obviously the flaw in this analogy, the Rockets at this point don’t have a guy on the level of Sheay or Devin next to Fred Van Fleet. But where Fred’s playoff run comes into play is that in a perfect world, what’s going to happen? Even the best are going to have more attention paid to them in the playoffs. And so you want to feel like that veteran has the gear that if for one reason or another the leading scorer doesn’t have it going or isn’t quite as efficient as he normally has because of playoff defenses that he can step up and in a limited circumstance do the heavy lifting. That’s what Fredmond Fleet did from game four through game six of this series. And so from a formula perspective, it reminds you that the reasons the Rockets signed Fred Bundle, the reasons I expect them to resign him, the reasons why he makes sense well into his 30s, they’re still there. They’re still valid. And he showed you that in this series, it just comes down to to make the whole formula work, who is next to him, how do the rest of the puzzle pieces work? But Fred’s piece of the puzzle, this series showed you that the Rockets are completely validated for the reasons they signed him and the reasons that they believe in him moving forward. That playoff riser, that extra gear factor that we saw in Toronto, he still has it even after a somewhat um inefficient regular season. Talking about an extra gear, I will say one more note here is is it was great to see Amen Thompson kind of finally arrive there at the end of game four and have the impact that he did in games five and six and even game seven, right until until he he had the cramps, you know, the calf cramps or whatever it was and then went down and literally like if a man Thompson doesn’t go down for that small stretch in that game like maybe we’re talking about maybe we’re recapping, you know, game two of Rockets Wolves instead of talking about, you know, this the the playoff postmortem. here because the moment that Amin Thompson went down, that’s when Steph Curry got loose in in that fourth quarter. So, uh, watching him kind of blossom and emerge the way that he did as that series went on. Um, I think, uh, good friend of the program, Roo Williams, has has likened him to a basketball robot that just downloads and processes information so quickly. And that’s why you’ve seen such an exponential growth from him in just year two of his career. And especially in that series, watching him just kind of realize, hey, I can take over offensively. I can get downhill and just start dropping my shoulder into guys and finishing at the rim and I’m more athletic than anybody else on this floor. I can get mine. Watching him slowly start to figure figure that out was really was was an awesome revelation. And I don’t think Rockets fans are necessarily ready for like how good Am Thompson is going to be in year in just year three of his career. He’s already he was already phenomenal in year two. He’s going to meet he’s should be on an alldefensive team. He received some DPOI votes. Like I I think he were ready for You want to talk about we’ve talked about like oh my god are they going to make the leap with Jaylen and Shingon and like all this stuff. Get ready for the year three Am Thompson leap because I think that’s going to be a very legitimate thing. Um and above all else, the way he played in game seven, there’s intangible value in seeing guys that play their best ball when the lights are at their brightest. We saw it in big moments throughout the regular season. We know what he did in Oracle late in the year. We know the brilliant game he had in Boston, including the game winner. We saw it in game seven. We can throw out all of the data and talk about development. A lot of it when we’re talking about high-end players in the NBA, just comes down to can you trust them in the highest leverage moments to bring out the best version of themselves with a men even in just his second season. I think we’re we’re seeing already that he’s one of those guys. Yeah. Um, and to to bring this thing to bring this conversation to its end end point, which is, you know, is change needed for next season, you know, I I walk away thinking you you have enough of a body of work from the regular season and from, you know, kind of how you did get exposed in the playoffs to warrant there’s enough there to warrant to say yes, change is needed. Now, what that change ultimately looks like could vary from person to person. what you think. Maybe maybe you want to jettison Jaylen Green to Mars. That’s fine if if that’s your if that’s your take on the team. I I want to just make a very quick point here about the Jaylen Green stuff. Nowhere when I when I asked Refell Stone that question about the data, about the lineup, whatever. Nowhere did I say that Jaylen Green was like hurting the team or whatever. Like he might be just miscast in his current role. That could just it could be as simple as that, right? Maybe you downsize his role. Maybe you change up. And is he open to that? Who knows, right? like he was a former number two overall pick. Like would he be open to the idea of a smaller role? Would he be open to the idea of potentially being moved to the bench, right? And being deployed in a smaller, you know, a smaller role. I don’t know. But I feel like continuing to try and like square peg round hole with him as your number one option is not necessarily the right course of action moving forward for this team. And the team has the bearings of what feels like a legitimate contender. The defense is legit. It’s got an incredible cast of, you know, the right role players, the right pieces. You’re missing that one key tip of the spear offensive player. And it was supposed to be Jaylen. And I I hear the fans who want to say, "Give it another year. Let it let him try again, whatever." And and if if that’s the boat that you’re in, if you think patience is the key, then then more power to you. I do not share that same sentiment at this point. And I have a fear of this Rockets team becoming the next version of the Sacramento Kings or the Memphis Grizzlies where they are so internally high on their own guys where they don’t see the problems that are currently facing the team that they do decide to run things back and then the team regresses or something changes and then suddenly you lose that window of of the momentum that you had of being a top-seated team. And that’s what I don’t want to see happen for this Rockets team. They need more offensively. They either need more out of Jaylen offensively or they just need better shooting. Like there’s there’s changes that need to be happen, you know, is where essentially I kind of boil down to and we’re going to spend the entire offseason talking about what those changes could look like. Yeah, I don’t think they have to be external changes. By the way, real quickly, I do want to underscore just how much the defense translated. Eoko was hired as a defensive coach and this was a top five defense throughout the year. The only question that was out there, and it wasn’t always fair, but it was out there. How was Alpar and Shenong going to hold up defensively in the playoffs when he was targeted a bit more, he didn’t just hold up, he flourished. So, the defense fully translated, and that is a big takeaway that even though we’re disappointed in the offense, and rightfully so, the defense translating that everything we saw over 82 regular season games with the Rockets being a top five defense throughout, it not only translated, they might have even been a little bit better. So, let’s not lose sight of that when we talk about the future of this team. As far as the offense, I agree with you. It’s that A1 scoring role that’s at the moment preventing this team from being at the true contention tier. The worst thing you could do in my opinion would be moving Jaylen Green just to move him and ending up with someone that’s more expensive, older, takes up at least as much if not more of your salary cap, doesn’t have as much upside because he’s an older player. You probably doesn’t give you as much future optionality because of that. With Jaylen Green, I mean, there are certainly chemistry, roster continuity benefits to staying the course. He works hard. He defends at a level that’s good enough for Eme Udoka. The status quo is not the end of the world. Obviously, we’d love it if the mega trade was available this off seasonason to bring in a superstar that’s in perfect alignment agewise and fitwise with everything you’re trying to do. But if it doesn’t, I do not think it’s a situation where you just trade Jaylen to trade him because you could easily be in a worse spot both in terms of the roster and in terms of team building. The big thing for me is having the optionality to play different ways. And so I don’t want to go into the playoffs next year. And I think this is true. Even if Jaylen takes a leap forward in the regular season, there’s no reason for a team that has this much depth of young talent to have Aaron Holidayiday and Jun Tate as their ninth and tth men. And Jan wasn’t available in the playoffs, but by the end of the regular season, he was your 10th man. he was your next up if you realistically needed an option down the stretch of this season. I want Reed or Cam, hopefully both to be more ready. I want to see Tari and Jabari, I want to see their roles, they played enough minutes wise, but I want to see their roles tweaked a little bit, experiment more with what they can potentially become offensively. If you stay the course, you’re going to be bringing in a top 10 pick from the Phoenix Suns in this draft lottery. I doubt they’re going to be ready to play year one. But I bring all that up to say certainly you have an incentive organizationally to know what you have with these other young guys, but it’s also it gives Emeoka, to go back to the golf analogy, more clubs in his bag. At the end of this year, it wasn’t just that Jaylen was struggling. It’s that the way they managed the season as a whole. And maybe some of the some of the guys just weren’t ready. There just weren’t any other clubs that he could realistically pull out are not very many of them by this time next year. And the Rockets should be back in the playoffs unless just something goes off the rails injury-wise. With their youth and the propensity for most of young guys around their ages to get better, they should be back. It’s not that you have to trade Jaylen Green. bench him, do anything like that. I want more options. And by these playoffs, it’s pretty clear the Rockets concluded internally that these other young guys who do have a lot of upside, there’s a reason you drafted Reed Shepard number three overall. There’s a reason why Cam Whitmore had talk to go in the top five of his draft. There’s a reason why Jabari Smith almost went number one and went number three in his draft. There’s talent in these players. There’s going to be talent in who you bring in with the Phoenix pick this year. I want I just want those players to actually be in a position to be viable options for Emoa next playoffs. And maybe it’s not Jaylen Green that struggles. Maybe it’s somebody else. Maybe it’s Fred Ben Fleet that doesn’t have it going next year. It doesn’t have to be Jaylen. It’s just it’s a frustrating problem to have because the Rockets do have a lot of depth, at least theoretically, that they can turn to if one guy doesn’t work out. It’s just this year that depth wasn’t ready. Hopefully next year it is. Uh it could be through internal development. Maybe you do a consolidation trade and you package two or three of those guys for a guy who’s more ready to play next season. But to me, having an option that Emmeodoka can trust. That’s that’s the big thing that the Rockets need this time next year that they did not have against the Warriors. We want your thoughts. What did you learn from the playoff experience against the Golden State Warriors? Is change needed for this Rockets team moving forward? Let us know your thoughts in the YouTube comments. Ben, you know the drill. Let him know where to track you down at. Yep. Uh Ben Dubose on Blue Sky, the Rocketswire, and the Logger Line on Twitterx and rocketswire.usa.com for all your daily Houston Rockets news coverage. 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 of your choosing and 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.

Houston Rockets Most Important Playoff LESSONS From Warriors Series | Is CHANGE Needed?

Can the Houston Rockets half-court offense evolve after a disappointing showing in the postseason? As the Rockets faced off against the Golden State Warriors, their playoff performance reveals critical insights into their offensive struggles and potential roster changes.

Host Jackson Gatlin (@JTGatlin) is joined by weekly cohost Rockets Wire Editor Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) to discuss the Rockets challenges, spotlighting key players like Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, and Amen Thompson. They explore the team’s evolving strategy, the impact of Ime Udoka’s defensive coaching, and the need for a clearer offensive hierarchy. With Amen Thompson’s emergence and the potential for internal improvements, the discussion teases the Rockets path forward.

Discover how the Houston Rockets can reshape their future and what it means for their future. Tune in for an in-depth analysis and expert insights.

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