Five Out: The coming Rockets minutes crunch, AKA the 240 problem

It’s Five Out, back from the dead, or at least on hiatus. We’re not close to playing basketball again yet, but we’re close enough to start thinking about real basketball stuff. Run to the corner, mini-camp style.

This is simply an exploration of the decisions Ime Udoka and the Rockets coaching staff are facing this season. I don’t pretend to have the answers, I simply want, in this article at least, to frame the question in clear terms. It’s one thing to say, “Play X, Y, Z more!” but with what minutes? That’s really a problem with this year’s Rockets. Something is going to have to give at some point, at some point.

One – The 240 Puzzle

Two hundred and forty minutes in an NBA game without overtime. No matter how you look at rosters, lineups, positions, rotations, wishes, hopes and dreams, that’s the number of minutes all five players must play in a game. It’s immutable (unless overtime is involved).

Most teams are looking for ways to fill the time their top six or so players aren’t playing. The Rockets? They’re looking for ways to find more minutes, get their collection of young talent playing, while still getting the veterans playing and at least contending for the play-in, if not the playoffs. The Rockets’ record as a team last year suggests 46 wins, not 41, so if the team is maturing and can win close road games and improve because of the maturity of the young players, 50 wins isn’t crazy at all. But how do you do that AND get all the young players playing?

Two – The Centers

Alperen Sengun is currently on an incredibly good trajectory for a young big man. Alpie turned 22 in July, but he’s entering his fourth NBA season. His seasons match those of another non-American center you may have heard of — Nikola Jokic. By advanced metrics, he was the Rockets’ second-best player last season, behind Fred VanVleet. He simply needs to play real minutes. Let’s say he plays 32 minutes, minimum.

That leaves 16 minutes for Steven Adams (who appears healthy) and Jock Landale, who was the Rockets’ third-best player last season in plus-minus on the court among true centers.

There’s also the idea of ​​playing Jabari Smith as a smallball center, or Tari Eason, or Amen Thompson.

How do you break that down? The 16 minutes for Adams, who is known for his offensive rebounding, toughness and crushing screens? A few minutes occasionally for Landale? Reduce Alpie’s minutes? What about the mismatch between Amen Thompson’s athletic size and speed? When he got minutes at center, good things happened.

Jock, even though he lived up to my notion of him as “the near-perfect backup center” in the second half of the year when he got healthy, may have to settle for warming the bench.

Jeff Green played A LOT of center early last season, because while Sengun was good, the perpetually injured Landale was not. And while Boban could have been a great backup in the 1990s, he just wasn’t fast enough for the pace of today’s NBA. (Good luck Boban, you were a delight.)

The Rockets also have big Australian shooter Jack McVeigh and undrafted player N’Faly Dante on their roster. Unless McVeigh is simply a great shooter or injuries hit hard, it’s hard to see either of those players getting playing time.

Three – The attackers

Dillon Brooks. Tari Eason. Jabari Smith. Amen Thompson. Cam Whitmore. AJ Griffin. JaeSean Tate. Jeff Green.

Here we have the SF position and the PF position, 96 minutes in total. Where are they going?

Brooks is almost certainly going to start and play at least 30 minutes to start the season. Same goes for Jabari Smith. That’s 60 minutes down from 96, which leaves 36 minutes for Amen Thompson, Tari Eason, Cam Whitmore (if he plays in SF), Tate, Uncle Jeff, and I’m guessing AJ Griffin, although his Summer League outing wasn’t particularly encouraging. He CAN shoot though, so that’s something.

For the purposes of this review, we’ll just consider Cam a shooting guard.

Tari probably needs more 22 minutes than he did last season. It’s entirely possible he could take Brooks’ spot without too much trouble and with more potential. Brooks started last season shooting really well and ended up not shooting well. It could have been injury, but he ended up shooting slightly better than his career average, so maybe not? Maybe it’s just Dillon Brooks?

But if you play Tari 22 more minutes, you’ll only have 16 minutes to exploit Amen Thompson’s energy and athleticism. Is that ALL he gets? Do you reduce Brooks and Smith to less than 30 minutes? Maybe so.

It quickly becomes apparent that Brooks is a hindrance here, and maybe, based on his appearance, Jabari could be one too. Everyone talks about the ticking time bomb under Jalen Green, but there’s also a smaller ticking time for Jabari. He needs to do more of the “I’m a third-round pick” stuff. Luckily, he’s only 21, and this is Season 3.

We haven’t even talked about Uncle Jeff, Tate, Griffin. I guess they’re not really playing, or they’re playing very specific games, right now.

Four – The Guards

Here we find Fred VanVleet, Jalen Green, Reed Sheppard, Cam Whitmore, Aaron Holiday, Amen Thompson at point guard, and maybe AJ Griffin, although he certainly didn’t look fast enough to guard the VSL wings.

VanVleet is a winning player and, relative to the number of players played, the Rockets’ best player. He’s also, by far, their most expensive player. Fred finished just outside the top five in minutes played last season, finishing sixth. Fred is not a great guard and he’ll be 31 at the end of the season. Ideally, you’d like to have him play about 32 minutes per game, not 37. But is that possible? That remains to be seen. The Rockets were a disaster with VanVleet off the court last season.

Again, we have 96 minutes to go, and Fred has spoken for at least 32 minutes. We now have 64 minutes left for Green, Sheppard, Whitmore and Holiday.

I really don’t want to get back into the Jalen Green thing, so let me tell you what I think. (You may think differently, and that’s fine.) I think Jalen is going to be a starter and play at least 32 minutes a game. Unless he’s just awful and someone else looks clearly better. Even then, a change won’t happen for a month unless he defies all measures of awfulness. I don’t think he will, but let’s leave that aside.

You now have 32 minutes for Thompson, Sheppard, Whitmore and Holiday. Maybe you can find another 20 minutes for Amen here if the shooting is good elsewhere, but let’s say it’s 10. Sheppard and Whitmore each get about 11 minutes per game. If Amen eats up forward or center minutes, they could get to 16 minutes.

While the guard position isn’t the richest on the Rockets, it’s still pretty rich, especially if you include Amen in some form or another in the “guard rotation.”

Is Holiday really playing? Does he start with reserve minutes and give way to Reed? Would you really play him instead of Whitmore at fullback, like Ime did with FVV and Holiday multiple times last season?

Five – Something has to give?

I think something has to give. But does it have to give this season? The obvious thing on the guard side is to wait until next year and decline VanVleet’s option. But Sheppard has to show you by the end of the season (let’s not be stupid about starting point guards without proof) that he can handle the job, and Amen (or someone else) can help. Fred’s option is expensive, and at least one of Green and Sengun will likely be signed long-term. Maybe both.

Then there’s Brooks. I think Tari Eason, given his health, is better overall. Tari, with the addition of a good shot, would be much better. This isn’t to say that signing Brooks was a bad idea, or that he’s overvalued. That was an NBA narrative, not reality. Despite what the chattering men with non-standard spellings of common names might think, I don’t believe the Rockets made an offer against themselves for Dillon. That should mean his contract is negotiable, given the type of play and overall good citizenship we saw last season.

If the Rockets weren’t in “Phase 2” of their own private Del Boca Vista and were still rebuilding, they might have this starting lineup and bench rotation:

Sheppard, Whitmore, Thompson, Eason, Adams (ok, two guys can shoot, but they’re tough).

Holiday, Griffin, Tate, Uncle Jeff, Landale, McVeigh

I truly believe this team could challenge several of the rebuilding teams in the NBA. Those teams are the Rockets’ second and third units.

The lack of playing time is real. There is not enough playing time for the players who deserve it.

You can talk about trades, but you still have to get your salary back and some players in general, and if you get someone good in return, he needs minutes as well.

What the Rockets do about this situation is one of the most interesting stories in the entire NBA, not just in the Rockets world.