This is the second in a series of pieces you guys suggested in the comments section of my Baba Oladotun article.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fitting, actually. If the Houston Rockets do draft Oladotun, they\u2019ll be trying to plug him into Kevin Durant\u2019s spot. Obviously, it won\u2019t be a one-for-one swap – this would be the \u201cstrategic stepback\u201d that Rafael Stone referred to – but the idea would be to groom Oladotun to take Durant\u2019s role.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that\u2019s not a great idea, because VBG\u2019s suggestion for this article was \u201cwhy were Durant, Alperen Sengun and Reed Sheppard so bad together in 2025-26\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rockets trio struggled when they shared the floor<\/p>\n
Per DataBallr, that trio was -4.7 when they were all on the floor at the same time.<\/p>\n
The data is unambiguous. The group was fine offensively with a 119.6 Offensive Rating (3.5 better than the team\u2019s overall rating). It\u2019s the defense that they tank, with a 124.4 Defensive Rating (8.2 worse). It\u2019s rumored that every time Ime Udoka put all three on the floor at the same time, he went home and wept.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no surprise to anyone that Sengun and Sheppard struggled together defensively. Remove Durant, and the remaining duo were still -0.9, with defense again being the culprit. Durant and Sengun without Sheppard were fine (+2.0), as were Durant and Sheppard without Sengun (+5.5).<\/p>\n
Yet, it\u2019s still notable that the most negative combination of the three is when they\u2019re all together. The dirty secret here is that, in 2025-26, Durant was closer to a neutral defender than the positive one he\u2019s been for most of his career. At 37, to paraphrase Lethal Weapon, it\u2019s possible that Durant is getting too old for this (defense).<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t waste time on CleaningTheGlass trying to find a single positive lineup featuring all three – such a lineup does not exist. So, this is clearly a problem:<\/p>\n
Can Ime Udoka scheme around limitations?<\/p>\n
Ime Udoka\u2019s solution was mostly to not put Reed Sheppard on the floor.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a tenable solution. It may be that Sheppard is a bona fide draft bust, but we are not close to being sure of that yet. The Rockets must explore as much of his potential as possible before making any rash decisions.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, Marcus Smart helps here. Sheppard, Smart, Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr. and Sengun could be a functional lineup, although that could be partly contingent on whether Smart has a season where he\u2019s hitting threes, or one where he isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have the solutions – if you haven\u2019t noticed, I am not the head coach of the Houston Rockets. It has been argued in the past that if Udoka is a defensive mastermind, he has to be able to design defensive schemes that insulate Sengun and Sheppard while also putting a neutral defender like Durant on the floor.<\/p>\n
Is that asking him to draw blood from a stone? Can Smart, Thompson, Smith Jr., and Tari Eason make up that much ground if Durant isn\u2019t contributing?<\/p>\n
Sheppard is looking a bit bulkier this summer. Could he make defensive strides? Could Sengun find his 2024-25 form on that end without compromising his offensive efficiency?<\/p>\n
Questions without clear answers. For now, we can only hope that Sengun, Sheppard, and Durant are a more viable trio in 2026-27.<\/p>\n
If anyone has any better suggestions, I\u2019m all ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the second in a series of pieces you guys suggested in the comments section of my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,7352,211,9782],"class_list":["post-809766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-rockets","tag-basketball","tag-houston","tag-houston-rockets","tag-houstonrockets","tag-nba","tag-player-analysis","tag-rockets","tag-rockets-analysis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117081774736873026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}