Ben DuBose

He's established enough.

You're not going to have to worry about Stephen forgetting how to play or needing to figure out where he fits with this team.

Steven, in his minutes, is going to be the same guy.

But in this period where Imei is going to have to trust the young guys more, they're going to have to shoot more threes, go for more variants, go for better half-court execution because you can't fall back on the offensive rebounding formula, maybe this gives a confidence boost to guys like Reid and Jabari, and that's what you need.

You know, if you want to look at the season, we've done quarter-season reviews.

Now we're at the halfway point, so we're, you know, two of the four quarters are in the books.

From the first 20 to the next 20, Amin Thompson clearly got better.

Amin's been like a 28-5 guy since the start of December on 62-63% true shooting.

He's been tremendous.

His defense has improved as well.

Well, if you get Reid and Jabari, because they're going to get longer leashes, they're going to get to play through their struggles, particularly Reid, the next few weeks in a way they haven't in the past,

There's a world where when Steven gets back, you have a better version of those young guys, and maybe that's what you need to have a real chance to make a run this year.

Because with all the flaws you talked about, and you're right, particularly with Shingun, with just the overall defense that wasn't dialed in, especially early in the game, when you have Reid and Jabari just making shots at that level...

Nothing else matters.

When you have that version of those two young guys, I call them your ceiling guys.

They are so important.

This team's potential goes through the roof when you have that version of those two guys to the point where even against a good team, even when you're not dialed in defensively, even when you're down 16, you absorb the haymakers of those early threes,

the Rockets still found a way.

And so to me, that's the, I guess that's the counter.

It's that, yeah, this is, these are blows losing Steven Adams, and that's going to make the Shingun issues in the paint even more glaring when you don't have another big body to help protect the rim.