Dave Hardisty

I mean, all in all, it goes in the box score as a good game.

And they're going to need him to continue to fight through it because one thing without Alper and Shingun that's going to stand out, I mean, there's not a lot of true creators.

When you look at the box, the Rockets played 10 guys tonight, and off the bench, four of them are –

Dorian Finney-Smith, Clint Capella, Aaron Holiday, and Joshua Cokie.

None of those guys create offense in any sense of the word.

Maybe a little bit from Aaron Holiday here and there.

Reed Shepard, I mean, even with the subpar defense and the four turnovers, they had to play him 23 minutes because where is the shot creation, where is the playmaking going to come from?

So...

You know, I sort of single out Reed because without Shingun, he's the obvious guy to sort of ask a little bit more from offensively.

But then I also think to a lesser extent, Jabari and Tari, they're the two guys in that starting lineup who in a different situation, the Rockets have talked about this.

Like I go back to the Fred Van Vliet and Kevin Durant podcast where, you know, Fred said on a different team, Jabari could score 20 plus points per game if he was getting, you know, requisite shot attempts.

And it just doesn't make sense for him to do that here.

Well, in the short term, without Shingun, and especially against, you know, so-so defenses over the next week or so, this may be the time, especially if Reed's slumping a little bit off the bench, which he has in recent games, then other than KD, where are the shots going to come from?

It felt like, especially down the stretch of that game, and some of it was fatigue, but there were possessions where...

There was just nothing going offensively.

There wasn't a lot of movement.

And KD just held the ball and put up a late shot with two or three seconds left in the shot clock because they just had nothing going offensively.

There weren't enough creators out there.

We know the limitations a man has not being able to shoot consistently beyond 15, 16 feet.

So this all leads to, in the very short term, Javari and Tari having a window to do a little bit more offensively.