Paulo Alves

And he can be that third scoring star on this team.

And sometimes even higher than that.

I mean, last game he was higher than KD in points scored.

Might have been higher than Shingun as well, actually.

So, as you said, those guys are the X factors and the ceiling raisers.

But at the same time, it's as you said, it's as I said before, sorry.

I'm not a non-believer on this team.

And I think I've made clear by my optimism in previous pods when things weren't going so well.

But I'll only be if, like, it's not, you know, I'm not a doomer, I guess, saying, oh, this team's not good enough.

But I'm only going to be...

full-in, you know, part-in to this team when I start seeing that they can lock in when it matters most, or a consistent stretch of games in which when the game's on the line, they lock in and they play great defense.

Because the offense might be great, but if you do not have the ability to lock in on defense and in strict possessions in the clutch in those tough games, then it doesn't

really made like you can't really look at the framework of this team as you've got KDS the closer because no close like if you're going to rely on one guy the only way you can win from your offensive output is if you've got just a dynamic offense that's like multi like that has multiple scoring threats and then you can manufacture open looks really easily like look at the Pacers last year

They weren't good enough to win the Champions League, but they were in the weak East.

But the reason they could afford to be poor on defense was because, schematically, that team was systematically getting open looks.

And so they could very easily survive a poor game from one of their stars because they could very easily get 20 from Nembhard or get 20 from Aaron Neesmith.

The Rockets are not and are not going to be that type of offense.

And so the process of acquiring a closer only makes sense if you retain part of the defensive identity that you had last year, that you can at least tap into it when the game gets close and allow KD to be that closer, right?

Because you're not expecting your closer to drop 15 points in the last five minutes of a game.

No, you're expecting the game to be tight, getting stops both ways, and your closer is the guy that can make a shot when nobody else can, right?