Silas voices support for Sengun
Coach Stephen Silas was not in the mood at the time to offer a detailed examination of the Rockets’ defensive shortcomings or his decision to address them.
Damian Lillard had just hit them for 71 points. Silas had lit up his team in the Moda Center’s visitors’ locker room. Silas listed the defensive schemes the Rockets had tried, not calling out any individual. But when asked why he had pulled center Alperen Sengun and held him out for the entire fourth quarter of a second consecutive game, Silas did cite the Warriors’ and Trail Blazers’ strategies.
“Yeah, I mean they went at him in the pick-and-roll. Every single one,” Silas said.
Sengun offered a more pointed assessment that night.
“I’m just doing bad defense, very bad defense. That’s why I’m not playing,” Sengun said. “I just need to be focused on pickand-roll defense, I think. I can do (a) better job. I can improve.”
Two nights later, Silas was considerably more comprehensive in describing why his starting center was not his finishing choice, mixing analysis of Sengun’s defensive challenges with defense of Sengun’s play as a 20-year-old, second-year center.
“We’ve had conversations about it,” Silas said Tuesday. “It’s not like he’s being punished at all. But when there’s a Klay Thompson or Dame Lillard going, you have to make an adjustment and to leave him out there on an island where he’s either going to be in a deep drop, or a drop that’s a little bit higher, that’s really about it. And it’s unfair to him. It’s unfair to the group, it’s unfair to everybody to just allow him to just get dribbled around.
“Obviously, Dame was making shots on everybody, but it is my job to exhaust every option whether it’s zones with Bobi (Marjanovic), whether it’s switching with Jabari (Smith Jr.), whether it’s blitzing with (Usman Garuba).”
With Sengun, the Rockets could only use drop coverages, a poor option against a high-scoring guard made worse when their own guards do not excel fighting over screens or being disruptive against ballhandlers. But Silas argued that the issue is temporary.
“I had this conversation with him yesterday about (Nikola) Jokic and his pickand-roll defense,” Silas said. “His pick-and-roll defense has gotten a lot better as his career has gone along. But Alpi’s 20. He’s a second-year player. I do understand it, but I don’t want him to put so much pressure on himself. If there’s an adjustment made and it’s one game out of 82 or two games out of 82, he’ll get a lot better. He’s 20-years-old. He’s a second-year player. He’ll be fine.”
The decision to sit Sengun, rather than others, points to his position as a center. With so few teams relying on centers in postup or iso, a center’s defense becomes part of a larger scheme, rather than an individual matchup. He cannot be hidden with another assignment, at least not for long.
“With other guys you can move them around a little bit,” Silas said. “You can change the matchups with them. But with a five man, there’s just the coverage. And Alperen in particular, doesn’t have the ability to — I can’t change coverages very much with him. He can’t switch and his blitzing is something that will come, but it’s not there yet.
“So, when there’s Klay (Thompson) or a Dame and a change needs to be made, then I need to go to a switching group, I need to go to a blitzing group where I can put more pressure on the guy or guys or offense. And yeah, it’s a learning process for him. We had to put him on (Matisse) Thybulle early in the game, in the last game, so he wouldn’t be in as many pick-and-rolls. He’s not being singled out at all. But it is the job of the five man to be the one who can kind of man your defense and be the center point of your defense.
“We’ve been talking about his pick-and-rolls all season, he and I, the group because it’s not just on him. It’s on the guards working their way up into the ball and getting over the screens and late contesting all those things. But when there’s a guy rolling the way Dame was rolling. You just can’t sit back and hope.”
Lillard was far from the only scorer to light up the Rockets this season. He is the eighth to score 44 or more against them There have been 21 50-point games in the NBA this season, and 44 games with 45 points or more.
The Rockets’ choice to change defenses by sitting Sengun was not going to make them immune to scoring explosions, as Lillard made vividly clear when he scored 21 fourthquarter points while Sengun was out. But Sengun has repeatedly said that he needs to improve, with Silas pointing out that his young center has no shortcomings when it comes to accepting coaching.
“He’s always done a great job when he’s been challenged, and he knows how I feel about him,” Silas said. “He knows that I love him. He knows that he has an opportunity as a second-year player to be one of 30 starting centers in the league. And he’s taken it and run with it, especially on the offensive end. He knows he needs to do better a better job on the defensive end. But I’m not down on Alpi at all. For a 20-year-old, he’s killing it. He’s killing it.”