Tag: VanVleet

I was a late bloomer in the bike-riding scene. I rocked training wheels until I was around 9 years old, and even then the only reason I moved on was because my brother and I were gifted new bikes for Christmas and told there was no option for trainers. I was grateful for the stability that training wheels had given me to that point. They helped me learn some fundamentals of bike riding and at times I even took what they did for me for granted. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life, hopefully, when they outgrow something that was always meant to be temporary. It’s a good dilemma to have, but a dilemma nonetheless. That said, I think it’s time to ask, “have the Rockets outgrown their Fred VanVleet training wheels?”

The need for stability

The Rockets made the right choice whenever they picked VanVleet over James Harden in the offseason prior to the 2023 season. VanVleet is nowhere near the basketball savant Harden is when he has the ball in his hands, but he is every bit and more the hard-working grit and grind player that is able to redefine a team from the inside out. That’s exactly what Rafael Stone and Ime Udoka were looking for whenever they signed him and Dillon Brooks to lucrative contracts that a lot of people laughed at in the moment. It’s pretty nice to sit back and enjoy how stupid all of those people look in hindsight.

The plan was always to bring Fred in to stabilize a young team with bad habits and help reforge them into tough-minded all around basketball players. That plan has worked beautifully. He’s been able to provide a consistent point-of-attack defensive presence while hustling and protecting the ball for near 40 minutes a night. As Green and Thompson have continued to require patience becoming consistent on-ball threats and facilitators, VanVleet has at least been able to get the table set and help the Rockets keep possession of the ball. He was an essential piece to the Rockets turnaround 41-41 season in ’23-’24.

Fast forward to December 2024, the landscape of this team looks very different. They’re very much in the mix for the 2nd seed in a crowded West and one of the most desirable destinations for unhappy stars looking for a change of scenery. They handle business against average-bad teams and give the best in the league a run for their money. Of course, Fred is still very much a part of all those things. Take the analogy too far and it sounds like I’m saying this team is better without Fred. Not the case. He’s a very real contributor on a team that is showing itself to be very good. That said, he also has some pretty glaring flaws that look to be the stuff that can stunt the very growth he has been a catalyst for.

Understanding limitations

We all know Fred to be a low turnover-high assist guy, which is great. We love ball security. However, he is far from being a dynamic passer and has extremely limited floor vision. He tends to shrink the floor and condense the responsibilities of the defense instead of expanding it and making their jobs harder. This leads to a lot of guys standing around waiting for their turn to crash the offensive glass after Fred or Şengün miss a heavily contested shot.

Speaking of turnovers, his jump shot is basically one at this point. Even though the Rockets have become the best offensive rebounding teams in the league and have feasted on second chance opportunities, you don’t exactly want to make your living off of your own missed shots. Obviously, Fred is not the only guard on this team who has struggled to make jump shots, but he is the one continuing to take 29 foot pull-ups late in games that he was held scoreless for 30+ minutes.

He’s logging 38% from the field 30 games into the season. I know, I know, we don’t like FG% anymore. Don’t worry! As of Friday, December 27, he’s got a 50.2% TS%. That’s good for 388th out of the 471 players whose stats are measured by nba.com. If he’s going to miss all the time anyway, I would much rather those attempts go to the guys on this team who are hopefully a part of its longterm future. I’m not going to make this about Jalen Green, even though I think there’s enough to talk about with his role and this specific issue, but I would rather him get a longer leash when it comes to attempts than to continue to watch Fred take even worse shots.

We have seen him be the guy who can scale his game up with a hot hand and be the leading scorer in winning fashion any random night of the NBA season. The problem is that he isn’t able to do that in any sort of replicable fashion and has had more than a few games where he seems very reluctant to defer to others who might be able to get it going. He knows that he is one of the leaders of this team and expects himself to play like that in the biggest moments. Someone needs to tell him that icing out your teammates to take hero shots is not always the best way to lead a team.

Udoka has to see, at some point, that the ways in which Fred provides stability to the offense is also one of its biggest limitations. He raises the floor with his leadership, defense, and by being a steady floor general, but he also lowers the ceiling by stagnating ball movement, settling for wild shots, and shrinking the floor our dynamic young players could utilize.

Is it already time to move on?

Because I refuse to remove an nuance from the conversation in order to have an easily repeatable hot take, I’ve got to say yes AND no. Something like a, “sort of.”

No, I don’t think that the Rockets should be in any kind of hurry to move on from Fred VanVleet. He is a good basketball player. He just has flaws, like all the rest. You can’t forget the human side of this either. He’s a leader in that locker room and he has all of Udoka’s, and the young guys for that matter, trust. I think that this is an element that fans online really seem to overlook and take for granted. Teams who are winning do not often just trade away people who are undeniably an important factor in them getting to this point. Not this early. Especially when there is not currently a clear heir to take his place. Maybe a star becomes available in the offseason and it makes sense to work with Fred on a sign and trade to match salary, but that is most likely a question for the summer.

He is still a solid defender whose career shows him to be a better shooter than he has been so far. Hopefully we’re due for some regression in that department. There’s also a random knee injury he suffered a couple weeks back that could very likely still be part of the math in all this. Who knows for sure.

So why is this a “sort of” on whether or not it’s time to move on? Well, the original question posed here is, “have the Rockets outgrown their Fred VanVleet training wheels?” To that question, I would give a resounding YES.

It’s not time to move on from VanVleet altogether, but it is time to move on from this version of him. The young guns have grown up a ton since the beginning of the 2023 season. Şengün has proven he’s gonna do his thing on a nightly basis, even if that TS% needs some work, but the others deserve the chance to decide how some of these games are going to end. Even if it is for worse. We need Fred to intentionally put himself on the back burner, play more off ball, and trust others to initiate and move the ball around.

I hear the difficulty with the guard conversation. A lot of people have zero faith in Jalen being able to take Fred’s opportunities and consistently turn them into something good. Fair enough. I disagree long term but I get there’s a lot of statistical and empirical evidence that points in that direction. I know we’re convinced Amen isn’t ready. Fine. That’s probably true. But, wouldn’t you rather take the training wheels off and know for sure? Have Fred initiate actions to get other guys involved quickly and then get out of the way? Then, when it gets down to crunch time, do it again! Let guys like Amen and Jalen initiate and continue to learn from stupid live ball turnovers and dribbling into traffic.

We know that this team still has a lot of growing to do, but that growth isn’t going to come unless guys are continually given the opportunity to fall of the bike and get back up. It’s time to take off the VanVleet training wheels.

Sheldon details the hard hitting question of Have the Rockets outgrown their Fred VanVleet training wheels?