Fred VanVleet

And that's just a reality of what this team is.

On top of that, they didn't have their point guard last year, and Fred VanVleet is absolutely a guy who understands how to control tempo.

He knows when to push the pace, when to pick things up.

Fred himself is not necessarily a guy that plays up-tempo basketball, but Fred knows when to push the pace, when to, hey, we've got to score now.

Don't run the break and flank to the wings or flank to the slot or anything like that.

Go straight to your corner, know where you're supposed to be, and be ready to start knocking down those threes because clearly he can do it at a really elite clip.

Yeah, because you mentioned decision-making is kind of the obvious one, but another offshoot of that is... and you were talking about this with Fred VanVleet not necessarily being a burner or a great athlete or anything, but what Fred has that you want to see Tari have more of is just situational awareness.

Like on top of the decision making, you want him to just be aware of the of the situation, which speaks to your point about him knowing that just a flank down to the corner and and kind of just be ready to knock down your shot.

And coming in at number nine, it's going to be the Houston Rockets.

Now, the Houston Rockets are going to trot out four guys from their starting lineup last year into the 2027 NBA season, but they're going to have a new point guard into the mix, and that's going to be the returning Fred VanVleet, who missed all of the 2026 season with an ACL tear that happened right before the season started.

Not crashing their title odds, but it definitely hindered their ceiling in the 2026 NBA season.

So right now, it's going to be Fred VanVleet at the one, Amand Thompson, who got a very nice rookie extension a couple weeks ago at the two, Kevin Durant at the three, Jabari Smith at the four, and Alper Unchangun at the five.

And this is actually a pretty good bench unit as well.

But like I said, we're only talking about the starting five in this video.

And unfortunately, yeah, we don't know how Fred VanVleet is going to look with Kevin Durant.

But last year, in about a thousand minutes playing together, shane goon jabari smith k dina man thompson had a plus 4.6 net rating and their net rating was a negative 5.5 when you threw out reed shepherd with them so fredman wheat is going to be a better ball handler a better decision maker and a better defender i'm not going to say he's going to be a better shooter than reed shepherd because shepherd is a good shooter but fredman wheat as a leader and a floor general for this offense i think can actually unlock what they wanted to do last year Kevin Durant.

Last year was just, we'll just call it a wash.

I mean, Fred VanVleet was out.

There's a lot of things that kind of went wrong.

You head into the offseason, you do get Marcus Smart, like you just said.

I think they are still committed to the young core.

I think that is evidenced by the lack of...

If you were trying to win by any means necessary with Kevin Durant and Fred VanVleet, some of these young guys wouldn't be...

You probably would have traded a Jabari and a Reed Shepard for more win-now pieces to go out there and really make sure that you give yourself the best chance to win it all in the next two seasons before KD retires.

Like, come on.

Veteran guard Fred VanVleet coming.

Missed the entire 24.

Okay, he had a torn ACL.

It was awful to watch.

and of course after that there was no more raptors tonight but it was like people want to watch wins right they don't want to watch you talk about a team that's losing every single game down the stretch so i think raptor fans kind of got a little tired of basketball um and now they're back baby they're back you can call them fairweather friends whatever but they're not fairweather at all if you if you look at the comments on this show if you look at how they show out at these types of events best fans in the world um The other thing that was kind of cool, they brought out Fred VanVleet.

And the comments are a little mixed on this show about Fred VanVleet.

I'm a big Freddy guy.

Always have been.

Michael has you covered.

Michael, are you excited for the return of Fred VanVleet to this Rockets roster and lineup and just to see him out on the floor again?

I think, you know, and anyone who kind of knows me knows that I am, in fact, excited for Fred Van Vliet's return to the four, although I don't think I'm as excited as Eme Odoka for Fred Van Vliet's return to the four.

I think Eme Odoka is more excited for Fred Van Vliet's return to the boxing ring personally.

Problem is Fred didn't play last year.

And so I guess the lessons of Fred not playing last year, because that's how we've been kind of doing this.

What lessons did we learn from these players from the previous season? What did we learn about them and about them as players on the team and how it works in a team concept? We learned that this team can't survive without Fred VanVleet.

Maybe I'll backtrack a little bit.