So if you see more of that from Alper and Shengun, and that is a major positive, I think, for Houston.

Yeah, you know, you talk about how it felt a little simplistic to say Fred would solve all these things.

I thought the same thing because you looked at the Rockets last year and it looked so ugly at times.

It looked so stagnant and so, like, stuck in the mud.

I think a lot of that is, and I'm guessing a little bit here, kind of putting pieces together, but I think a decent amount of that is Ime looking at the personnel he had last year, having two young guards in a men Thompson and Reed Shepard that he had to bring wrong, and looking at a roster that, for multiple reasons, Fred's injury, Dorian Finney-Smith's underperformance...

Aaron Holiday just being okay, Josh Akogi being your starting shooting guard a lot of nights, that just didn't have a lot of shooting or skill on the roster.

And skill I'm going to define here as passing and ball handling, right? They just didn't have enough guys who could shoot, dribble, and pass last year.

a houstonian baby come on we just need that

How did you come to that conclusion?

Yeah, where I came from is basically This is the market value for Amend Thompson, is this five-year $208 million.

I think this is a fair deal on both sides, both for Amend and for the Rockets.

On Amend's side, I mean, $200 million is a lot of money.

And after the Rockets have kind of established this precedent of saying, like, we're not going to just auto-max players.

This goes back to, you know, Jalen Green, Alfred Shangoon, Jabari Spitzer Jr., all these guys have signed.

There's been real negotiations here, and there's been, like, real negotiations.

What's your impression for why Rafael Stone in this era of the Rockets is consistently able to get like those types of deals?

And I do want to get your thoughts on just what was your reaction when they actually won the lottery, when something actually went right for the Wizards for once, and then also your reaction to them selecting A.J. DeBansa with that pick?

Yeah, I mean, listen, This is why you go through the last two years, three years of just god-awful basketball, right? This is why they did it.

You need difference-making players in the NBA.

And if you're not a team that's going to be able to attract those players through free agency or get people to demand trades to you, the draft is obviously the best way to do so.

And so the Wizards knew that.

They approached it this way.

And, I mean, in the room in Chicago, it was – I would say, you know, you just kept seeing other teams come up.

So I have no idea where this goes, personally.

Just at a high level, Varun, what have you thought about their offseason strategy and largely staying the course but making moves around the margins to try and bring out the best version of these young guys and Kevin Durant?

It's a measured, patient approach.

I understand why some wanted bigger changes after the way the year ended and two straight first-round exits.

The way I think about it is, you don't know, and this is specifically with Amin Thompson and Alprin Shingu, who I would say are the two young players who are furthest along right now, but it extends to even a Jabari Smith Jr., Reed Shepard.

You don't fully know what you have in those guys just yet.

Like, you have a pretty good idea, especially with a man and Albi who are a little bit further into their careers and a little bit older.

But they're still relatively unfinished products.

Is that kind of how you see it, that they're counting heavily on leaps here this season?

Or is it just kind of a situation where it is what it is, and there's gonna be games where it's just gonna happen, and there's nothing they can do about it.

I mean, I think there's gonna be games where it happens.

This is one-- I wrote this somewhat recently.

The Rockets are a flawed team, right? They're-they turn the ball over way too much.

They don't generate enough three-point shots.

Uh, they can be really, really, uh, out of sorts at the end of games on offense, all this stuff.

They're not a particularly deep team, especially now because of the injuries.

At what point do you think the Rockets have to consider making a change with Tari Eason? Or do you just see them sticking out with the, the starting lineup they've kind of settled into as their de facto starting five for the rest of the season?

And a lot of Wizards fans will question, saying, "Why is CJ McCollum, who's 34 years old, playing the most minutes on this Wizards team?" So I wanna ask you, do you feel like we're seeing too much of him based on what the Wizards' goals are for individual development this year, or is this all part of the plan for them?

I think that McCollum is the player he has always been.

This is what CJ McCollum has done for the past five to 10 years of his career, I would say.

He's going to take up a decent share of your offense.

He's got, like, a 24.8% usage rate right now per Cleaning the Glass.

That is the lowest he has had in his career, but it's arou- or, since the, the 2018-19 season, but it's still in line with his career norms, I would say.

He is in the 65th percentile among combo guards in, uh, Cleaning the Glass's efficiency metric.

Yeah.