HOUSTON (SportsRadio 610)- Rockets head coach Stephen Silas wanted to get an extended look at the double-big pairing of Christian Wood and Alperen Sengun, so with Eric Gordon unavailable for a matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans and bruising center Jonas Valanciunas, he elected to start them. As expected, the duo is a work in progress.
"We don't see it too much," Rockets guard Kevin Porter Jr said Monday. "They don't really play with each other a lot, depends if we're down a man or the matchup."
The Rockets were outscored 29-22 in the 13 minutes Wood and Sengun shared the floor during Sunday's loss to the Pelicans. The duo held up just fine defensively, but the other end of the floor was a mess. The Rockets scored just .8 points per possession and gave the ball away more than 20 percent of the time. A lack of spacing can be blamed for the offensive woes, so fixing that issue will be key fundamental to making the pairing work.
"You want one probably at the top of the floor and one at the bottom of the floor," Silas said. You don't want one at the top and the one in high quad because it just bogs things down and the help is a little bit easier for the defense because they sink in."
The key is also positioning them in a way that gives you options to run a variety of actions over the course of a possession, and Silas thinks he has a fix.
"We've talked about having one at the top of the floor, one in the corner, and then it's easier for us to get to multiple actions because that's when we're at our best. We're not at our best when we just come off and drag and shoot or hit the roller and try to finish."
What makes playing Wood and Sengun together especially unique is both players can operate anywhere on the floor and they have a variety of skills that should be able to mesh.
"They both so versatile," Silas said. "Al-P's very good at the top of the floor, so is Christian, and Al-P's comfortable in the post, and so is Christian, and when they have a smaller guy (defending them) they both want to duck in and exploit that mismatch, sometimes at the same time, so it's a work in progress for sure."
Wood and Sengun want to share the floor with one another, and Wood has lobbied for it. They may not start together after Tuesday's rematch in New Orleans, but the two will see time on the floor at the same time each night, but at some point the results need to change. The Rockets have been outscored by 14.7 per 100 possessions during the 231 minutes the two have played in tandem.
"We didn't play together for a long time," Sengun said through an interpreter. "Sometimes we had some mistakes about spacing, but I think we will correct those things, and I think it will be better."
