I think - We've created a spoiled basketball player. Just like any kid in any family, a spoiled kid is very hard to undo. In fact I'd argue it rarely gets undone and you can only save 10-20% of them. It takes a lot of confrontation, a systemic program of repetition and installing SELF-discipline (rather than discipline). It was stupid of me to think that one summer and training camp would do it. I think this summer is going to be the first summer that Jalen understands what he has to do to be what he wants to be in the NBA thanks to Udoka. Unfortunately, I think it might be too late. I'm not very confident we're keeping him till he's a restricted FA the following summer. Personally I would highly advise we stay the course but I only have instinct to back me up at this point. - Each of the past 3 seasons we've had major roster changes in our top 8 rotation. His first two seasons the rotation was very unstable, adding and dropping players constantly, allowing culturally bankrupt players to do their thing. It's not surprising at all that he sucked at the start of his rookie season and at the start of this season > this guy had no fundamentals and joined a chaotic NBA team which then under Udoka became the most serious team in the NBA. I always remember Cam Whitmore saying Rockets practices are easier than Villanova practices. Jalen has had the exact opposite experience, he's always known he has to work hard but he's never been in a place where there's no other choice. This mountain of bad habits he's inherited also imo contributes to him turning it on after the ASB - very similar to cramming before an exam. The kid had no idea how to be a professional and he had to learn it while getting benched for the first time ever after his best defensive effort of his life was just not good enough for the coach. - Players seeking to add tons of muscle each summer often have shooting inconsistency to start the season. Adding mass and working on your shooting don't go well together, that's very common in the NBA. - This point is about to trigger a lot of older posters but try to stay with me. Jalen is a new age religion kid. I've heard him say many things over the years that show it. When he says basketball is an energy sport, he's not talking about the energy we're thinking about. He's talking about mood and vibe - the energy around the team, rather than the energy exerted to play the game. He's your classic Gen Z type kid who believes everything is energy and confidence, the real/physical world is a pure manifestation of confidence levels and that literally anything is instantly possible with the right mindset. Every work place in the world is struggling to integrate these kids, you probably have some where you work too. Personally, I do not like this belief system and believe it's designed in a way that brings about major ups and downs in a person's daily life/performance whatever they do. It's great for artists maybe, but not for anything militaristic like a corporation, a sports team or a military. I had staff like this so I'll share my experience with it. You can spend your whole life whining about how these kids are "lazy" OR you can start to understand that just as easily and stupidly as they can be demotivated, they have allowed you to motivate them more easily than anyone else. So while I started this experience trying to change these people and instill more productive consistency in them, I discovered that they are elite self-motivators and that's what I always wanted out of my staff. If you are invested in these people (and most young workers in the future are going to be this way) then it's best for you to get the most you can out of them. The way you do that is that you assign respect and joy to the way they think even though you disagree with it, and you give them a little bit of motivation in they way they want to be motivated. They respond to positive reinforcement, so when you want to be critical of something, just praise the inverse. Instead of "you suck at defense" it's "damn what an amazing opportunity that you have all this room to grow defensively". I know I know, it sucks and it makes you cringe, but the most important thing is that it works. This lights a fire under them and then they motivate themselves for a very long period. You just have to keep an eye out for when they need a little boost here and there. They will ultimately grow out of some of those beliefs by themselves but not on anyone's command. That's how I was able to create highly productive relationships with people like that. I think Udoka is the exact opposite of the type of person who would be able to understand this stuff. He's more of the "back in my day" kind of guy and might not even understand any of this stuff. These things explain it but they don't excuse it. Unfortunately the NBA is a business and at some point the Rockets will do what's best for them. I see his situation as right now if he doesn't finish the season strong he's 100% gone. If he finishes the season strong, he's still 70% gone. He would be lucky to be a Rocket next season.
I think he will be a great 6th man scoring punch off the bench. Since he is likely not to accept that role, the Rockets may be forced to trade him, unless Stone thinks he’s still good enough to continue starting.
There is a sense of not knowing which direction to take and I hope they figure it out rather sooner than later. He should defiinitely be on a team that uses him like Westbrook and just runs him in transition all the time.
I don't agree with that. There's a level of self-acceptance that has to come with a great 6th man, they tend to be comfortable in that role. You don't want a 6th man who believes he's always under-appreciated and better than the starters. You want a 6th man who's proud of being 6th man of the year. I don't think that's Jalen. I was all for benching him earlier this season but imo that ship has sailed. It's something we could've - and should've - done as part of his first 3 years of development. His game was very shaky and getting benched like that would have been less disruptive, it would have allowed his %'s to be higher with the fewer shots and most importantly would have tamed his ego at a critical part of his development. At this point, I say start him or trade him. If he halves his midrange and 3pt shots, plus he increases his attacks on the rim and assists, we have a player worth going to market to when he becomes an RFA. The idea he should be a rebounder or a great defenders was always stupid, why the hell would we work on the weaknesses of player's who's strengths are not strong enough yet. Jalen is a starting big scorer or he has no value to us imo. I don't want him sulking off the bench - that's poison for our team. I want guys who know and love their roles. P.S. I don't think Stone ever thought he was good enough to start, get this many minutes and this many shots. I think Stone wanted to tank the first 2 years and this season he's discovered it was really f*cked up to tank by installing 2 years of bad habits in your #2 pick who already had the least fundamentals of any of his peers and needed to catch up. So now he's protecting his pick Jalen by insisting Jalen starts - and I bet that's something Udoka agreed to before taking the job and I think it's something that has driven Udoka crazy.
He is playing 4D Chess, getting ready for playoffs form since his rookie year. Once we are in the playoffs, checkmate.
Depends how you look at it. Josh only shot 27.1% the last year he played for us, but he only took 3.7 shots a game. He also only started 6 of 23 games. The first year he played for us he shot better than Jalen's averaging this year. Even then, at 33% he only took 3.5 shots per game and only started 7 games. Jalen's started 62 games at SG this year, averaging 31.3%. He takes a lot more 3's than Josh and Amen ever have. For me it's been harder to watch our starting SG chuck 289 bricks from behind the arc this year. True, but he only takes an ave of (1.1) 3's a game. Big difference. He doesn't waste a bunch of shots chucking 3's.
hmm I wonder if I can think of anything or anybody that's emblematic of creating outsized expectations that can't possibly be realized - leading to such spoilage:
Maybe he is just not doing enough in the off season to be game ready then. I hope he finds new people to train with this summer and really turns things around as a player.
If Jalen was really good at basketball this would not matter at all, but since he seems like a poor decision maker, enjoys pointing the finger and not taking responsibility for what has happened so far in his career, people are going to draw conclusions about him knocking up someone twice his age who was his girlfriend's mentor and then not being included in the announcement of his first child. Everything he does and says just seems low IQ. If you are really good at something, and make mistakes elsewhere people would give him a pass, but he has consistently shown he is immature and the public is going to destroy him if he even stays relevant enough for them to care about much longer. The Josh Christopher videos and simulated assault, calling out your new head coach while on a rookie contract, and now you knock up your girlfriends mentor, it doesn't really make him likeable if hes already playing so badly.
