I'm sold. The kid's turned into a man out there. While it remains to be seen how he and Alperen play together, I'm assumng they'll figure it out. Either way, sooooo much talent on this Rockets team. Along with our picks, enough to be a perennial contender. And, the right coach, in Ime... @Mathloom - Hats off to you! I've never been so happy to be so wrong about a player!
This is MASSIVE for the team. What an unbelievable, clutch performance from Jalen against an excellent defensive team chasing the #1 seed. Their offense may not have been at full power but this is a playoff team even without SGA otherwise they're not competing for top seed in the conference. Dort is a huge 6'3 one of the best defenders in the league and it mattered little vs Jalen. I've said it so many times, there are no good comps for Jalen that's why Lavine feels too low and Kobe feels too high as a comp. There are MAYBE 2-3 good comparisons for the brutality of tanking/culture he was drowning in for 2 years which was a major setback to his development. His pre-NBA experience was going to be only G-League and then covid turned that into a 1 month training camp without fans. It was all going to come down to how he will react to powerful coaching. That's the only way he'd be able to catch up on the development time he's missed his whole life. One of my favorite posters highlighted to me that Kobe was All-NBA 3rd team in his 3rd year. That's interesting because Kobe was a bench player the two prior seasons, not a good defender, not a shooter, considered selfish, barely above average efficiency even on low volume off the bench, skinny, showy, too involved with the media, etc. It took 2 years of very disappointing basketball by lottery standards to get Kobe trained up. That's with excellent coaching, veterans and winning atmosphere. That's with Kobe allegedly having a legendary work ethic off the court. Was it so crazy to think Jalen can make a roughly similar turnaround with a delay (taking closer to 3 years vs Kobe's 2 years)? Offense is just the first half of basketball though. Defense is the the 2nd half of basketball. The reason why I don't like the comps with Beal and Lavine is only because Green has a much more positive attitude towards playing defense. He doesn't have that "YOU play defense while I score" vibe to him which you expect from a James Harden or something. Green wants to do the right thing, he's just not sure how to do it fast enough. He's not as good as Kobe or young T-Mac defensively, but he's certainly ahead of players like Lavine, Booker, Beal right now. The most exciting thing about this run is Jalen's ability to play good defense while scoring. He's never ever played offense and defense simultaneously this well for this long. There are still going to be hiccups, but that's always the case when a star explodes. It's been amazing to see the board so excited about our future. Now we turn our focus to the Warriors. It would be so sweet for this Rockets team to end the Warriors dynasty.
There are a bunch folks who defended Jalen through thick and thin, including yours truly but not everybody can claim that they started 8 long a$$ threads rooting for the man. Props for never giving up on green despite the ridicule from the haters for making these threads OP.
Jalen's 3P% is now higher than last season's. Didn't think it was possible one month ago, but the dude actually redeemed his season. Hope he can keep it up!
Lol, to be precise, in any other actively moderated forum this would have certainly been merged into at least 1 or 2 ongoing threads.... There is not really anyone moderating these, that is why you see a lot of people starting the same threads x times over and over. I give @AroundTheWorld props that he actually kept his thread going instead of starting another plethora of threads which would have cluttered the segment even more.
I'm definitely start to come around on Jalen. It was one thing to do this against the Wizards, but he was incredible against a damn good defense last night. His playmaking and his ability to finish through contact really stood out. He's going to gave off nights shooting, but if he can keep attacking the rim and does those two things well consistently, he could be legitimately great. Really, really hoping this stretch isn't a fluke. I just don't want old Jalen to jump out from behind the mask at some point and prove this was all a ruse.
Legler sees shades of Morant, Westbrook, Iverson in Green. Might be faster from 28 feet to the rim than De'Aron Fox and Tyrese Maxey. He's super impressed, changing his mind about Green's ceiling. Can't believe Jalen is 6'4, says he looks 6'7 out there.
One thing I will say about Jalen's hot streak: If he really does win Player of the Month (which he deserves to IMO)--it's been quite awhile since any busts/scrubs have won that award. In the past five years the worst player I could find who won it was Tobias Harris, and he was already in his prime years. If you go a bit farther back you'll see a few guys who were just solid starters, and Rockets Legend DeMarre Carroll somehow managed to win it once upon a time, but that was almost a decade ago. Overall, it's a list populated like 90% or more with all-stars... probably even 95+ percent honestly. If he wins it, great company to be in, especially at age 22.
So I waited long enough for the sample to be significant and I’m not posting this after a monster game so that you don’t say the stats are cherry picked. This includes bad games at the head and tail of the 20 games. It includes good, mediocre and bad teams. We are better than our season record during that stretch. In the last 20 games, Jalen Green is averaging 26 points on 20 shots. 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 5 FTA per game. Maybe most important of all, high level of effort and net positive defense. One silly poster the other day actually wrote “who actually thought we wouldn’t win those games against easy teams.” Lol Well, only Boston has had a longer winning streak so are we the only team that had a fairly easy 10-12 game stretch? Do you REALLY think everyone knew that a sub .500 struggling team would suddenly win 11 consecutive easy games with 3 key injuries? I don’t know if even the Boston Celtics can win 11 straight easy games if they were missing Jason Tatum and 2 other key rotation players. No, this was special. If I’m being honest, my heart was telling me before the streak this season may be the end of Jalen’s ceiling but my brain kept saying the data shows an outlier. I have no idea what possessed me to start this thread while we were seemingly down and out. I was definitely sweating, that was a close one. You chose to cheer for our guy and you were right. If you had the balls to remain supportive through it all, congratulations. It wasn’t easy to battle the cynical onslaught. The process of Nova is complete. The fun is not over despite the past few games. Jalen will punctuate this chapter before we move on up. I wonder what the future brings.
