If you put an average shooting guard in Jalen Green's place, we would be a decent shooting team

100% if Jalen sat out the last 25 games we would be better off - addition by subtraction he is a net negative an anchor around the Rox necks.

DD

 

This is honestly the most frustrating thing about his game. He actually didn't shoot poorly from 3 as a rookie (relative to the other rookies)! And his mechanics look a LITTLE BIT better...but he cannot hit a damn thing most of the time, and he keeps throwing them up.

If Jalen cannot become at least a league-average shooter, he will not be successful in this league. I hope he does, truly.

 

I posted this in another thread yesterday ..... but it fits this discussion so I'll just post the same damn post here:

Yeah, this team lacks talent - particularly guys who can shoot the damn ball.

I said it before the season - this team would struggle offensively because they don't have shooters

Their best shooter from last season has only played in 22 games this year. (Tari)

The 2nd best shooter from last season is out of the league.

Most of the lineup combo's have at least two guys who can't shoot - that screws up the spacing.

There's 5 dudes shooting .308 Or Worse from 3 who play at least 15 minutes a game and a 6th that plays ~10minutes per.

Landale .111
Amen .149
Sengun .295
Tate .304
Jeff Green .306
Jalen Green .308
(The next lowest percentage after these is Tari at .360, pretty much league average (.367))

And one of these dudes takes the highest volume of 3's per game (Jalen).

This equates to 52.2% of the total minutes available per game being played by dudes shooting .308 or lower.

Teams don't even bother to defend these players at the 3 point line on many occasions .... and we wonder why their record is what it is?


They can't f*@%$*g shoot.


Amen & Sengun absolutely have to improve and Stone needs to find some shooters in the draft and or free agency.


A kick in the teeth ? ... The best 3 point shooting team, The best FT shooting team and 2nd best 2 point shooting team ..... OKC.

 

Threads like these are why Clutchfans will always be better than that r/Rockets cesspit.

This is a question I’ve wanted answered for a while. Thanks for crunching the numbers for us!

 

And then what? You have to get rid of that average Shooting Guard for a better player....

 

I will go further down and say this team does not have elite scorers that have a bag........

Besides the obvious shooting.....

 

Nice post Orem.

If you were to add Trae Young to this team next to Amen in the backcourt, and then start Tari over DB.

Trae
Amen
Tari
Bari
Alperen

You would just have to sit there for a couple years.

 

Buddy...don't ever go into r/rockets. Staying off of Reddit in general is better for your brain.

 

I guess my problem is that there's a mythical "average NBA shooting guard" out there that you can just drop in and replace in the counterfactual and everything is equal.

Like, here's a list of guards (classifying guys as PG/SG is very arbitrary to the point where it doesn't even show up on nba.com) who shoot a bunch of 3's on volume.

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional?CF=FG3A*GE*5&PlayerPosition=G&dir=A&sort=FG3_PCT

The median guy is basically Fred Van Vleet at 37%, but if you want to take a non-Rocket, hey there's Eric Gordon at 38.9%.

We have a pretty good idea of what Eric Gordon would do on this current Rockets roster - probably the same stuff he did the last 4 seasons, and none of these things is that big of a deal.

Conversely, look at a number of the "below average" names on the list:

Trae Young
Donovan Mitchell
DeAron Fox
Jayson Tatum (how is he a guard? But whatever)
Mikal Bridges
Damian Lillard
Jaylen Brown

Let's get real, obviously we'd want ANY of those guys ahead of Jalen Green and probably any other guard on the roster. And you'd be WAY better off adding any of those guys than most of the "Top" names on the list llike Grayson Allen, Malik Beasley, Luke Kennard.

Accordinglly I just don't see raw 3 point % as a really good predictor of anythign here.

Effectively what we're talking about by your counterfactual is that Jalen Green would have made about 20-25 more 3 points shots, for an aggregate of +60-75 more points over 58 games. That's the difference between a few spots in the "team 3 point rankings".

I don't doubt that would generate few more possible wins here and there but the Rockets are probably still in the same relative spot overall.

 

lol i made the mistake last season... basically the entire r/rockets reddit subforum was jerking off to kpj and anyone posting even a hint of negativity about kpj was instantly downvoted to oblivion. that place is filled with idiots with a herd mind who have not a single clue about basketball in general lol.

of course rockets reddit is probably defending jalen green as if their lives depended on it... haven't checked and don't want to.

 

That’s making the assumption that if he were shooting 40% from three, every defense against him and every shot he has taken would have been exactly the same, only falling at a higher clip. That’s not accurate.

If he were making 40% of his threes, teams would change their defense on him. That changes the defense for his teammates, too. And made shots have to be inbounded by the other team rather than them starting a fast break, which affects pace, etc. Green being a good 3pt shooter would be a catalyst for a lot other positives.

 

the rockets subreddit is the perfect place for whiny meme-posting snowflakes who shall not be named to go to obsess over sengun supporters and cry about how clutchfans has devolved into a toxic cesspool who **** on their own players instead of just blindly posting "JALEN >>>>>>>> LEBRON" like they do

 

Reed Sheppard instead of Jalen Green next season.

In the meantime, stop playing Jalen at all and split Jalen's minutes between Cam, Amen and Holiday.

 

If you put an average shooting guard in Jalen Green's place, we would be a decent shooting team?

If said guy is average at everything else, then we are probably only marginally better as a team.
Bad shooting has more than one origin.

Add two more shooting role players that can be serviceable defenders, then we should be noticeably better.

 

The year we had Russell Westbrook, they saw the problem and told Russ to stop shooting 3s. And then Morey got rid of ALL centers and gambled on small ball just so Westbrook could be maximized.

It actually worked for a while. But at what cost? Westbrook, Harden, and MDA all wanted out after that season, and Morey hit the eject button too.

 

Every ****ing game he chucks 17 shots at 26%.

 

Yeah. Good. Don't. Let them make posts like "How will you respond 4" and "Here's Dillon Brooks next to a cat! ;D"