Id bet Green will average more than KPJ next year. G League isn't the NBA but it's a lot better than College. My fear with Green isn't that he's not going to be an elite scorer. It's that he's not going to develop any other part of his game. He doesn't seem to need to because he can get whatever shot whenever he wants. Again, I'd prefer Mobley (and Suggs if I'm being honest) but Green is ridiculous offensively and he'd be better at it than both KPJ and Wood next year or at the very least the following year.
Defense doesn't matter for a guard if his offense is good enough. There I said it. It's much easier to find 3- D wings in the league than to find a truly great scorer. Curry, Dame, Harden, Booker etc. Have all been known as subpar defenders, in today's day and age it's so easy to hide bad defense vs creating good offense.
I'd be absolutely shocked if that happened. KPJ will be the primary ball handler and either the first or second option on offense. Green will be 3rd at best. Perhaps one day he could improve enough to be as good a scorer as KPJ, but that likely takes years.....and would require that improvement while KPJ doesn't improve at all. I find the faith in Green's alleged scoring ability odd because he hasn't proven that he can be a better scorer than Nik Stauskas when they played against the same level of competition. I could get down with people talking about scoring potential, but it's not something he currently possesses. Even scrubs like rookie Terrence Jones could score 19 points per game in the D league and that translated to 13.6 points per 36 in the NBA. I was using the same word from the post I was responding to. Point is that Green didn't belong on the same court with KPJ a few months ago, now some of his fans think he'll magically become considerably better in the NBA than he was in the G league and that's just not reality. Averaging under 20 in the G league usually translates to less than 10 points per game in the NBA.
You have to end up being INCREDIBLE at offense to overcome a lack of defense. I mean, when you have to say "they have to be Harden" to hit the mark, that's a helluva mark.
Curry was going nowhere without a super team around him, Dame has never gone anywhere, Booker was 4th in win shares on his own team this season and is 6th on his own team in the playoffs this season......and those are likely all better players than Green can ever hope to be.
Bringing in Greens G League stats into the argument have to be put in context, especially when comparing him to Nik freaking Stauskas (26). We are talking about a high school player adapting to a professional basketball league environment. You have to take the learning curve for an 18 year old into consideration. Watch him play, he’s got the entire skillset for a scorer, that will need to be refined for sure. It’s going to take a lot of work and time, but the Rockets can afford that with it’s early stages of a rebuild. Kobe only avg 7 pts his rookie year (not saying Green will turn out like him) but you have to put things into perspective here.
The context is that is his current level of play. We can make excuses for it by saying that we shouldn't expect him to be any good at this point, but it doesn't change the fact that as of right now, Green hasn't proven to be a better scorer than the current version of Nik Stauskas or Jeremy Lin. What I'm doing is trying to have people pump the brakes a bit because they are rolling with ridiculous hot takes about him being a 20 points per game rookie and that's just not reasonable. Those types are just setting themselves up for disappointment by setting the bar that high. If he scores more than 15 points per game, celebrate. That's about the high end of reasonable expectations for a guy who will be a 20 year old non-ball handling 3rd option at best. Also, he was 19, not 18.
Green may not be the better scorer now, but we wouldn’t be drafting for the “current” version of Green. If we think the current version of Green is the ceiling of his potential, neither I or other fans would want him. Same goes for any prospect.
That's fine, the context of the conversation was that I was talking to people who were expecting him to be a 20+ points per game scorer his rookie season in the NBA because he scored 17 per game in the G league. I was just trying to make those expectations more realistic. I'm certainly hopeful that he'll improve over his first few seasons and there's reason to think he could end up being a really good scorer eventually, but there's no reason to think he'd be that now. Certainly no reason to think he'd be anywhere near the best scorer on the team.
I think he'll be the best scorer in the league this year and then go on to break the single-season scoring record.
No, that's not hyperbole. The gap between the two players really was that wide. It's a lot better to just say that you expected that because KPJ was 20 and Green was just 19.
I'm guessing this is sarcasm, but it's only slightly more extreme than things I've come to expect from the average Jalen Green fan so it's impossible to tell. By summer league I think we should be projecting Green to break Kareem's all time scoring record during his rookie season.
I’ve said this in another thread, KPJ had a full NBA season and a another full summer of training prior to his G League debut, whereas Green made the jump from high school. Just look at pictures of KPJ this year to his rookie season, he had already added a considerable amount of muscle. I would feel comfortable betting money that if Green were to play in the G League next season, he’d average 22 pts a game or more.
Right, so we should expect KPJ to be a considerably better basketball player than Green in every way.....and that's what we saw. We should expect that to be the case next season as well. That has been my entire point and I don't think we disagree.
Yeah but your argument is for the present and mine is more about the future and Green’s potential. I want the Rockets to draft Green because I see him as a potential 25-30 ppg scorer. Today, right this minute he may not be a better scorer than KPJ but I believe he will eventually be.
Who knows what the future holds, perhaps he develops into that. It would be shocking, but not impossible. I think KPJ is more likely to become that than Green though because KPJ is a primary ball handler and currently is a much better scorer than Green. We'll see what happens. He could become Bradley Beal, he could become Gerald Green. The only thing that is certain is he'll be a flashy cash cow in the short term and that's why he'll be the pick no matter what
Lol we all know Bobby’s draft predictions are always horrible. Being a perv not withstanding, Deshaun Watson destroyed every single draft “projection” that Bobby had on him.
Different sports and I wanted Mahomes that year, the Texans would be a lot better off if they had found a way to get him instead. The fact that Watson is a pervert who helped Bill Obrien gain power and drstroy the team makes this an odd battle to pick
