Jalen Green being the worst player in the NBA makes as much sense as Garrison Matthews being the 5th best player in the NBA. Would you pay GM the 5 year max? Based on this list he better than Kevin Durant. Green has been bad but a lot of that had to do with the team composition he was in at the time. Moreover, GM's crazy play has also made him so much worse by comparison. It's like if you took out Mobley and out in Giannis, obv Mobley will look worse cuz of how good Giannis is. Tbh if we are gonna be real the reason Green has so many haters is cuz of envy at how good Mobley has been. Personally I'm ok with missing out on Mobley. If we got Mobley highly unlike the Rox would've traded 2 picks for Sengun, morever Green is partly responsible for the Rox getting JC as well. Draft is an inexact science I believe the Rox handled the draft pretty well with fallbacks at big man and guard positions. Green has a ton of pofential at 6'5/6'6 and if he improves his shooting at the NBA level and learns to do the intslangibles stuff that GM is doing sky's the limit for him.
OKC was selling that pick to anyone, not a lot of takers. Rockets FO took advantage of their recalcitrance to take another young player in a draft where they already had multiple picks as well as a roster full of young players.
I've had to block most of the Nevergreeners. He deserves criticism when it's warranted but he needs to be looked at objectively. Just like Al-P. People here act like Evan Mobley is averaging 25/12 on 60% shooting when he's just performing decently for a rookie and has multiple veterans picking up the slack for him offensively. Rookies are gonna rook. The irrational hatred towards him is something I don't quite understand. Even weirder is if you cheer for him to do well you're now a JOF? Weird times. We'll see how Jalen looks with the new offense when he gets back.
I'm sorry but when people bring up the vet/age of the Cavs. I do a double take. What do people consider as vets, for me, at least 7+ years of NBA experience. 10+ years is a grizzled vet. Players with playing time. Cavs starters (with Sexton out). Mobley is not playing with rookies, but they're not seasoned vets. The average starters age around Mobley is 22. Jarrett Allen - age 23 Darius Garland - age 21 Lauri - age 24 Mobley - age 20 Okoro - age 20bench Rubio - age 31 KLove - age 33Injured Sexton - age 22. It's not like this is a group of seasoned geriatric seniors, please stop repeating this. --- Our current players with consistent playing time. Gordon - age 32 Brooks - age 23 Mathews - 25 Tate - 26 Wood - 26 The current Rocket starters who's giving us this winning streak is mid 20's (26.4) Bench DJ - age 34 Sengun - age 19 KJ - age 20 JC - age 20 Injured JGreen - 19 KPJ - 21 Say if KPJ injured, but JGreen returns, If swap with Eric, the roster around Jalen is 25. If swap with Garrison, the roster around Jalen is 26.75 If KPJ + JGreen returns and Brooks + Gordon goes to the bench. The Roster around Jalen is (KPJ / Mathews / Tate / Wood) averages to 24.5 which is still older than the Cavs. ------------------- I don't want to come off as a hater. Honestly, if JGreen was doing other things to impact the game when his shooting was meh, more fans will come around. I'm as curious as anyone to see what JGreen can do with the new spacing. Cavs and Pistons are our peers because both stunk it up last year. Except this year. Cavs have leaped ahead of the Rockets and Pistons. I'm hoping with this new winning streak, thing will turn around for us too. Internet hate will always be there, for the players it's just best to shut them out. If other teams passes you, instead of making excuses, look inward and improve. The best way to quite the doubters is to simply play better.
I really want to see green play in the line up without theis and with a team that has a better understanding of what the heck they are doing on offense. They also need to hurry up and trade Gordon while his value is high and before he gets hurt again
Before we get too excited about this win streak let's not forget in the last 5 wins they beat okc twice, Orlando, New Orleans (all 3 teams will be vying with rockets for the worst record), bk playing on a back to back without Durant and alderidge.
Gordon would give Green more spacing than say a KPJ. KPJ's defense is improving but not near EGO yet. And KPJ's 3 is still bad. Gordon (3&D) + Mathews (3&D). Run the action through Gordon and Tate. Gordon (3&D) + Brooks. (3) People still respect Eric Gordon's range. Even if he has a cold game. Against the Nets, He was 8/12, 2/4 from threes. Which is as good as an offensive game as it gets. Against a Nets team, who's tied with Jazz #7-#8 in DEFRTG. If Gordon is traded, we'd have 3 non 3pt shooters on the court. KPJ, Green, Tate. Out of the three, Green has the best 3pt potential. But might suffers the most from bad spacing. Rocket's current non-injured PGs: Gordon and DJ don't have to take too many 3's but they shoot well enough where opponents don't sag. This can benefit Green tremendously. Rocket's best 3p% shooter this season are. JChristopher - 53.3% (small sample sure) Gordon - 43.6% DJ - 40.9% Garrison - 40.0% --- league avg --- normally 37.5% Wood - 35.7%. (If you're at 35% that's still decent.) Sengun - 35.7% Brooks - 33.7% Theis - 31.4% KPJ - 30.9% House - 29.4% Jalen Green - 27.8% KJ - 27.3% Tate - 26.6%. (If Tate can improve here, he'd get a big pay day) Gordon is Rocket's top volume 3pt shooter. If you trade him away; could easily kill some of this good spacing we're seeing... which again will hurt Green. (not help him). And yes right now; House and Theis are more efficient than Green.
I want everyone to really focus on the ages. The Cavs are going to make the playoffs with an average starter age of TWENTY-TWO. The age our "Young team ready to compete" at 7 games below 500 is TWENTY-SIX. In comparison, the Golden State Warriors have an average age of 27, only a few months older than the Rockets. The Rockets rebuild isn't close to done, hell, the teardown isn't finished yet. The Cavs are in the position to flip one of Sexton or Garland plus a few picks for a legit superstar, their rebuild is done. When this team can trot out a lineup with an average age below 23 and win, then the rebuild is over and we can get back to winning. This right here is why I want the Rockets to get/trade for a top pick, get ready to win when Green's 21, Sengun's 21, KPJ's 23, and JC and KJ (provided he can shoot) are 22. Plus a 21 year old Chet or 20 year old Paolo or Jabari.
Haha. the 26 yo Houston Rockets are 7-0! The ones that were 1-16 were much younger. But your point is valid in one main regard: Eric Gordon. He's bringing up the average age quite a bit and I cannot see him growing with the rest of the group. If we trade him and still can win, then we're [mostly] done. If the team disintegrates without him, then it's back to the drawing board. We need to know that. As much as it pains me to say, we need to trade EGO rather soon... The other insane thing is that if you take EGo out of the current starting lineup, all the others are ... undrafted! That would be an insane rebuild, if your starting core is all undrafted players... I don't have a strong opinion one way or another. Need to see more. We may be OK with the talent we have or we may need to find more talent. One thing I can tell you for sure, though: neither White KD, nor Black Blake will move the needle that much! Cle hit gold with drafting Garland, Mobley and getting J.Allen; I don't think White KD or Black Blake are anywhere near their talent level.
Hard to imagine anyone giving the Cavs a legit superstar for either... certainly not Sexton who the Cavs themselves were concerned was too one dimensional and now has injury risk. As for Garland, I REALLY REALLY REALLY like his game. A LOT. But at the moment he's just below that legit superstar bait, given any picks they'd give up would be just "ok", and when he gets good enough to be at that level, do you want to trade him at that point?? I think they're best bet is Garland goes from19/7 to 25/9, and Mobley turns into a 25/10 legit superstar (plus the defense) and they build around that 1-2 punch. They also suffer from being in Cleveland... so its not like Damian Lillard is going to be like "trade me there!". This is a bit of the rub with tanking, rebuilding and drafting. Heck, the Mavs got a legit superstar form almost day one, and still ended up with a coach fired, some roster dissaray and an inability to get out of the first round. You have to pick true legit superstars and then lots of things have to go your way. This is why i was on team Jalen in the first place. Legit true megastar, can carry a team offensively while being a star that can get others to come play with him potential... admittedly i definitely misjudged his potential downside case. On the topic of Green... WHEN WILL HE BE BACK????
You do realize that more than 50% of Green's shots prior to his injury were open / wide open 3's ..... yet he's shooting 27%. It is quite possible that Green was just as much the problem as the scheme itself , killing the spacing with his poor shooting (Combined with Tate who was at ~25% last time I looked). Funny stat - Wood and Theis had the two highest 3 point percentages of the starting 5 (Green , Tate , KPJ). Any wonder the spacing was broken when your guards / wings can't spread the floor ?! While they ran the two big offense to start games , they didn't run it exclusively , there were lots of times there was only 1 big on the floor. He was equally bad on both ends -5.8 offensively and -4.3 defensively .... teams would seek out isolations against him and abuse him time and again. The -5.8 offensive number is particularly disturbing considering that's suppose to be his specialty .... Yeah , he was that bad. He could have been replaced by a league average player and the needle been moved significantly in the right direction. Just so happens he was replaced by a guy who has played at a crazy high level of efficiency and been a stand out defender too .... and that's the difference between 0-15 and 7-0.
Green KPJ Tate Wood Theis The compatibility here is ****ing terrible. Matthews has been a huge upgrade over Green. Gordon is better then KPJ and getting Theis out of the rotation has unlocked Wood. Blaming it just on Green is idiotic. I’d like to see Green with 20 minutes off the bench. He was making clear progress on the offensive end over his last few appearances, culminating in a good quarter against the Bulls with Porter. edit: I think Gordon is an asset you can get value for at this point. I like him and I’d keep him if I thought this was an actual playoff team but I’d rather give his minutes to Green and Christopher.
