Jalen lost it. KPJ never had it to the same degree. Alpi, Bari, Tari will never lose it. Tari was still hustling his ass off.
I'm not worried about Sengun and Bari at all. Even when Bari is playing like ass, he is hustling. Bari is still in his stance ready to shoot when the ball is never going to come. You also see the improvement in Bari's game already - that man couldn't dribble when rocket drafted him. I'm not worried about Sengun and Bari at all. Jalen I'm worried about. Jalen was a different guy as a rookie; you saw the fire, bravado and "want to". Even the start of this season you saw Jalen Ding up on ball (his help d was ass). It's not there anymore; The rot of losing is starting to seep in for Jalen. Jalen just going through the motions and relying on talent. He doesn't care on defense and he started to lean into the iso ball that wasn't there in his rookie season. This it what happens when a kid is left to figure it out on his own and he doesn't have that crazy MJ/Kobe mentality. They start to feel the weight. Jalen starting to buckle. If we had a coach that could push Jalen I wouldn't be worried. Jalen is that type of player who responds to tough coaching... but we dont have a tough coach. I hope we dont lose Jalen before Silas is fired.
Praying Jalen gets it back. I think he will if he gets the right people around him. When Sengun said Tate was his best friend on the team that hurt my soul. Sengun and Jalen need to be friends. BEST FRIENDS!
Jalen never had. But it does not mean that he can't have. Success, failure, fighting sprit, iso ball,.. all contagious. Force JGreen to spend time with Sengun/Bari/Tari and he will get it. Do it soon.
He quoted Eric Gordon as best and J. Tate as kind of best friend. Sengun started with JGreen and Josh and shared late pizza nights with Garuba but it seems that he leans for mature players' friendships nowadays. Personally I would like to see Bari/Tari/JGreen/Garuba/KJM around him
I can respect your view, but I don't really see it myself. Players are created differently, Kobe Bryant looked like a showboating stat-stuffer to me for years before it clicked for him. That's the life of a star scorer before they learn to link their scoring to winning and before a veteran team hunts their defense in the playoffs to open their eyes to how important it is. Kobe's defense sucked and the effort inconsistent, he was constantly taking bad shots for a minimum of 3 years. In fact I don't think it fully clicked for him till Phil Jackson's second season. Jabari would look more hardworking next to a Kobe Bryant, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's going to end up the better player. In the real world, sometimes real talent beats the harder worker otherwise Ryan Bowen would have had a very successful NBA career. Hard workers ensure a higher floor. I think we have the right mix of players here. These are all the right types of characters to form a core, you rarely have duplicates in young teams that emerge early. And make no mistake about it, it's super early for us. We're only 1.5 seasons into drafting our first batch of players for the rebuild. If we take flight in the middle of next season, we'll be seen as way ahead of schedule very much like the Grizzlies. All will go well. We are the worst shooting/spacing team in the NBA, all our playmakers are riddled with turnovers and love to score. Everyone is going to look worse than they actually are here, it's a compounding problem in a team sport.
You're going to have to show me clips of young Kobe lacking effort. And even if he did, he had vets and coaching around him to set him straight. Who does Jalen have around him? Does Jalen still talk to Ja Morant?
There are no clips of players lacking effort from then. You can just look up his 2nd year stats: 42% from the field, 32% from 3pt land, almost as many turnovers as assists, negligible rebounding, fewer FTA than Jalen. No defense, anyone my age or older can tell you that. He's playing with Robert Horry, Elden Campbell, Derek Fisher, Eddie Jones, Nick Van Exel and Shaquille O'****ingNeal. Those are his vets and they were going to lead that team to 60 wins with or without Kobe. Things were easy for him, and still he had the same problems Jalen has: poor shot selection, no defense, inconsistent flashes. So what's logical is Jalen can put up volume stats on a bad team but his efficiency should be lower. That's exactly what's happening. He will be fine as soon as we surround him with vets and the young guys get better at basketball. The degree of difficulty is so high dude, you have to earnestly acknowledge it. The youngest/dumbest rotation in the NBA, the worst spaced team and poor offensive execution from the playmakers. How can it NOT matter being set up by NVE/Fisher vs KPJ/Nix? Jalen is a classic SG, he's not in the mould of the Cades and Hardens of the world where they want to be the PG and the SG. He's in the mold of MJ/Kobe where he likes there to be a responsible guy who knows his place at PG. He wants everyone to get out of his way when it's time to score, but the opponents defense is all inside the paint when he's trying to score. These are not identity issues, these are situational issues. The situation is changing in 40ish games. Hang in there.
The environment is different. I don't think you can compare 2 players' development 1 to 1. It happens or it doesn't happen, and the middle ground is also vast.
hes in the league for a long time maybe he or his dad had feud with alpis agent so hes holding back alpi to hurt his agent... or maybe he is doing favor to jalen greens agent/agency by holding back alpi because his dad was a huge friend /buddy/customer under the table with the JG's agent if alpi ever breaks out hes guaranteed max contract big money is in game... perhaps he got orders from above to nerf him and for rockets to be able to sign a franchise player on cheap later on perhaps hes saving his face or face of whoever of bosses vouched for jalen green to be selected at 2 so that by holding back alpi jalen is not looking like a big bust...
math, you're agreeing with me. I've been sayin in all these threads that Jalen can't expect to rise above the coaching and his situation with no one teaching him. I'm worried about Jalen because his mentality might not be strong enough without help from the rockets organization. Also if Kobe was lazy as a rookie/soph and not trying, don't you think Shaq or anyone on that team would have said something by now? Kobe is infamous for his work ethic. Just because his stats were ass wasn't because he was lazy; it was because he wasn't physically ready. Plus Kobe was the one who wanted Shaq gone because Shaq was the lazy one. in some of these clips Jalen is not even trying.
Imagine the game being close going into the 4th and watch your coach refuse to let u in the game until your team were down 15 pts bc of the sht rotations said coach trotted out. If u care about winning, u would b triggered also Especially if u had a solid game. In no world does nix deserve the most mins on the team with that stat line.
Agreed, the first quarter was a joy to watch, the ball moved and Martin had an absolute dunk fest. It’s baffling how they can’t maintain that level for 48 minutes
We’re on the same page except that I think Kobe sucked because he just didn’t know how to win and he was selfish. The vets didn’t need him and would’ve written him off. I’m also saying a young star scorer type being defensively demotivated in a game does not mean anything about how their career is going to go. It happens and it especially happens when you’re in a season where the defense is breaking down no matter how hard you personally try. This team has no chance of playing good defense and Kobe has done some wild **** when he didn’t like his chances of winning. He went almost a whole game without shooting once just to make a point, teammates be damned. In 2010 he thought Pau could clean up for him like Shaq and he was lazy on rotations in the playoffs against the Suns. Kobe would be fuming on this team, he’d be fighting with teammates and being dramatic in the media. Greens situation is tougher, and the result of that is there will be instances of more frustration. Can’t judge his effort, getting to the line at the rate he’s doing it requires an exceptional level of effort, getting beat up, driving around his misplaced teammates and not getting calls. I don’t doubt he’ll be a good playoff defender in his career, personally.
The Suns series in 2010 was arguably Kobe’s greatest series of all time and one of the greatest playoff series performances ever. Stop it
