Jake Fischer: Rockets have discussed Jalen Green trade

Brown is MJ now?

 

He's never going to be a 2 way player...

I worry his ceiling is Lou Williams... similar body type...

 

They will just bust out their Gerald Green or Jeff Green jerseys...

 

That's absolutely correct just like Enes Kanter is Rudy Gobert....

 

Defense is not a body type, it's a mindset! Not saying he'll become a Gary Payton, but he can definately improve with the right guidance! Really want to see what Udoka can do with him BEFORE we start labeling him or anyone else on our team.

Go Rockets!!!
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I honestly believe that Udoka will help KPJ and Jalen be better defenders. Jalen doesn’t seem to have any real defensive IQ yet, but he’s a capable on ball defender. I just think Udoka is going to help him take a big step on that side of the ball.

 

Im looking at some of these players in the playoffs and thinking about the narratives that surround them in their first few years. Fox was not that highly thought of after a couple years but has really emerged in year 6. Tatum was questioned and called a Robin. People called Jaylen a bust after the first year or two relative to being pick #1.

Have to be patient. What will Porter, Sengun, Green and Smith be in 3 years?

 

Noooo! But you can have Porter

 

Noooo! But you can have Porter

 

Even Tari man. He had really terrible fundamentals when he arrived and I think that's in part because his role in college was as a 6th man and typically you get a lot of freedom (i.e. less structure) when playing that way. Struggled working with the team both offensively and defensively. Despite that on raw talent and effort alone he had a good defensive season with decent 3pt shooting. I can't think of a better coach in the world for Tari than Ime Udoka, their profiles as players have a lot of similarity. Udoka was a bit of a talented but unstructured defender when he joined the league, he had to learn that.

With more muscle and the team concepts slowly becoming second nature to him, I think he can be a better player than OG Anunoby and that's an excellent player.

If Udoka can figure out a role on defense that Sengun can develop in, he could be creating a max-worthy player.

 

Brown was drafted in 2016. The screenshot I posted is Celtics in 2017-2018, that was Brown's 2nd year.

Green is #1 offensive option on the Rockets in his 2nd year, his accounting stats ppg is up but his efficiency hasn't really (it even dipped a little). Yes, he's the focus opposing team's defense, yes Silas was coaching, but results are what they are; after we dismiss bunch of would-have / could-have. In my eyes, Green still has to prove that he is that elite scorer worthy of us going out and surround him with defensive players. His offense hasn't been good enough where he can be a one-way only. Good news is Green still has time, year 3 he has to show a jump.

This season, I could have gone much harder criticizing Green, but I held back back because it his 2nd year and it doesn't mean he won't keep improving. I also didn't want to be dragged into the pro-green vs anti-green arguments.

I'm not for trading Green for Brown, as I said in other threads, Celtics is in win-now, Green doesn't fit their current timeline. Plus the idea was for Brown to play with Green not trade for him. If Rockets can land a guy like Brown, he's one of those defensive guys who can cover for Green. Brown is a SF for the Celtics, currently their guards are Derrick White and Marcus Smart. Brown's still young (in his prime), but a 'vet' enough to have played more playoff games than all our entire Rockets roster combined.


All this stuff is hypothetical anyways.

Our season has ended, but I hope folks haven't forgotten that this team is not good. Objectively speaking our team is bad. Like really bad by NBA standards. Even against other team's 3rd unit, who were tanking, the Rocket starters even struggled. And when I see some of our fanbase turn our nose up at certain players... I'm like... Harden era is gone... we need to reset expectations a bit.

Because of the way things are, if Rockets go after other players, there's going to be a premium in overpay, but hopefully, the price isn't too high. With the lack of vets, going all young in hindsight was a mistake, as the growth of guys like Green/Bari seems to have been stunted. We're hoping things change with the new regime, fingers crossed.

 

I just want to say for the record: I don't believe for one second that Green is going to remain a bad defender. I think what will happen is that Udoka will earn Green's buy-in to giving 100% effort as a point of attack defender and a willingness to learn and improve his defense continuously. He's going to convince him that if he wants to be like his role models, all of those guys were very good defenders (I believe Jordan is his favorite).

Nothing will happen overnight but I believe with adding as much muscle as last offseason and Udoka's help, we're going to see good results from Jalen. Steph Curry is not a great defender but he made himself from a bad defender into a defender not worth isolating or attacking specifically. I can see Green doing that. He has already had long stretches of 20-30 games where he gives 100% effort on defense and moreso in his rookie season. He just arrived with no idea how to play any type of defense at all and it wasn't really a priority for the team since he's been drafted.

Losing can weigh heavily on players as well. I'd argue Jalen gave a better defensive effort in his rookie season vs his sophomore season and I bet that dip has a lot to do with just getting sick of losing. It's not natural for a competitor but we just had to tank the way we did.

I'm optimistic about his future as a better defender. I never took him as a kid who wasn't willing to give effort until late this season, he just really sucked at it and strength matters on defense in the NBA.

 

Very few guys come into the league as good defenders, especially at age 19. The few players who do are normally defensive specialists who aren't asked to score much. For star players, it usually takes time to develop into a good defender. Even LeBron came into the league as a bad defensive player, he had to learn how to do it and he didn't really become a great defensive player until around the middle of his career.

More recently, you can look at guys like Andrew Wiggins and Devin Booker as players who really took major strides on defense after being bad their first few years in the league.

I think we did see some improvement from Green on defense over his rookie year. He still has a lot to learn, and as many have mentioned, he needs to keep hitting the weight room and getting stronger.

I'm less optimistic about KPJ. Maybe Udoka can turn him around. But he hasn't shown any signs of improvement at all since he first got here in my opinion. Not even a little bit. The guys who never become at least average defensive players, it's usually for one of two reasons: The first possibility is they just don't have the physical tools to do it (too slow, too small). That doesn't apply to Green or KPJ. The second possibility is they just don't care enough to try hard. I'm afraid that might be the case for Porter Jr. But we'll have to wait and see.

 

Yes young players traditionally aren't great at defense and needs time. Coaches who have commented on this (including JVG) also said by 3rd year they should showed at least some decent level of improvement.

The other thing is until the young core (and I don't just mean Green; other young guys too) improve their defense, it doesn't mean the GM/Stone stand idly by and not plug those holes. So when the team is looking at free agents/trades of other guys: many of are either positively defensive: Lopez, PatBev, Carsuo, Brown or at least net neutral: Cam Johnson and Austin Reaves.

Can't do what we did last year where you sail a boat out with 4-5 gaping holes (starters). That boat will sink real quick. Plug some of the holes maybe two starter positions at least, until guys like Green and Jabari are positive on defense.

 

Starting to see more articles iq about teams local beat writers talking about trading for Green. Or sengun.

what bothers me about this(and this is jsut my very personally opinion) is I(we). Have set here and continuously watch this tank for the last three season of horrible basketball with some potential upside jsut to now possibly watch all that talent we drafts get traded away. What was the pointing of tanking? We we could’ve jsut tried to compete and got 14th pick selections because we were always goin be big players this summer becaue all the big contracts come off the books. We just set here talking the last three years to become a farm system for some contender.


Now I’m starting to shift my views and wished we hired Nurse or Vogel

 

If you can trade a guy you drafted for an actual star, you've made your team better....that's the point.

The last 2 top 3 picks were the biggest reason why the team had another tanking season....there's no one on the team good enough to get emotionally attached to. One of the first things Udoka said was that "youth is not an excuse", the players are going to be held accountable no matter where they were picked, something that wasn't the case before.

They'll either sink or swim, get better or get gone.

 

Right now, the bar is so low that Ime doesn't have to do much to greatly improve his defense. If the coach shouts at him every time he leaves his man to chase the ball, Jalen will already be a 5x better defender. Nowadays individual defense is just 20% of the game anyway so a good scheme will at least make him serviceable. He'll never be MJ or Kobe on defense because you have to be a bit crazy to be like that but he can defintly reach Curry level.

 

The youth have grown, let’s see them in a real system ina really coaching environment. Not what they been enduring the couple of season. They couldn’t even execute sets properly under Silas

 

Have they? I hope so, last season they got away with whatever they wanted, but this season there will be accountability. Green's defense has to MASSIVELY improve from what we've seen the last 2 seasons and Smith won't get away with another season shooting 29% on catch and shoot 3's. Both should catch some pine if those things continue.

 

There shouldn’t be anybody that disagrees with this. Green and KPJ should have been held accountable for their lack of effort on defense. I don’t think Jabari should have been benched in his rookie year for bad shooting and I think his last quarter of the season improvement is a pretty good indicator that having him work through his shooting issues was the right move. The speed of the game is almost always a long adjustment for rookies and benching him would have just delayed his being comfortable on the floor. It was not Green’s or KPJ’s rookie year. They should have been held accountable for effort or lack thereof.