I bet he is… I wouldn’t want to be the team to give Brown the max deal. Celts will have to be very creative going forward and better win a championship next year or two.
Jabari's handles in the latter half of the season really improved and he no longer looked awkward on drives. In terms of being able to create his own shot it was night and day compared to summer league or preseason. If you look at his late season performance against Indy, for instance, you can see all the plays he's pulling off in this year's summer league. In his last 20 games Smith averaged 16/8 on 47/36/78 splits vs his first 20 games where he couldn't hit anything (35 FG%). He's been putting in a lot of work in all aspects of his game.
Imagine Jabari having these level of performances in multiple regular season games like Green. Green is easily the highest ceiling player still. A lot of "shiny new toy" syndrome too. People understand that Green was a higher prospect in pre-nba than Amen right? I don't think a single summer league game changes that.
Given all the young talent on the team right now, I feel like it's going to be hard for the "only" or "first" type fans struggling to make it seem like their guy is the top guy on the team....especially if they have a history of underperformance. They either need to step it up this season or no amount of constant spin is going to keep the hype train alive. I hope they cope well.
How? Jalen brings nothing but scoring to the table. I’m hoping to see a jump in him defensively. He’s not different than Beal and LaVine, just gonna light up the scoreboard! Jalen has just been a shot chucker so far. His ceiling is the 2 guys I mentioned, and those are really good players!
I get it.. I have him below them bc I don’t think he’ll ever be at least decent on defense. If wasn’t a center, which is the most important defensive position, I would have him above them
Amen is taller and 20 lbs heavier at PG, so he has better size. Only thing Jalen has on him is shooting.
I always think about how high @Clutch was on Jabari and his work ethic and drive to go along with his defensive ability and his other talents as well… It’s going to pay off Year 2 loading
Nope. Beal at Green's age: 17 ppg 50% ts ong 35% of his fgs self created Green: 22 ppg 54% ts 60% of his fgs self created. Green not only was a lot more efficient on high volume, he was a lot more efficient taking a lot more stupid contested off the dribble attempts. How does that even happen for two similarly level talents? It doesn't. Because one player is significantly more talented at the same stage. You can find similar gaps between Green and Lavine. And then you compare him to Jabari which is even worse: 13 ppg 50% ts ok 22% of his fgs self created AND had worse defensive on/off numbers than Green. There isn't an argument. And you are severely underselling Green. Like there is no reason to cap Green's ceiling at Beal or Lavine. Green had a significantly deeper bag than young Lavine and is significantly more physically gifted than Beal. If you want a reasonable comparison to Green's ceiling, think of a more physically gifted Booker.
Jalen is a pure scorer a three level scorer and I don’t see Amen dropping 30 at least no time soon and plus that’s not his game.
Quickness? Ball skills? Handles? In between game? There is a reason Green was the significantly higher prospect entering the league. Amen does one thing significantly better than Green and that's having awareness of where his teammates are and having his head on a swivel when operating with the ball. That is something I hope Green picks up from Amen.
Thus far, he's just been a low efficiency chucker that is a complete embarrassment defensively. If Amen's ball handling and passing translate, and he is defensively what it appears he could be, he could end up better overall as a rookie than Jalen ever will be.....and I say that despite the fact that Amen is nowhere near ready. Chucking a ton of shots and ending up scoring a lot of points in an inefficient manner isn't something good players do....but it sounds like that's oddly what you value. Right now, Jalen is the 3rd best guard on the team....but could be the 4th best guard on the team by the end of the season depending on how quickly Amen comes on.
The only thing Sengun doesn't do as well as Green is score, and even then you could argue they're pretty close when factoring efficiency. Sengun's better at pretty much everything else, including defense. Green's horrible thus far. Whitmore same thing, and he's got a long ways to go.
