Ah yes, because Jalen the not good at a single thing Green is comparable to the (much taller) LeBron and T-Mac who had multiple aspects of their game that they were great at.
You see, both of our criteria are arbitrary. You choose January because it suits your argument. I chose game 30 to 40. The difference is, I chose and stuck to my prediction since before the season. I didn't let myself get into a conflict of interest. I had no idea how Jalen would do before game 30 and I left the door open to be wrong too. It's not reasonable to cherry pick a random January streak. It's a little more logical to say before the season: he will be very inconsistent for about 20-30 games as he learns the system. Then he will make gradual improvements. If I didn't do that, I would be freaking out just like you. If you tell yourself Jalen can fly, then you've set yourself up to be disappointed independent of reality. You can tip toe around it forever but the truth is what you're mad about is that Jalen didn't improve his TS% and rebounding and assists and defense and effort and off ball play within 30-something games. Only one of those things he hasn't improved and whether you like it or not it's because of how the coaching staff designed his development schedule. You have a right to whatever opinion, but there's not gonna be any sympathy for this opinion when it predictably falls flat. Do you think I will be disappointed if it takes him 72 games to do all of those things simultaneously? No one would be disappointed by that and everyone would consider a huge turnaround success story. That would be wonderful for the teams future too because we would still have 1+ years to decide whether to extend him.
Comparing him to HS prospects is the key to understanding where we are with Jalen. In fact put HS draftee McGrady his first two seasons with Silas/Stone and that's roughly what Udoka is working with.
Orlando was a fairly young organization of 10+ years when McGrady arrived. McGrady was one of the history's earliest bloomers.....not the best example. Tells you that McGrady knew how to work on his game, things Jalen Green cannot even think of.....
My criteria is about his shooting. Not his passing, defense or most of the rest as you claim. Go look at my prior posts, I have have never said he needs to improve in all areas of his game at once. My criteria isnt arbitrary either, go look at his December stats if you like. Same story. No cherry picking. Now you yourself have crossed into the absurd. I am not freaking out one bit. What a shortsighted characterization. We need a shooting guard that can shoot. I can say that calmly and rationally.
You're choosing the sample after seeing the performance. It's cherry picking. You're ignoring what he's improved and any stats that reflect it. You're ignoring that December is a whole month and your January is a quarter of a month with his big games coming end of December. This is a game, and not a very good one. Just create a schedule for yourself without any bias and see how he performs. Also, yes what you're expecting of him by mid season ("I don't care about anything else he's here to score efficiently a lot" kind of talk) knowing that he has improved literally EVERYTHING else means you want him to have elevated as a scorer while he improved at everything else. If you think it's better for him to be a big scorer but not have improved much at defense, assists and everything else then you're not calculating basketball correctly. Udoka wouldn't start the player you're talking about. We would not be a top 10 defense with him starting. Defense is 50% of the game and possessions and minutes. Offense is 50%. Scoring is a part of offense, though the most important part. You have to value what he's done, young players who suck at these things don't improve all those things in 30 games. That's not a normal occurrence in the NBA.
He is a better defender this year than last...but he's still not a good defender. His improvement there is to go from awful to slightly better than awful. In no way shape or form is Jalen Green a GOOD defender. I would argue the whole team is better at defense this season than last season in part because of the influence of Brooks and more importantly because they have a coach that will bench their asses if they don't show effort or get lost consistently on defense. His assists are down this year...but maybe that's because his minutes are down too, because when his shot isn't falling he's not offering enough of anything else that's genuinely worth keeping him on the court for. Again, we can roll with him for however long, because we're just on vibes at this point anyway. No one has any expectation that this is a championship caliber team. So they can experiment and play around. His career will depend on whether he can shoot and score far more consistently than he does right now. But the organization should absolutely be listening to all offers. They don't have to accept them, but they better be listening, because rent is coming due and currently the roof is leaking.
I don't think I said he's a good defender. However, the improvement he's shown thus far has been impressive. He went from awful to below average. It's not a common occurrence for shoot-first young SG's to get better at defense 30 games after being taught it. I have seen career scorers go 5-10 years not improving that much. I cannot agree that we are starting a slightly better than awful SG and Sengun and we were a top 5 defense when healthy, doesn't make any sense especially since Jabari was not defending well early in the season. We're a team full of very good defenders so maybe side by side it seems to you he's slightly better than awful, but the results don't support it. His advanced stats don't show a slightly better than awful defender either, though I understand those tend to be noisy stats. To be honest I'm his biggest fan here I thought it would take him 1-2 years to go from awful to whatever he is now. I wasn't even sure he wouldn't sulk about the level of defensive effort required, because that's typically what happens with people described as immature score-first guards. On assists you're right about the box stats, I'm just going by what FVV and Udoka have said that match the eye test. He's passing quicker, better, more decisively with lower usage, fewer minutes and fewer shot attempts. To me he's a clearly more selfless player than last season when most of his passes were bail outs and transition opportunities. He's doing this in a slow as hell halfcourt offense with little ball movement. I'm very happy with this development in this area, especially more recently when he's been choosing whether to score or pass with a couple of seconds. I've also seen improvement in his PnR game with Sengun. I want more 5-out offense and transition for Jalen I know that his %'s would be higher in that setting, but they're aggressively moulding him into what this team needs from him. Hasn't been pretty, I get it. Most importantly, the only viable candidate for his spot is Cam who is a significantly worse defender and passer. That difference in scoring efficiency is not going to cover that gap. Both of these guys would benefit from more spacing and more transition opportunities. Listen to offers sure why not. Can't think of a better situation of a budding team than an uber athletic, great first step, willing-to-be-coached 22 year old who's one tweak to his 2PT% away from being a very good scorer who can start on a top 5 defense and we have till the summer after the next to pay the "rent". If he weren't on our team, I would want to acquire him and give him to Udoka and Sullivan for a year. The only problem with Jalen is he was surprisingly underdeveloped when he showed up (no college or pro experience like Amen/Ausar/Kuminga/Scoot) and then we continued to under develop him for 2 brutal years and let him take more bad shots/habits than I've ever seen a rookie take lol. I wish I knew this before we drafted him, but is what it is. If there's a story out there that screams obvious late bloomer, to me it's Jalen. If there's a coach who can make that happen for Jalen, it's Ime. To some extent Sengun has spoiled us, but that's because Americans look at international pro experience very poorly. To me it was very obvious Sengun plays like a young grown up and the other two play like kids. Playing in the Turkish league is far superior to playing in college which is far superior to playing in the G League. If that's true, the rate at which Sengun, Jabari and Green are developing makes total sense. I hope for all of us that I'm right.
You didn't. I just wanted to make it clear, because I see it said a lot that there's improvement there. There is, but it's just not meaningful enough to say he's giving you something there on the defensive end that's worth keeping him on the floor for in the event his shot isn't falling.
Yes I get what you mean, it's rarely the case that a young scorer can be a net positive when their shot isn't falling. I don't think 3 extra rebounds are going to fix that. What I've seen from Jalen is when his shot isn't falling, he goes to the line more or gets more assists. He'll improve in that area as he gets smarter and more experienced, but everything is pointless if he can't gradually improve his scoring efficiency.
