Green and Whitmore off the ball

there is nothing wrong physically with Jalen Green. All this talk about wingspan, skinniness, hand-size, none of it is relevant, there has been many, many NBA superstars with much less imposing physical attributes. What we haven’t had, though yet is a star that has the personality and demeanor of an Instagram model.

 

Why?

 

Rockets desperately need a shooting guard who can actually shoot the ball. A shooting guard whose percentage is 40% and ~32% on 3’s isn’t cutting it in a title contender. Especially when the PG is also another 40% FG shooter.

Fred VanVleet gets a pass because no pun intended, he can actually pass the ball, plus he’s surprisingly been shooting around 38-39% on his 3 pointers.

 

I certainly didn't intend to hurt anyone's feelings. Sorry if I did.

 

To put 3 great defenders around Sengun and offer an ability to reach league average 3 point shooting at the same time particularly in wide open looks. Run an uptempo 2nd team.

What realistic free agent or trade is going to make a bigger difference?

 

1. You use a lot of words as “it’s as though” and “looks like”. That’s an opinion and judgement but what is this based on? What specifically is he not doing and what specifically does right look like to you?

2. You also talked about “barely” contesting shots “well below” his physical abilities. Do you know his optimal physical abilities on shot contests? What does that look like or what should it be?

3. You talked about him being disinterested and “inattentive” and “indifferent”. How can you tell this? What specifically isn’t he doing?

4. You talked about him trailing his man on defense while not innovating or “create opportunities for the ball handler”. Again what are you specifically talking about and what does right look like?

I’m all about specifics and ensuring analysis and assessments are rooted in facts, data, and knowledge instead of bias, conjecture, or emotions.

A. When I watch Green he makes the right reads on both ends most of the time. When his man switches on offense on the perimeter he stays taking the guy coming up and lets his teammate take the guy coming down. When he switches on defense on screen he does it. When the defense rotates to strong side and helps he gets in the right position to guard the perimeter. He stays with his man most of the time on defense. Not a great steals guy or on ball defender but he stays in front. When he gets screened high he goes over the screen with the ball handler because that’s team philosophy. All the Rockets players do this. He also grabs 4.6 boards a game. How do you grab boards by not boxing out or not being physical or soft?

B. On offense To me Green doesn’t have great court vision. He doesn’t make cross court passes to find the open man. He doesn’t hit corner guys a lot. He seems determined on screen and rolls to pass to Sengun or the roller which is the right play usually. But for instance in one game he has a screen on the left wing. The help defender up top came out to stop him. The original wing guy also followed him as he was driving to the paint. The paint was clogged. If only he turned back and hit the wide open wing guy. But he didn’t. Offensive awareness. Peripherals. He also is more hesitant this year and I think that’s from the new system with FVV and Sengun dominating touches but also with him trying to be better at making the right reads.

C. I can say Cam misses a lot of assignments. Doesn’t matter what he looks like if he looks strong or aggressive. At the end of the day he misses assignments and plays very loose on defense. For instance running to the paint to guard a big or a driving player while leaving his man in the corner open. Or switching leaving his man unguarded. Which is a communication issue possibly.

 

I'm not commenting on Jalen Green anymore...Tired of that topic...

But regarding Cam, offensively I think he moves off ball well. He's one of the few willing cutters we have and he migrates to open spots well. You can tell he really wants the ball and it shows up because he puts himself in good positions to receive it.

Defensively, early on I felt like he was inattentive and lost his man while he was ball watching too much. But even so he was still active off ball and looked like he was at least engaged and willing to play defense. Someone must have gotten on him about losing his man, because lately he's not had those issues. Cam really needs a consistent 25ish mins per night.

 

Any number of reasons to not do that: Pace. Sengun as the offensive centerpiece. Defense. The fact that easy transition buckets go away in the playoffs and you have to have a workable half-court offense to survive in the playoffs.

You're basically making an argument to go back to prior years so he can look more like a "good stats/bad team" guy rather than a struggling player on team contending for the playoffs. JG needs to adjust to the team now, not the other way around.

 

What does “given” mean? Really. Fact is teams invest in their lottery picks. Has Scoot Henderson necessarily earned it? Most of the stars today who were lottery picks were given playing time early in their careers and teams continued to invest in growing and developing these players hoping for a nice return granted players show potential and growth. Im sure if Green hasn’t shown anything or earned anything as many fans believe, he wouldn’t be playing. It’s difficult to score in this league and he has shown he can do it. He has shown growth despite many fans not believing it. This year his role has changed. The system and style has changed. And the coaching has changed. It’s easy to look at numbers and say why isn’t he dropping 30 a night. And some of this is on his lack of aggressiveness but there’s a bit more going on in terms of personnel and style of play. Why does Jaylen Brown or Jamal Murray thrive? Because they have a center that can stretch defenses and not clog the paint. This is one example among many more issues. Is this a shot at Sengun? No. It’s just reality and where we are.

 

Yep, me too (angry).

More so when some folks say he is fine (or will be) and give a list of excuses.

 

Bonus points for using the word "execrable." I had settled for "horrific."

 

The final one I hope.

 

Brooks is a fine 3 pt shooter and a great defender. Tari is awesome off the bench and will suffer theFVV effect. Tari starting instead of brooks will hurt our team not help it. Jalen playing with FVV is the problem

 

Playoffs? LOL you sweet summer child.

Play to your player strengths is what Im saying. You dont take a freedom of movement rhythm player and expect him to be a 3&D guy.

 

Nope. You need quality 3&D players around Sengun if the 1995 offense is going to work. Tari even offers a little playmaking.

So who are you thinking of when you want to go sign or trade for someone - realistically that suits your position?

 

That’s right. Move hi to the bench with guys that meet his style

 

Might as well just try to outrun other bench units.

 

Im so tired of these delusional posts lol The defense of Jalen is to gaslight and throw fallacies and aggressive assumptions at the person you are replying to. Its old, its desperate and its stale and its not gonna work anymore. Its over he shouldn't be starting, he's been given plenty of time if he wants to be a starter he should earn it from the bench because so far he's proven he's not ready to be a starter. Its not personal I dont hate him by fact he is the worst shooting shooting guard in the league, its just the truth.

 

Your comment about system change would make sense if Jalen actually was efficiently scoring at any point in his career. He was inefficient 2 years ago, 1 year ago, 3 months ago, now.

 

1995 had a guy by the name of Clyde Drexler… If we had that caliber of player, I’m sure Ime would let him eat. We don’t.