Yea just like you said, I don't think Jalen really cares about basketball. He cares more about the material stuff that comes along with being an NBA player and the bigger social profile but it's fairly obvious basketball isn't his main priority, sadly. If Stone ignores Eli Witus and screws up this draft... I'd still be happy with an eventual core rotation of Sengun, Jabari, Tari, Whitmore, and Amen. Just need to get Jalen off of this team to finally get rid of that loser stank from the Silas era.
Green is literally the only player on the roster who can consistently create his own shot at all three levels against set half court defenses that are loaded up to stop you. Fred would join the list if he could create his own shot going to the rim but he's a midget. Sengun would join the post if he could create his own shot consistently from the three point line. Amen and Cam could join the list if they could maintain a live dribble against set half court defensive pressure loaded up on them. But so for on this roster, only Green is on this list. For example Green is the only guy on the roster that can pull off stuff like what he did in OKC like splitting double teams with a handle.
I don’t know if Jalen doesn’t care or if he just gets discouraged easily. I see it on the golf course all the time. A player has a bad couple of holes and then just can’t get their attitude or concentration back the rest of the round. Then there are other golfers that will really buckle down and get their game back on track . I also think mental maturity plays a part. Jalen clearly loves basketball when he is playing well. He needs the maturity to contribute in other ways when his shot isn’t falling. I, like most, are about out of patience waiting for him to mature. To me, he needs to be a positive starter the first quarter of this season with a somewhat consistent shot and continue to improve his court awareness to be part of this team going forward. I do believe he will eventually be a very good NBA player for someone.
Front runners are not pieces to build around....they are to be shed to other teams .....we need guys who can grind...and don't hang their heads. Jalen just doesn't have the mentality of a winner....a DIE NOT TO LOSE player.....he needs to go....no matter what all the fans from the Philippines think. DD
I agree with your perceptions. Jalen is quite bipolar in the sense that his game swings wildly from one extreme to the other. But whats really at the heart of the matter is why. Lack of maturity? Lack of NBA experience? Or maybe its just his personality. If its the later, it may not be fixable. People I have known in my life to carry their personal life in this way never suddenly become fixed into a certain way of being. They carry on up and down, this way and that their whole lives. But it is true that some of them make what they are in a more positive way than others. It also could be that his personal life affects his professional one in this way. Unfortunately, what I know and see of his personal life doesn't look like something that is likely to be a source of stability for him in the long term.
I think people are just looking too much into this. Green's archetype as a self creating scoring guard always has high volatility when they are young. Asking 19-22 year olds to run 10 possessions per game of being the primary pnr ball handler is asking for a lot of mistakes to happen and a lot of volatility. But for players that are with that archetype if the player shows extreme highs, which Jalen has, the hope is that when he becomes the ripe old age of 23-25 that volatility lessens and those extreme highs become more of the norm. Guys who are drafted because they have super utility role player archetypes are less volatile because they aren't asked to do things like create their own offense against set half court defenses. What you are seeing is a product of roles, not psychology. People are bad at psychoanalyzing people they've never met. Hence the Goldwater rule. I suggest people try to stop doing it.
What I've found from an outsider perspective (that is knowing basketball, but being an outsider to specific teams/players) is that role & psychology actually have a combined part to play over time that shows itself to the outsider. There's a natural pecking order that happens on a basketball team over time. So with Jalen, to those saying he doesn't have "It" whatever "it" is, or doesn't have the leadership archetype... I just don't buy that completely yet from watching the way the team reacts to Jalen ALL THE TIME. Now there were times earlier in the season (and it has happened in seasons prior for months on end) where you do see him slip into the background, and in a pecking order sense, I do see his role slip. But the fact that other times for a decent stretch of play, he's treated by his teammates, and his play reflects a leader, and a key cog in the team's makeup. People should stop trying to psychoanalyze the situation with Jalen because not only are we not part of the locker room, but also there is outsider evidence to the contrary that stared us right in the face for a good chunk of the season where we did see that given the role, he has shown that he's a all-star caliber player, and one that his teammates and coaches obviously believed in during that stretch. If you want to trade Jalen for consistency, that is an entirely different argument, but one that is probably a tough gamble to make. Hell you could have made an assumption about James Harden after the OKC/Miami finals appearance. There were warning signs there as an outsider looking in that probably have some merit now years later as his career is winding down. However the Rockets were still in a place where the gamble was worth it with Harden given where they were at a place in need of talent that showed that it could probably star level production. Jalen... buy into him, or not... has shown that he does have that type of talent.... AND we know the Rockets desperately need an all star on the perimeter. So for now... as an outsider to that locker room, I see the evidence to tell me as a fan that we should give Jalen another year before throwing in the towel. As frustrating as it is, and as impatient as we are as fans... there's still something there we might not be able to replace or upgrade from so easily, and could look back and wish years later the team would have waited another year before trading him.
Bringing it back to Cam though... I really just don't see why it has to be an either or right now. Cam deserves minutes and a role next season for sure, and there's no evidence that keeping Jalen for another season (or at least until trade deadline) means that Cam just isn't going to get a chance to flourish. I don't know why nobody mentions the fact that Dillon Brooks probably isn't quite full time starter caliber, and I see no reason why Cam couldn't beat him out if he improves on defense even more. I personally think Amen earned the starting spot over Brooks last season maybe more than Cam did, but Cam also has offensive capabilities to open the floor up that Amen does not.
Cam has not shown that he can be a secondary ball handler/playmaker--yet. It's important for a starting SG. I think he is more suited to be either a starting SF or a 6th man instant scorer. So I don't see him as the insurance for Jalen. We don't have an insurance for Jalen. We need to either draft one , sign one, or trade for one.
To me this should not be a conversation about Jalen vs Cam vs Amen etc. This should be a conversation about who makes it an obvious choice for the coaches to replace Brooks in the starting lineup, and hopefully at some point if someone emerges as a playmaker.... who replaces FVV in the starting lineup. Right now we have 5 starting spots open IMO, and only 1.5 players on the team have made the case that they are worthy of keeping their spot. Every one of these young players have the opportunity to emerge as an upgrade to the vets, or maybe even an upgrade to a really solid but still young player like Jabari or Jalen. I just don't buy the notion of it being this guy or that... This is a team that barely got to .500 and has two highly paid veteran role players who I really like but aren't superstars. There are spots open for guys to take if they can emerge.
Green can always get off a shot but most of the time it doesn't go in so who cares if he can create a shot. Then he also sucks on defense. I dunno why everyone still holds onto hope that he's gonna be good. He doesn't compete in games, loafs around most of the time, seems like he's day dreaming on defense. His frame is too small to guard bigger guards and players. His discipline isn't good enough to guard quicker players either. He has 1 hot stretch a season against the worst teams trying to tank at the end of the year and everyone is happy and excited about the next year until he goes back to being absolute trash for 3/4 of the season. I think it's safe to call him a bust and time for us to move on. I'd rather see Cam Whitmore get those minutes. That dude plays with a purpose. I dunno how yall were arguing about Mobley and Barnes, I take them both over Green in a heartbeat, if we called Cleveland and Toronto and asked them to trade us straight up they'd both laugh in our face. With the defensive improvement we get with Barnes we probably make the playoffs this year.
Shot creation is why Jalen has the second highest impact on team on/off offensive efficiency for the entire season, not only the hot stretch, only behind FVV and Landale(small sample size where most of his minutes were on that 11-0 run). In 5 years one player has one player of the month that didn't make a all-nba team. Jalen Green would have won March if it wasn't for a historic month from Luka. Difference between being hot and carrying a team to a 13-2 record for 15 games. In those 15 games the Rockets were 13-2 and had around a -6 pt differential per game when Jalen was resting on the bench. He was the only player in he rotation where the team was a negative per game when they rested. Basically the Rockets were a dog **** team the moment Jalen rested during a 13-2 stretch. It was MVP level impact for an entire month. And your narratives about him being lazy on defense.... He would benched if that was true. Silas didn't hold him accountable on that end. Ime has.
He was benched basically for the whole season in the fourth quarter until Cam and Sengun got hurt. That stretch was against some of the worst teams you've ever seen in the nba. People trotting out g league rosters that won't even be in the nba next season, Then when we actually played playoff teams in that stretch he went back to sucking and we started losing. Not sure what stats you're looking at but his BPM on the season was negative. So no for the whole season he wasn't a positive to our team. He was also 5th in win shares behind FVV, sengun, Jabari and Amen. So basically he's our worst top pick in last 3 years. He was out performed by a rookie who can't make a shot outside the paint.
Win shares? Dude don't be lazy. Jalen Green has a higher offensive winshares than Ant Edwards in their respective sophomore seasons. It's one of the worst advanced metrics. I'm referring to cleaning the glass that does on/off metrics that remove noise like garbage time that Basketball reference doesn't. Greene as benched in the fourth like 8 times. And it not happening anymore had nothing to do with Cam. His best game was against one of the best defenses in a he NBA in OKC that has amazing points of attack switchable defenders.
For someone that has a horrible track record of player assessment, it is extremely irritating that you are so confident in your player evaluation. Also, as an avowed liberal your racist comments are so hypocritical. Keep it to basketball no matter how uninformed you are.
A great defensive team? I would say their defense even improves without SGA. They have an army of long switchable good to great defenders. If you watched that game it was elite shot making against great defense. The Cavs are bad? The Suns? Kings?
Only the Cavs were a good defensive team out of that group. But it seemed like they were uninterested and coming off a long road trip, cuz they showed no fight in that game. Suns and Kings are both flawed teams but they also game planned against Sengun in those matchups, leaving Jalen to do whatever. 3 game sample size isn't great when I have 60 games of him being terrible. I get it Jalen when he's on looks like a star of stars. Rockets are so much more fun to watch when he's playing well. Problem is he has 0 consistency and his bball IQ is pretty terrible. I don't trust him for a whole season I definitely don't trust him if we make the playoffs. His offense drives his whole game. When he's scoring he's also more engaged on defense. But when his shots not falling it also affects the rest of his game cuz he's just out there doing nothing.
