I don’t get how you can say this when bagley for his career (in fewer minutes) leads in all 3 metrics. Jalen’s 3rd season shows more promise for the future certainly, but he hasn’t done it yet.
My attitude toward Jalen at this point is: hope for the best; meh for the worst. I still have hope that he will fulfill his potential. That will be fantastic for the Rockets future. If he turns out to be a low value player, in the past I would be very disappointed because he was for a while the most hopeful to be our numero uno guy. Now, I'll just shrug and move on. We have a truck load of young talents. If Jalen fizzles out, there are other guys who can step in. They can't do some of the things Jalen does. But they can do a lot of other things that Jalen can't dream of doing. If this happens, the team will look different but probably not worse.
What are these attributes that Jalen "cant dream of doing" when comparing to the other guys on the roster?
The only thing I'd say is Amen's defensive impact. That is something Jalen doesn't have the traits for to ever reach. And Sheppard is still TBD but good chance Sheppard will be a level of shooter that Green never will be. But that is still not certain until he actually plays NBA games.
I need to see more Amen with the 1's. Reed BETTER be a more consistent/impactful shooter than Jalen thats the main reason he was drafted.
Yeah but it happened with Sengun out not clogging up the paint. Even as limited as Jock Landale is, his ability to hit 3s opened up the floor for Jalen. Had we had a stretch 5 the whole season, what would've been the result? Trash players don't lead young injured teams to 10 game winning streaks
Jalen is a nice guy and I have nothing against him, BUT he is still a below average shooter, average defender and a consistent….inconsistent player …game by game.
I know, I know, you think the Linsanity 2.0 BS was real rather than a fluke and you blame Sengun, and KPJ, and Silas, and literally everyone but Jalen Green for Jalen Green being a terrible player for 3 years. You have to understand that no one is going to take you crazy cultists seriously though. The newest excuse is that Jalen needs a stretch 5 to not suck at basketball.....if only there was some point in the past when Jalen had a stretch 5 to see if this is true.....oh wait, we have that history. How did Jalen do with Christian Wood as a stretch 5? He was terrible and his moronic cult blamed his awful performance partly on that stretch 5. I guess that stupid theory goes out the window doesn't it? Honestly, I hope you plan on leaving with Jalen. Player first and player only fans are an absolute cancer.
Bottom line here is Jalen has to be much more consistent. We need to see more of the good Jalen and much less of the poor Jalen and it all boils down to shooting. The following information is taken from his game logs found here - Jalen Green 2023-24 Game Log | Basketball-Reference.com He simply cannot have 12 games where he shoots .000 from 3. That's ~15% of the season and it might be different if he were taking less volume on these poor shooting nights but that's not really the case, he's still taking a high volume. He cannot have another 13 games where he shoots between .1 and .2 There goes another 15% of the season down the drain. (.158) He can't have 18 games where he shoots between .2 and .3. Well, that's 22% down the tubes ... (.219) You can deal with the 9 games he shot .333. A ho hum 11% of the year .... (.109) Now we're at 62% of the season with unacceptable shooting splits .... The 3 games he shot between .364 and .375 are about league average for the position, totally acceptable. The 27 games he shot .4 or better are fantastic, can I have more? The cumulative average of his worst 43 shooting games of the season, that's the games in which he shot between 0 and .3 equates to an Amen-esque .169 going 47 of 278. That just isn't gonna cut the ketchup & mustard. You double the number of made shots over that span of games and it's still well below league average at .338. Jalen is the epitome of when you're hot you're hot and when you're not you're not ....
Appreciate the work but that's still just saying he needs to take fewer attempts. He's taken about 7 per season each of his first 3 seasons. He should never have been taking that many and so his efficiency numbers are really bad. I don't understand how Udoka thought that was ok rather than making changes. Silas didn't care. The problem in Udoka's offense - especially early in the season - is that the paint was packed so the shot you "should" take is often a 3pter and that's just not Jalen's game. He needs a spaced out paint in order to attack the rim, and to use the 3pter only to punish defenders who sag off him too much on occasion. That's why it's very important Green and Sengun improve their shooting this summer. Makes them compatible on the court, improves both of them. Cutting down his attempts to 4-5 would increase his efficiency and just reduce the impact of bad shooting on our team. He could also get an assist or two passing the ball. I'm sure his mechanics will catch up but for the time being the real problem is shot selection/quantity. He needs to be in that Ja Morant range of 3-5 attempts and I'm sure he'll be able to make a decent % at that volume.
Amen's defense, court vision, rebounding Reed's shooting, stealing Cam's power scoring Even Holiday's shooting might not be within Jalen's reach.
I don't see how cutting down his attempts is going to make them go in at a higher rate. And - he has to have that threat to open up the rest of his game and the offense in general or defenders are sagging back into the paint - can't blame that on Sengun when Jalen is shooting .169 for 43 games a year. I really didn't realize the numbers were that bad until breaking it down today. That's Amen bad. Another thing - people have said 6th man this and that about him for 2+ years. I just can't see that. Usually, a 6th man is a good shooter. If he can't make league average, he can't be a starter or a 6th man. He just needs to see the ball go in more. Everything else takes care of itself.
Oh for sure reducing a player's attempts would increase the percentage. You're literally cutting out the lower percentage shots. Regardless of how Jalen is shooting, his game is suited to a spaced out floor. It's not about blaming Sengun, no matter who was there it would help if they could make 3's or were an elite PnR lob threat. Jalen has to improve his shooting too as I mentioned. It will definitely make it much more potent when they play together. I don't get what's so fascinating about the numbers here. If anyone shot in the low 30's, they would have a lot of extremely low shooting games. Don't we know he shot that poorly? We're still just cutting out 1-2 stupid shots and a little work on his mechanics away from being fine.
I think both of yall @fchowd0311 @Corrosion make good points. One thing that stood out to me is that about 30 or so games in Green started to finish at the rim a lot better and this seemed to sustain through the end of the season. I think it was the culmination of experience and physical development. His body control was better And he improved a lot in dealing with physical defenders. The issue with the three ball is definitely removing the dumbest 1-2 attempts per game BUT he really needs to work on form and body control on his three-point shot as well. It is too inconsistent. He is often drifting and the elevation on his jumper is all over the place.
I know that’s not what you are saying @Mathloom, but It’s the entitled, one-sided nature of this argument that’s annoying. As long as Sengun continues to be more efficient and effective in the paint that’s the game we will be playing. It’s up to JG to show he can reliably finish and score if he wants us to keep the lanes open for him. Some folks say this with a straight face as if Sengun is being selfish and somehow making JG worse with his game that he alone insists on playing at the expense of JG or something. Some JG stans are getting the order of things wrong here - let’s see JG playing well and deserve strategies being planned for him first. No, Sengun doesn’t clog the paint, Udoka just had us go to the most reliable plays over and over as expected. No it’s not on him to solve the spacing issue for the entire team when even our SGs can’t shoot. And no he won’t be a bust even if he doesn’t develop a 3pt shot soon. Sure it significantly raises his ceiling but he’s a damn good player at his floor even without it.
No, I don't agree with this assessment at all to be honest. We have to avoid thinking of it from a Sengun (or Jalen) perspective. What an organization should do is to make things easier for its core players. What's best for us is for there to be better spacing because that doesn't hurt Sengun. It would certainly be easier for Jalen to get to the basket if our C could shoot but that's part of rebuilding and developing players. It will take time. It doesn't mean Sengun is doing anything wrong or that we're dissing him. The game we were playing with Sengun was already over by the middle of last season imo when Udoka had spammed the Sengun/FVV PnR literally more than any other play in the NBA and its efficiency had dropped at that volume. It's not sustainable to only play that way, you can't carry an NBA offense on essentially one play all game. We're going to have to make things work for multiple people, it's inevitable. It will also be amazing for Sengun if Green and Jabari can step up their shooting.
Yeah, what I posted was all in the context of last year, otherwise I agree. The offense was definitely very shallow. The hope is we manage to deepen the bag collectively while being able to keep reliability and efficiency high. It helps everyone - it’s super easy for teams develop counter measures after all if you are that predictable. If we can’t get the team to make any of those more complicated plays work then it’s time to change the roster significantly anyway. I think this last season was a bit interesting. The lack of creativity in offense was discussed to death, and none of us know for sure what the whole reasons, plans or intentions were, but I’m not 100% convinced we hit the right balance. I think Udoka might have thought too hastily that this could be a playoff team (or wanted it to be) and kept going back too fast to what he saw was working (ie. spamming Fred and Alp PnR). I feel we could balance it a bit more towards taking risks to teach guys - previous year’s record was easy to beat anyway, and now the pressure is even higher next year. Again, there’s a group of folks who spin this in a wild way to support some agenda and my post was targeted at those folks - otherwise it was pretty clear that’s not what you were saying in your post.
I’ll add this, because I think that’s where we end up talking past each other here often: If the end goal/expectation is him ending as an acceptable starter in the league then there are gazillion ways for that to happen and I don’t think anyone besides trolls and hardcore haters are worried about that. If we’re talking about a superstar path however I am worried - I think with his body type he’ll always be inconsistent if his game will be just attacking the rim, because he gets swatted off super easily by bigger bodies in the league so a lot of his scoring ends up dependent on how well the other team is defending him - I don’t think he will ever be as good at it as to make up for say below average 3 pt shooting. Or alternatively he could get a lot better off-ball and at being a catch-and-shoot guy or an elite sniper on top of his capabilities on finishing at the rim. I think that’s why there’s merit to folks saying it comes down to shooting at the end of the day - I know it feels like moving the goalposts sometimes but the problem here is past 3 years hasn’t shown elite potential on the probable paths, and given his role and expectations and hype we don’t expect them to only split or outrun defenses but also turn those into actual points a lot more effectively, otherwise someone else deserves to take the shot more. If I was him I’d hit the reset button a bit: Stop obsessing about ppg, carefully stick to a strict shot diet, which should fix perception a lot and then build up from there. I’m fine with him keeping on chucking if Udoka and coaches see a great shooter in practice, because that means it’s a confidence/mental or conditioning issue, and losing confidence to take those shots would be a lot worse if that’s the case.
