Forget about defense and playmaking. What separates Booker from those other guys is that he is efficient. (*huh* this again?!) Yep, Booker is just an average 3pt shooter. But his TS% in the past two seasons were 60+% while being the team's first option scoring in high volume. That's because his midrange is very good and his shot distribution is very balanced. But, but, but, if he missed one more 3pt shot and one more 2pt shot every few games, he'd be just like Jalen Green...
Let me make your point even clearer. 27-year-old Booker is way better than 21-year-old Booker. What you didn't say is that 21-year-old Booker was already much better than 21-year-old Jalen Green.
In their second season? Essentially the same. Similar totals, similar eff8iency, near identical bpm, vorp. Third season? Keep in mind what I'm about to say is just something you take into consideration. It isn't me saying anything is definitive. Booker and Green had very different experiences going into their third season you should consider. Booker went into the same exact situation from his second to third season. Same exact role, same exact expectations for winning(none), playing defense(none) etc. It was a "let em cook" season. He played his game in a rather free way with no expectations and continued to improve on what he did in his second season in terms of a scorer. This resulted in him going from a 24 win season to a 21 win season for his third year. His team won 19 games the next year. Only until his 5th season was he doing his thing on a semi-competent non laughable team when they won...34 games. Dude was not on an above .500 team until his 6th season. That is a lot of time to allow a on ball scoring guard to develop their scoring while not giving the level of effort on defense to stay on the court on a Ime coached team. How would Booker's numbers look in his third season if Ime replaced his head coach, and someone like CP3 joined him in his third year to take away some on ball rhythm possessions AND center an offense around another young player which effected how he was used to scoring? Keep in mind if Jalen didn't give Ime's required level of defensive effort that drains energy and tires legs out, he can't stay on the court. That would have been the case with Booker. Could that have negatively effected his scoring hypothetically? Maybe. Maybe he doesn't leap to 25 ppg in his third year. Maybe he drops his efficiency because of the law of thermodynamics means he has to expend more finite energy on the other end tiring legs out, making shot attempts less consistent? Very reasonable to assume that maybe if the Silas regime continued, and the main vets weren't added, and Green was allowed to play with the same level of poor effort on defense, would he have jumped his pt production and efficiency from year 2 to 3? Possibly. And this isn't me saying that what Jalen Green went through with the new culture shift, regime shift etc was bad for him. No, in fact this was the best thing to happen to his career. Getting conditioned earlier into your career to be able to handle high usage offense and high level of effort on defense, the better it is for your long term career. A common myth is young players have more "energy" than vets. Young players are less injury prone and less prone to pain and soreness than vets but vets are better cardio conditioned due to years of these 82 game schedules playing 35 minutes a night. Hopefully Jalen Green's third year was a year that he got used to expending the energy he has to on defense to be part of a winning franchise and that will translate into his 4th season where his legs won't get as drained easily and his shot maybe, hopefully can become more consistent.
I think there's a certain risk with trying to hope for development for these type of players, it's really putting eggs in one basket. This is not even specific to Green either, it's for all pure scoring guards in general. If they fail to hit a level of efficiency, they are actually less valuable than a great 3 and D player, at least to a playoff or a contender already with a super star. Most teams would rather have a KCP or Warriors Andrew Wiggins than a Anfernee Simmons and Anfrenee is not even that inefficient. That's why you see players like Dinwiddie, Hardaway Jr just getting kicked around the league. The game has involved where counting stats are basically at the bottom of totem pole in place of efficiency, playmaking, 3 point shooting and defense. All I'm saying is Green basically has to be really really efficient to deserve a big contract, otherwise he might have to become an Andrew Wiggins to stay in the league long term.
Has literally anyone here posted about how it’s going to be ok if Jalen starts the season having regressed again? He made the leap. It happened. The question now is can he continue playing highly effective basketball. Being optimistic or a negative Nancy about it is the choice of the individual. one only wonders why follow a sports team just to grieve over success?
Wait, what? When? Are we talking about the 8 game hot shooting streak? Was that "making the leap"? If so, why was he completely terrible again the second the fluke hot shooting streak ended? Is "making the leap" really being really bad for the first 65 games if a season, then shooting really well for 8 games, then being absolutely pathetic for the last 9? I'm just not sure that's what anyone else was looking for.
Nothing of Booker's game screams of helter skelter and out of control. Which is what Green is basing his game on. That is Westbrookesque. He also doesn't jump out of the building, not athletic. To me he is very Euro like player but not a top Euro player, close though.
when you look at the raw 3 point shooting data, it's almost like looking at 3 different players. 42 games shooting between .000 & .286 Bad 10 games shooting between .300 & .333 Acceptable 30 games shooting between .364 & .883 Fantastic He just needs to limit the number of poor shooting nights, by at least a factor of 4 .... 10 bad games a year instead of 51.2% of the season.
The level of disconnect = Jalen Green needs to make one more 3 every four games to be deemed "good" Jaters: "Thats impossible who do you think he is Steph Curry"
I bet you there were games where he was important to winning where he shot less than 30% from three. Jalen Green has had multiple games where he shot poorly from three but did a lot of other things well. It isn't this simple to divide his "bad games" and "good games". Hell, there are probably a few games where he shot well from three but did poorly on other things to be a net negative that particular game. Ya he needs to be more consistent with his three. Absolutely I'm just saying that this way of dividing his performances isn't holistic representation of whether Green did good or bad in a game overall.
The disconnect is that you think its about a shot here or there .... It's not, it's about consistency. Pay attention: 12 @ .000 1 @ .100 2 @ .143 5 @ .167 1 @ .182 4 @ .200 6 @ .222 1 @ .231 6 @ .250 4 @ .286 1 @ .300 That's 43 games of suck. 9 @ .333 That's tolerable. He has only 3 games between .334 and .375. (None between .376-.399) He has 27 games of .400 to .833 It's not that he needs to "make one more shot in each game". He needs to reduce the volume of poor games - just being .333 to .370 in the majority of those and the dynamic is completely different. He has more games (12) of .000 than any other and it's on his regular diet of shots. That's 15% of the season going 0-fer.
You're saying that as if it's a trivial thing when it's not... if it was that easy, fellow mindless chucker and hilariously terrible shooter Russell Westbrook, who was infinitely more talented, would have done it. We're talking about the difference between being a complete joke... one of the worst in the league, and league average. You might as well say all he has to do is survive ingesting 10 mg of fentanyl.... after all, 10 mg is a tiny amount, right? I'm not saying hitting 37% of 3's is difficult for a competent shooter... I'm saying going from one of the most pathetic shooters in the league to league average on similar volume would be a massive, very unlikely improvement.
Jalen Green had really bad shooting nights. He was very inconsistent from three. He needs to improve and be more consistent from three. Now that I've said that I suggest you look at his game log here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/greenja05/gamelog/2024 And sort it by something like +/- or gamescore and you will see that there some games where he had really good game scores and/or really good +/- for that game but shot poorly from three where overall he had a good game. NBA players are capable of having good games on bad three point shooting nights I just don't like how you label his individual game performances as "good" or "bad" just by his three point shooting for that game.
Are you denying that making one more 3 point shot every 4 games would not raise his shooting average to around 37-38%??? "He needs to reduce the volume of BAD SHOTS" is really a simpler way of delivering your message dont you think? Bias and agenda require you to paint the picture of a hopeless player. Its duplicitous and not allowing any sort of meaningful debate if you're going to thumb your nose at what the season average SHOULD look like.
