It's a fair question, but I don't think we can answer it. The only players who have played in this system with these players are the players on the team... I will say that Jalen is now 14th in net rating among the 16 players, and even behind Reed at this point. Is there some attainable player that would perform better? I strongly suspect that answer is yes.
Ya his on/off impact has been disappointing but then again it's more fair to compare on/off ratings with starters only as the bench guys play with opposing bench units more. Green definitely has been the most disappointing starter though he still has much larger responsibilities than someone like Jabari where him struggling is much louder than Jabari struggling. What sucks about it is after the first five games everyone was thinking the exact opposite. Good news is a few weeks of consistent play will change the entire zeitgeist around Green. National media still sees him as a "future star". There are players out there that of course would do better. Like no doubt Booker on this team would be more efficient than Green but I have a good feeling that Booker's efficiency would still be a lot lower than his prime career efficiency on the Suns because of this really poor offensive system and the fact that Ime will have much more expectations for Booker to expend energy on defense. Ime doesn't abide by the philosophy that primary scorers take defensive possessions "off". So that means Booker would have more tired legs on offense. So I can see someone like Booker traded to this team and now our new shiny guard scorer we trade a young 22 year old for is still scoring mid 50s ts% and he is 29 instead of 22 and then it's just going to feel bad.
Right. I don't have problem with the view that Tari is better than Jabari, although I don't necessarily agree. The two guys bring different things to the table. I guess I have some irrational fetish love for shooters. I believe Jabari can be a consistent 40% 3pt shooter (so can Reed). Jabari's best offense is better than Tari's best. His defense is steadily improving. He will never be the disruptive defender like Tari but he is still valuable on defense. Basically, when Jabari is hitting his shots like he should be, it's hard to say Tari is better.
It's funny that we have two guys on the team that are 6'10 and get blocked by the front of the rim. Both guys are first team no hops.
I think the answer is yes and the evidence is the celtics. Obviously a team with significantly more talent than the rockets, but that team was 7th in offensive, Tatum averaged 27 ppg on 58% TS. And that's not to say Ime is a good coach, you can see how much better their offense got when they replaced Ime with Maz, but it is possible for an Ime coached team to be efficient and effective offensively, given enough talent.
I'm not putting all the blame of the offensive system on Ime though. Part of the issue with our offense is we have complete non shooters having large roles and heavy minutes. Like when Amen and Sengun are on the court together, that is severely going to harm spacing. A guy like Jalen who's speciality is going down hill is going to struggle in a environment where there are two non shooters hovering around. Its very easy for opposing teams when someone like Jalen or Fred get hot to just blitz them and ignore the screener because they know the screener isn't a threat to shoot unless it's like Jabari who rarely sets screens for pnr situations which I don't understand why because I think teams would blitz the ball handler less with Jabari as the screener as he's the only big on the team that opposing teams genuinely fear as a outside threat.
Shaq kinds of sums it up for me with his comments in the post game show after the GS game when they were showing the clip of Jalens dunk. Shaq says "So much talent - he just needs to learn how to play". Thats where it is with Jalen. Picking and choosing his spots is still an adventure, but he does provide things that nobody else on the team can. Penetrating, finishing in transition, rim pressure for secondary shots, connective passing and suddenly a strong desire to play a team focused brand of defense. The whole team is 'bad' at shooting for the most part and the offense is basically PNR with Sengun. Its a good sign to be where we are all things considered. My shtlist: I think the synergy between Jalen and Sengun when Jalen is ball handler is underutilized. Terrible transition recognition on both sides Jabari post up touches/midrange flash/shooting should be a "thing" Amen should play more Need a stretch 5 Situational coaching Poor shooting as a team Jalen learning when to turn it on and turn it off and quality of shots edit: I have to do it -- having a lob threat with this group would also be advantageous. REEEELAX its not to replace anybody, but to include an additional skillset to an athletic nucleus when situations or lineups merit. These gripes arent directed at you @fchowd0311 just kind of tossing them out into the void.
If u were a glass half full kinda guy, at least we didn't extend him to a max. I personally thought it was an okay extension. Stone should have waited to see if green is taking it to the next level, and the player option wasn't it either. Personally I thought we should wait and take our chances His efficiency has dropped but he has been contributing in his ways to us winning. He's no longer a liability on defense and is playing like a team player. Ime has coached this team and brought culture change and discipline to a young squad, if ime keeps playing him heavy mins, green must b doing something right. But nah instead of enjoying the wins, one should keep btching that green is getting paid 30+ mil next year and it was a poor decision by Stone. Like when winning would u also btch that fvv isn't playing to the value of 40 mil and we should get back harden every single game? If u hate the contact blame stone, ime and tilman for doing it. Broke a 15 game loss streak to the warriors, won one of the biggest games so far for this young team where green clutched it up but stucked btching about how overpaid green is next year.
My hope was he could be a lesser Derrick Coleman. But without fluid hips he can be the comp of Rashard Lewis still. Which is good, but I use Jabari in trade proposals for a good player in return. Unfortunately we (Rockets) have to loose something to get something. Would be great if we could loose just picks, Reed Sheppard, and or some of the old timers on the bench.
Its a 3 yr contract for a reason, you arent supposed to judge it for the first month. Green is only 22 sure he'll never be Anthony Edwards but whose to say he cant have a Wiggins type growth? The flashes of great performances are there he just needs time to mature and put it all together. And in the mean time he will give you good defense and clutch plays that isnt the worst deal ever. Its so funny to see the CF zeitgeist here b**** and moan about Green's 30M contract every game BUT still praise Reed Shepperd and say they are confident he will be the shooter this team needs. I'm gonna go out on a limb and I'll say paying Green 30M is a lot less expensive than using our top 3 pick on a massive reach in Reed Sheppard. So if you are this mad about Green you better be posting how much Sheppard sucks cuz if you think we overpaid on Green we got absolutely ripped off on Sheppard. At least Green played great defense and who was the one who clutched 2 fts to seal the game again? If I see you b**** against Green but then talk about how confident you are about Sheppard I know you are just a grade A clown. 20 games in you thank the lord for a 6 pt Sheppard game but you got all these cultists attacking anyone who points out thats an expectation not a record breaking performance. JG is 22 Sheppard is 20, there isnt a large gap between them age wise. If you see so much upside to Sheppard then the same is true with Green, in fact Green has these 30 burger games multiple times the best Sheppard has done in 20 games is a 12 ppg performance with lots of 0fers and 1/3 attempts in between. Bruh, have some perspective and look at it from a team POV.
I think Rashard is a good comp for Jabari. Coleman was always above the rim. Remember when he put Shaq on a poster? Outside of landing a legitimate household name I dont think Stone is going to do anything this year. Everyone needs to see how these guys respond to a playoff series and which way to modify the roster with that data in hand.
No one is praising Reed Sheppard right now as far as I can tell. It is largely qualified criticism. It's a matter of the size of proof. We have 285 minutes of Reed. We have about 900 minutes of Cam. We have 30x and 10x of Jalen with 8150 minutes. We're more likely to know what we have in Jalen than we do the other two.
He's done well defensively and doesn't turn the ball over. His shooting has been unacceptable and he's been far too passive on offense. That said, he hasn't truly gotten enough opportunity to make any definitive statements about the future.
Definitely something odd about how good he is at FT's vs a below average jumper. Even an 85% FT non-shooting big man can be taught to shoot 3's over 2-3 years. The staff will fix Green's shot before his contract is over and probably get him downhill more often than taking jumpers. I bet that's why they gave him the contract, they believe they can fix the jumper and the results would be WELL worth it for the team's overall outlook. At the beginning of the season I was really happy that lots of young guys put on muscle and Brooks lost weight. They pretty much all have struggled at shooting and Brooks is shooting a career high. FVV should've lost more weight probably, shooting poorly. I think there's truth to the idea that players tend to struggle for a few months if they were trying to pack on as much muscle as possible in the summer. Jumpers require finesse, maybe your body needs to realign or something. Maybe a bunch of them will come around soon. I have hope for it too especially with Jalen now taking fewer 3's and Jabari taking more.
The issue with Jalen isn't his natural shooting ability but how he takes his shots. He's been developed as a lead guard so his shots are more geared towards self created ones, on the move, stepbacks, etc. His catch and shoot 3s this year has been a respectable 36% per nba.com. That's a number you can live with. And one I assume can even go up if he practices it more in the offseason. The issue with Jalen is all the hard stuff he does, the stepbacks, the razzle dazzles that goes nowhere, the amazing drive coupled with the facepalm finish. All points to him being unsuited for lead guard. Personally I'm coming around to the idea of Jalen being a positive role player on a contender. But that still leaves the Rockets with a problem of finding that lead perimeter guy. This team really needs a Harden/Drexler/T-Mac type player to reach real contender status.
positions are so outdated man and i think you know that, or should. We play pretty position-less as a team, especially defensively. he has no problem playing small with some combination of holiday, fred or reed and he has no problem playing big with amen tari and brooks, or any combination in between. he has plenty of options to go with, he still plays him a lot.
Yup catch and shoot up from 31.6% last season to 36% this season and that's even though he's slumping. Last season on 4-6 feet open on 3.5 attempts he shot 37%. We clearly just have to shift 3pt creating responsibility to others and the improved spacing will help Green get downhill and out in transition more often. Fewer 3PA will improve his efficiency. Teams might even respect him on the Sengun PnR more often if one of them has a respectable 3. The big murderer is pull up 3's where he's taking like 4.5 attempts and making like 25%. He's not ready for that. I don't think that will improve this season much. I think he should take maybe one per game till next season. FT% up significantly since last season. Worked on 3PT shot all summer to Udoka's standards. The jumper actually LOOKS better. Maybe we see a 36-37% shooting Jalen Green the rest of the way. A star we just have to wait for the right one, players are always shaking loose. In the meantime plenty of candidates to surprise us.
I wanted the Rockets to go after Giannis when he and his team were down. Now the Bucks have climbed back and Giannis is looking all world and MVP candidate again. I'm still laughing at those who told me he was washed. I hoped Stone just goes after small game hunting. The Jerami Grant or Cam Johnson level. Many cry about spending two first round picks but nevermind that we spent firsts in drafting Josh Christopher, TyTy, Garuba, CP3, Westbrook and John Wall and had to use firsts to get rid of them.
I don't think he would've gotten very many minutes under MDA but if he were forced to play Green of course he'd perform a lot better as most players do under MDA. We'd see a lot of Jalen and 4 shooters extremely spaced floor. I don't know about MDA as a development guy though. I don't think he'd necessarily be the best to get future offense out of people.
