The loss last night was tough, but one positive I took from it is that I am much more confident that we can play Jalen at the 1 with Amen at the 2 and have them both get us into our sets effectively. When I heard Fred was out last night and saw that the starting lineup did not include Holiday I immediately thought "Interesting... so Coach Udoka either has more trust in Jalen being the lead ball handler and distributor or he wants more data on the starting back court of Jalen\Amen (or a bit of both)" Despite the loss, I felt Jalen did a good job of balancing getting the team into their sets while still being aggressive and looking for his own shot. He is getting much better at splitting and passing out of doubles, mixing up when he attacks the double, and using the pick prior to the double. Hopefully everything is good with Fred because I'm not sure that this back court duo is ready just yet (still too many silly turn overs from both of them), but with a little more seasoning the Jalen\Amen backcourt can be a truly terrifying prospect for the NBA.
Yup. They're easily the fastest wing duo in history, could easily be one of the fastest backcourts in history too though that's much harder. One thing about the game though, it made me realize Fred can be useful for like 2.5 more years here. I think for now as a starter and in the long term as an elite bench player. I think he's the perfect 3rd guard in the rotation (with Whitmore growing too). Sometimes you need a smaller quicker defender and sometimes you need safe hands. I think with the chaos Amen/Green can cause, it's good to have that contrast in Fred so that we can be flexible against different teams. I hope we can get him realistically on $30m declining for 4 years this summer. I can see him being the guy who started it all and stuck around to win it all with us. He's also a perfect mentor for everything Sheppard needs to learn to make it. Sheppard is not as small as Fred but all those tricks and that mindset is going to help him a lot. The future is looking excellent with Sengun/Amen/Green. You're right they made some silly mistakes against the Kings but I have confidence they're improving.
His improved free throw percentage, which is around 10% better than his career average of 80%, has translated as well into being a 10% better 3 point shooter. This tells me that he's genuinely an improved shooter rather than this being a hot streak.
That is a good point. I figured out how to make Basketball-Reference show me statistics across two seasons and made it spit out a link for all of Jalen's games between January 18th last year and last night's game on the 16th. This gives us an 82-game sample size, or exactly one full season's worth of games. Here's what we got right now: 21.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.0 steals, 0.4 blocks, 43.7% field goal percentage, 34.5% three point percentage, 84.0% free throw percentage Those numbers are up in every single category over his career averages. Some of those are very small and could just be statistical noise, like going from 3.2 assists to 3.3, but the FT% is way, way up, and he's made moderate improvements to his FG%, scoring volume, steals, and rebounding. I can't remember a time when you could look at a full season sample size from him from anywhere in his career and see actual statistical improvement. This is why I'm starting to believe his breakout might be real. I still don't think he's going to keep dropping 30-bombs with regularity, but it's very possible he's become something like a 23-24 points on average efficiency guy, which given the scoring volume and self-creation--is a very good shooting guard.
this is something I don't see being talked about often enough.. his current ft% is a pretty good indicator he’s got the potential to be an above average 3pt shooter. he can still improve his game in other areas, I think it’s safe to say he still got superstar potential. i just hope i’m not being fooled again
I made a post stating similar earlier this year - when I stated if he cut back on launching the end of half/qtr 3s and the grenades he ends up with… his % would be a lot better than it looked.. had folks arguing with me
Tari doing Sammy's big ball dance after Jalen nailed a heat-check three in Denver: https://www.humorlabs.com/bigballs.mp4
from the mixed up views & attitudes department. when cw7 heads straight to the locker room ... he has a bad attitude problem. when jg4 heads straight to the locker room ... look out league.
Like the Dallas game, 8 games ago, (which Bobby doesn’t include with the streak). 0-3 from three, but he still dominated the 1st half with Cam, to mount a big lead. And his 4thQ was quiet yet solid, but game was a blowout by then. I think his ability to drive and finish is very sustainable. He seems to be able to find his opportunities more easily. ie his reads are just better, all around. And to think he’s doing all this really without foul hunting. If you think about it, that’s what the superstars do to maintain high scoring on bad days.
Superstars basically do this as a baseline, like 8+ FTA's are expected. Would be great for Jalen to make that a focus. Jalen has been to the line 6+ times in an unstructured offense as a skinny teenager, I think he's much bigger now and once we improve our spacing a little bit we'll see teams have to foul him a lot more.
I'm not sure if he was pissed off, or if he had plans to see his family / friends after the game as they were likely there.
Call me crazy but I'm not buying into Jalen as a good shooter just yet. There's good signs for sure. I think he's more like: At 8+ attempts he's below league average, maybe 34% At 5 attempts per game, he's around league average roughly 36% At fewer attempts he would get slightly more efficient but not by a lot imo. That's as average as a shooter gets. I happen to think it's plenty enough for right now and will open up driving opportunities for him if he can just be a league average shooter 36-37%.
Room for improvement. If He can not only keep up this rate of improvement, but actually become a truly efficient shooter...watch out league! Only 22
