We literally would have drafted Cade and Banchero if we had the No.1 pick, what you babbling on about.
Theres nothing unfortunate about it, we didn't pass on Cade, we just didn't get a chance. Not really sure people get salty about Cade, he never did or said anything bad about Houston
I also said I wasn't his fan, as a 53 or 54 year old, 1 month older than Morey he really hasn't done anything substantial. (Presti is 47 in reference) If you said he was an up and coming 39 year old Stevens, okay, well, that's better than good. Even if you take Sengun which wasn't all his handwriting on it. Morey blew everything out of water with Harden and his 3 and layup model. He later destroyed everything too. Also everything hinges on Udoka, if he becomes frustrated and throws all of these away.....the Rockets are not real contenders, it's not easy to find that type of coach.
The Rockets are not the Lakers that the league caters to with a legit superstar every 5-6 years and would guarantee contention. See the fall of Nico Harrison by the agent Robert Pelinka once again. As a matter of fact light years away in terms of marketing and brand awareness. The Practice area is pretty rad I admit.
Green's bad games are becoming less frequent. His floor is rising basically. There seems to be a basic level of competence for Green now where even on a bad shooting night he just doesn't fall apart like his first few seasons.
The only player in that draft class that should have been taken in the top 3 was Jalen Williams. The consensus top 3, Paolo, Chet, and Jabari, all had projected deficiencies before the draft and those deficiencies are still true after more than 2.5 seasons.
Could have had a 30pt triple double tonight if he played the 4th … his decision making as playmaker is getting so much better, those 3x in a row he setup the play so he drove and kicked it out and then the next pass was open DB 3 next step is getting a decent whistle on drives, I don’t want him foul baiting like Kevin Martin but if he can get to 6-8 FTs a game it will help when 3 isn’t falling
His shooting and all around game increased well lately. Main missing part of his game getting to the line.
Game Theory podcast was wrong on every single thing about Jalen. My gosh. What a disaster. They made up a theory and kept pushing that point. Sam made a bunch of you Jaters believe that Jalen's a shooter and if he just fixes a broken shot, everything will work. One time he implied he doesn't know if Jalen has a future unless he becomes an efficient high volume shooter in the NBA lol. That was never it. Jalen has improved in spite of this. That's why when he shoots well but doesn't go crazy, the team has struggled anyway. He has to shoot like 50% from 3 on a high volume to swing a game, that's unreasonable even for a shooter. The roster is out of balance. There should be some space in the paint and that's done by giving a couple of Jalen's 3's to better shooters, thus opening the paint for him. Jalen is not a shooter. He overcame being a slasher forced into a shooter role by being a rare case: someone who's a bad shooter becomes and average shooter on massive volume. Jalen is climbing into the top 15 of 3PA's now. Just casually added it. He's almost 40% on catch and shoot opportunities and open 3's. If he stuck to catch and shoot like Brooks (something like 95% of his shots are just open catch and shoot) he would be the shooter the Jaters dream of. But the team needs him to actually CREATE 3's at times and on those he's more like 31% and they constitute something like 20-30% of his attempts vs Brooks 5% IIRC. If the team did its job and delivered shooters around him, we'd be passing those difficult attempts to other people and his attempts would go down and his percentage would then shoot up. The REAL issue with Jalen STILL is spacing. It's not allowing him to get FT's, that is his bread and butter. Ime is constantly insisting on being less aggressive in the paint. He says "when it's crowded" well you guys designed a team where it's crowded in 9 out of 10 games. So yeah, 3's have to go up artificially and FT's have to go down artificially too. Jalen has delivered. He didn't whine publicly. He just became a good shooter even though they put him out of place as a catch and shoot player essentially. Now it's the GM/Coach's turn to open up the f*cking paint - and we would be happy with below average spacing. Not average. Not good. Not excellent. Just below average spacing would be a DREAM at this point. I'm not expecting Jalen to get more FT's until Udoka tells him to be more aggressive in a crowded paint or they do their job and get him better shooters. I'm holding out a glimmer of hope that Jabari functioning as backup C (stretch 5, automatically more points for Amen/Green) and FVV returning (our best spacer) to add to Brooks, perhaps we'll get lucky and catch fire from 3 for a long stretch. Sorry but we absolutely cannot go out there with 2 non-shooters starting again next season and the playoffs will show you why. Would be unfair on all the people you're expecting drives and FT's from. Shooting was a problem Jalen could fix by doing hard work. Spacing is not something he can fix on his own. The greatest athlete in the world plays alongside him and that guy can't get up more than 8 shots against the Bucks precisely because the opponent just lives in the paint near the rim. It's not on these guys to fix spacing. Something's got to be done about this because Amen and Green on 20 other teams would be shredding the paint far more frequently. We're losing out on that for what I don't know.
.1% from shooting 43% from the field and 36% from 3 which would be career highs. Feels like his spot up shooting has immensely improved this year as has his craftiness getting towards the rim. Still gets blocked a lot but wonder if some added weight and strength would help. Also turnovers continue to be an issue.
I'm not sure I agree with this analysis at all. With Green's development as a shooter, Green / Amen / Sengun absolutely work. It's also not hard to build around - just have a couple good 3-and-D wings like Bari and Brooks. Of all our lineups, Amen / Green / Brooks / Bari / Sengun has been the only one that has been effective on offense AND defense aside from FVV / Green / Brooks / Bari / Sengun. Yes, as an unrefined prospect, Green was a poor shooter who relied on driving. But he was also pretty ineffective. As a perimeter player with a good shot who can also drive, he is far more effective. His efficiency is better. His assists are up. The playstyle is far more conducive to winning, and the team does not have to be built around him. If teams crowd the paint and sag, there are major disadvantages to that. Sengun and Amen cause teams to collapse, and if that happens with a crowded paint, virtually every one else is open. Amen also seems to feast on sagging opponents. Oh, and by the way, Amen Thompson has shot .32 from 3 the last 20 games, a massive improvement. I doubt he'll ever be a volume 3 point shooter, but I think he'll develop well enough as a shooter such that teams would be able to leave him up. In short, I firmly believe Amen / Green / Sengun is our future, likely along with Bari, who fits with that group well.
The problem with this analysis is it ignores we have literally never seen Green in a situation better than 25th or worse spacing in the NBA. It is not reasonable to make an assessment that a guy who got to the line 6+ times a game as a 20 year old is limited to what we've seen as far as finishing. What we're seeing here is stress-tested numbers. For a stress-test situation, Jalen is killing it. Jalen with 2 negative shooters on the floor is an absurd situation to be in. I have no idea why I would assume anything other than: if he just gets average playoff team spacing, driving and finishing will get a ton easier and thus more efficient. What you seem to be describing is that Jalen shooting is good for the team, no debate there. I already stated that it's good for the team. I'm specifically saying: his analysis that this is the only road for Jalen and what he is going to be is flat out wrong. You might convince me that we don't know. There is no way to convince me Jalen is not a 6+ FTA guy in a regular offense. I would bet a lot of money that whether he's a Rocket or not next season, he is going to the line 6+ times a game. It will be through adding spacing or through him just going to any other team but the bottom worst shooting teams. This team's problem with driving is systematic. Cam worse at it than we thought. Jalen worse at it than we thought. Sheppard. Jabari. Tari. Even Amen - but he controls this by just not shooting when the paint is packed, so you see wild swings in his shot attempts. It's not reasonable to not take this into consideration imo.
Hahaha This guy's acceptable range for Jalen is between I HATE HIM and OK GOOD BUT. There is literally a 0% chance he'll just be happy about a game without sliding in a criticism. He just doesn't FEEL right doing it. A healthy human has a range between JUST TERRIBLE and JUST GREAT. There are lots of levels in between which feature conditions and nuance. That's normal. What's not normal is that there has never been a game you thought Jalen played perfect and had enough logic to share it. Like never in 4 years. If you give Aaron Holiday 4 years and 17 shots per game, even he will have a perfect game at some point. A game worthy of "that was a perfect game" without the "still, he's short" tag-on. I wonder what you think you're communicating. It's so weird. I don't get why you don't save yourself the hassle of writing about him? I can tell you the future: you are never going to fully like the fact that Jalen is on this team, no matter what he does.
