Booker's stats are better than green though. The only thing Green is better at the 3pt %, and that is mainly because Booker's worst career year in 3pt% coincides with green's best. A year before that Booker shot 38.3% vs Green's 33.2%. Booker goes to the line more, makes them at a higher percentage, he takes more 2s and makes them at a much higher percentage and because of that his ts is 3.7% higher than green's. Green is trending in the right direction and I am very happy with that. But saying that he is better than booker at the same age is a stretch. His defense is really what he has over booker but his main role is being a scorer. His defense won't make up for the gap. It is something good to have but not that much of a difference maker unless he is like Tari or Booker is like first year Green.
I think it is easier to understand if you think about it as a rank. Jalen ranks worse in the league compared to where booker ranked in his time. He could still be the better basketball player, but that is not that important for any practical purpose. And the stats doesn't suggest that either.
Well you need to understand Booker is at age 28 and he is in his prime right? OTH Jalen just turned 23 his previous seasons are probably the worst he will ever be. That's why I compared Jalen at the same age to Booker at the same age to show Jalen is just as good as Booker at the same age. Now you are blaming circumstance well I can't help it if Devin Booker at 23 is the worst shooting of his career right? DB's career 3 pt percentage is 35.6% so even if we give Booker the advantage and use his career 3 pt then you can argue they have same %. This is a common thing I see thrown around but when you look at what happens on the court it doesn't really hold up. First of all the efficiency gap between Jalen and DB is overblown. If you look at the raw numbers Jalen has 54.7% and Booker has 58.4% so on the surface that is a huge difference right? However when you dig deep in the numbers you will see Devin Booker took 3 more free throw attempts and also takes 2.5 more field goal over Green. Both JG and Booker are great free thow shooters, both of them shoot above 80% so those fts are pretty much automatic points. Giving Booker 3 more ftas is the reason why he is more efficient, and the reason he takes more fta isn't because he drives more than Green its that he gets superstar calls Green doesn't get. Not sure if you watch JG but he drives to the rim quite a bit. Unfortunately he doesn't get foul calls or very rarely gets foul calls so he doesn't become very efficient. I honestly don't attribute that to DB superior skills he is just a whiny b**** and a flopper. When Jalen gets the same treatment he has no issue being as efficient as Booker look at the Suns game 31 pts on only 16 shots omg what efficiency! Usually though he doesn't get the calls he had a bloody lip one time still no call. As Jalen grows older and as he gets more respect from the refs he will start getting calls so I'm not worried about that long term. As for the defense that is where definitely disagree Jalen is already an above average defender while Booker even he tries hard will just be an average defender his entire life. In Ime's schemes Jalen is part of the switchers and sometimes he even guards PFs, when has Booker even done that? He guarded an SF in the playoffs and got his nose broken lol. Under Ime and on the Rockets a good defender is more valuable than a good shooter that's why FVV gets so many minutes despite Aaron Holiday being a better shooter. If we had 23 yr old Booker on this team over Jalen the team would be much worse guaranteed. Worse 3 pt spacing, worse defense, but more crying to the refs and more foul baiting.
This is a severe miscalculation of an objective thing to be frank with you. Defense (perimeter + interior + individual + team defense) is equivalent to all of offense (interior scoring, shooting, pts, assists, efficiency, offensive rebounds, 2PT% and anything else you can think of). All of offense is half the game. All of defense is the other half. There's nothing that doesn't fit in these two categories. These two categories have been shown to be equally important for several decades and eras now. No matter how much they change the rules for offensive to get easier, it just changes the type of defense played. It doesn't change the overall impact of defense. That's why no era of basketball has ever been able to shake the formula: you have to be about a top 10 defense and top 10 offense to be a legit contender for the title. That's not basketball hearsay like "Defense wins championships" or "offense is more important in this era". When calculating the defensive and offensive rank of champions, the number could have landed ANYWHERE. It could have been top 15 defense and top 5 offense - but it's not. The overwhelming majority of champions in every era of basketball are in this 10 and 10 range. That includes eras where defense was more prioritized and eras where offense was more prioritized by NBA management. Defense is half of the report card when analyzing a player for that reason and because of the unignorable fact that half of all possessions and minutes and production is defense. Defensive is not a role. It's not a tag-on like rebounding or steals or blocks or 2PT shooting. You could hide someone on a bad defender, but they you are just slowing the bleeding there. There is no one in any role where better defense doesn't result in exactly the same thing as better offense. If tomorrow Booker started playing better than Jalen Green level defense, all his impact metrics would go up and he might be up for an MVP award for once. He would basically become SGA/Jokic tier. The difference between Green and Booker's defense displayed on the mirroring offensive side is basically the difference between an average offensive player in the NBA (say someone slightly better than FVV's pts+assts+ts%+whatever) and some of the worst offensive players in the NBA (say Jasean Tate). It's a $20m+ difference if you want to look at it in asset value. It's not reasonable to think this gap is the same as 2 assists for example. You're not going to get $20m by averaging 2 more assists. You can get $20m more by jumping from 500th best defender to 200th, that's a kind of turnaround that makes Ime Udoka defend your defense. Apply it to anyone you like, move Brandon Ingram up 200 ranking spots on defense and he's the MVP. Move Cam Whitmore up 250 ranking spots and he's worth $30m+ per season on the open market. Move Banchero up 200 spots on defense and even though "it's not his role" he is worth as much as Jokic and SGA.
I think he's almost certainly going to struggle in any game where his shot is not falling, don't you think? If you think the paint was packed for us in the regular season, I'm scared of what the paint is going to look like in the playoffs. I hope not that extreme, but that's what tends to happen in the playoffs. Fewer FT's, more packed paint, faster closeouts, everyone is going for every rebound. On the plus side, if there's any team used to a dog fight, it's us. Rightly or wrongly, Jalen does seem to be extra motivated for bigger games though, and I'm hoping to see some of that unfold in the playoffs. You're right though we should be prepared for "he can never be a good playoff player" if he just averages similar numbers to the regular season. It's going to be really interesting seeing their characters in the playoffs, I'm so glad we're finally here!!
Green has a deflationary aspect to his points due to very poor spacing with multiple non shooters with high usage roles. Booker also has never excreted the amount of energy on defense as Green has this season. Ime has standards for defense Booker never has played.
ya it's pretty obvious at this point by just watching him move with the ball with the level of confidence and assurance he has now. I mean he just looks far more controlled with his pace. His ability to slow it down and pick up speed with control and refined movements is so much better now. He doesn't look rushed anymore. He doesn't feel frustrated by press coverages. He's handling blitzes with ease and confidence. Ya his processing speed, pace etc all have made significant improvements.
you explained it exactly the way you are interpretting it. you had no problems explaining, you are having a hard time understanding its flaw. Its about as usefull of a stat as gamescore, not worth much.
I don't think Ime wants him to be passive looking for his shot though. He's done a much better job last two games at getting some assists while being aggressive too. What I didn't understand re: your earlier post, was you defending him being passive because you said Ime asked him to, but also saying that our only hope is for Jalen to go last March's Jalen, which seems like opposing ideas. Interesting info, not really relevant to what I was responding to but interesting.
with fred back we are seeing normal Jalen who looks to be more aggressive. when fred, reed, and amen were out we seen more look for others Jalen. when i said we needed march jalen, i meant scorching hot from the field, not aggression. tbh i expected Jalen to struggle significantly more when he was the only ball handler and facilitator. I expected lots of traps and lots of blitzes which would highlight his weaknesses. BUT i was wrong actually, he did pretty well of getting off the ball and we actually got a lot of other guys contributing during that stretch.
Relative ts? Because a change in league average ts% season to season can have more to do with just normal variance that has nothing to do with change of play style or reffing. Especially the closer the years are It's more more useful when comparing different eras where there are entire different approaches to the game like when analytics came to play and the 3>2 era almost entirely eliminating the long 2 pt attempt. Or major changes in rules like hand checking or illegal defense.
Jalen is really coming into his own. Look at the stats the last 5 games, look at the season long stats and just watch the play. Yes the decision making and turnovers still have a ways to go, but he’s found a way to be effective when his shot is not falling and he’s shooting much more efficiently. I’m now of the opinion you don’t trade Jalen. If he takes another step next year he will be one of the best young 2-guards in the nba. You have to give a ton of props to Jalen for overcoming adversity and getting to where he is now. I don’t think anyone would say he’s on a bad contract anymore. That certainly wasn’t the case to start the season. GROWTH is happening before our eyes. Hope other Jalen skeptics like me can call it like u see it.
I agree that defense is half of the game. But no one player can pull the defense up by so much as it happens on offense. That's why teams try to excel on offense first, it is the easier one to do by far. You get much more for your investment. You have guys like trae, lillard who areuseless on defense but get paid for their offense. Do you think they would be paid similarly if they were useless on offense but great on D? Or guys like harden, luka, jokic who can lift the whole offense, you just need role players to surround them to lead to all time good offenses. There is nothing parallel to this in defense. So the problem is not that Defense is not half the game, but other things 1) personal impact on defense is much less than offense 2) Offense is just easier, and I think comes naturally to basketball players. Defense not so much. Players like Giannis, Wemby, Amen have huge impact on defense, but they would have a hard time getting paid equal to lillard, luka, harden, trae, if they don't show anything on offense. 3) When there is a new defensive scheme on court, some offensive players or teams, can solve it on the spot. The opposite is almost never true. So if defense and offense are 50-50 of the game, it is much easier to get your offense to 40 level impact than getting your defense to 40 level impact. The way I see it, teams can utilize on average say 40 out of 50 in offense but 25 of 50 in defense. Hence any impact on the defensive side is less.
Agree, but he still has at least 3 moments every game where I shout at my TV, "Jalen, WTF are you doing?!?" Experience should reduce the number of times that happens.
all it does is show a ranking in the league where said player was in relation to the league during that year. league average ts% doesnt even carry much weight to me. Its significantly different for a PnR center and a 3nD player. I can understand trying to compare someone from todays game to the 60's where it was nothing but inefficent long 2's and post play. But 6 years is hardly telling any story outside of just noise.
I don't think that aligns with what we know can't change. The best defensive player is simply as good as the best offensive player, that's what the 10 and 10 proves. There are certainly floor raisers on both offense and defense. There is a best defender who is the 50 score and the same exists on offense. There are people who score a ton of points and it doesn't translate to as much winning. It's all relative, that's why I used the rankings to demonstrate it. There's no 50 score that no one reaches. 50 is just the score of the best defender in the NBA. One core error you're making is to attach contract value directly to this. There's nothing that says we can't underpay defenders and overpay scorers. That will certainly make things wishy washy. In reality everyone knows defense is undervalued. When they say "Defense wins championships" what they should be saying is "defense is the cheaper way to win championships". That much is probably true. Bottom line is the gap between the worst and best offensive or defensive player is miraculously the same. No one gamed that, it wasn't a theory before it was derived. It just so happens that no matter what we do, that has to happen. If that's true, a player is simply the combination of their matrix score on defense and offense. We can discuss how those are arrived at, but to say a scorer's defense improving against 40% of NBA players is not a big deal is flat out objectively wrong. If you're taking any single metric into consideration when comparing two scorers and thinking that defense is not that big a deal, it's just not going to achieve any credible results. Booker has never been and will never be as good a defender as Green - who's not GREAT himself. That means on half your report card, Booker is an "F" or near it. Whatever offensive advantage he has over Jalen is just the other half of the report card. There's no other way the 10 and 10 could come to fruition if it was possible for offensive players to break ceilings and raise floors while defensive players just couldn't. It doesn't make sense.
Booker might be as good as a defender as Green because he'll probably expend more energy on that end than any point on his career if he was coached under Ime. Green has a lateral quickness advantage but Booker has a strength advantage. But that would also imply his offense would suffer also because he'll have more tired legs.
