I think we, and the NBA commentariat - got WAY too down on Jalen Green as a basketball player I used to have very high Green expectations - I thought him a future all star at least. Not @fchowd level high but high nonetheless Turns out that Jalen Green - right now - was just not *QUITE* efficient enough to be a high usage lead guard on a contending NBA team as we saw v Golden State He had one (Game 2) elite game & a bunch of meh or bad games. Basically he's maybe only the 30-50th best lead guard human on the planet, not the 10th - 29th the Rockets needed him to be last spring That was disappointing, no doubt. But anyway, the reaction to it seems to have been WAY overblown to the 'he's trash" side. He wasn't good enough for us last year but he still has a lot of NBA years left and the margin between good enough & trade bait is literally single digit percentages I heard Andrew Schlecht today from the Athletic literally make throw up noises at the idea Green (in the context of a hypothetical Morant trade) be considered a good NBA player - but, he is a good player! He won player of the week 3x. He scored 20 ppg on a good team. He plsyed a lot of minutes on a good defense. That counts as good. The worst high usage lead guard is by definition a good player.
he was trash in the playoffs and he was the worst starter in terms of both BPM and net rating even in his 4th year
I feel that the trade will make him better, maybe the kind of player a lot of us would have wanted. I'm a fan when he isn't playing against the Rockets.
Austin Reaves is dropping consecutive 40-50 point games with high assists to boot, so anything is still possible in the deep West. We probably see Giddey making an All Star appearance.......the NBA with high pace and high scoring has seen a lot of different All Stars throughout recent years.
This is what I'm talking about People confused Jalen Green*not being quite good enough* for his role type (lead guard on a contending team,) at age 22 with him *not being a good NBA player* . He still looked kike a good player to me, the margins between him being who we want him to be and who he was were tantalizingly thin. - if he had, let's say one - 1 ! - more game v GSW like Game 2 or if he finishes at the rim at a *slightly* higher % or etc - we're probably not having this conversation
