He's obviously going to bounce back but all I care about is he needs to have a 38% season overall. If he hits the number, great. If not, we should upgrade.
I used to view Jabari as untouchable, because of his high ceiling and age. I still think he is going to improve year to year, but I don’t think he is ever going to be the knock down 3 pt shooter we were hoping for. If he could bulk up to be a full-time center, it would be ideal for his career. At center, it would be a better than average ball handler, better than average 3 pt shooter, and his turnaround jumper would play better. It’s kind of like the Astros talk about Diaz. As a catcher he is a + hitter and a DH he is below average. Problem is he needs about 25 more pounds of muscle to have the appropriate sand in his pants. It will take several years to bulk up that much and you would have to have the metabolism and will to do it. Anyway, long way to get there, but I’d consider trading him in the off-season as part of the right package.
Yup, he's definitely not untouchable and could be traded for the right deal. But it definitely has to be a solid deal as Jabari will eventually be a super solid high end role player when he hits his prime. So no BS deals it needs to be a clear upgrade and no 30+ age folks (unless he's in a deal for Gianis I guess, but I doubt he's included in that, if rockets trade Sengun and some pics they'd only have to include salary filler for rest, but it doesn't sound like rockets are trading for him anyway which is honestly for the best given his age and recent injury history). And it seems like they've reeled Jabari in a bit the last few games he's not shooting like 10+ three pointers if he's not hitting. He's pump faking more and passing to a better shooter which is encouraging.
Jabari is 6"11 trying to model his game after KD. Sad part about it is, he should try to model his game after KG. Wrong Kevin! He doesn't have a post game at all. He doesn't like to bang down low. Maybe it's design by the offense, but when Alpis out the game he could be that go to down low. Thats why I'm so high on trading him. He's one dimensional.
I think playing with a Kevin Durant will do wonders for Jabari’s future going forward. Though Jabari will never have the shooting touch Kevin Durant has, he has the ability to shoot 38-40% from 3 point, while giving enough mid range game to make people respect his ability to drive the ball; hence giving more space for his 3 point shot. I see Jabari as an integral starting rotation player for the next 8-10 years. I do not think he has all-star potential in his game, but that’s fine. Some people look at top draft picks not becoming all-stars as failing; yet most draft classes only have 4-5 players in the whole of the draft that ever even make one all-star. in my opinion Jabari is a, “for-sure critical rotation player” on a championship level team; he still has to improve and he looks to be doing so. Sure he has setbacks, and folks get flabbergasted at his bad games. But his win share so far for his career would put him in the top 80 players for any given year. Meaning he is instrumental in making sure coaches game play have a winning formula. He may not be a given to ever be an all-star, but he looks to be quite valuable to a winning formula.
I think he'll be an excellent starter somewhere eventually, but we just invested in a 36 year old PF and he's aging like fine wine. When Jabari is a 4/5 he's good. Unfortunately we have to hide Durant on most 4's. So Jabari is playing at SG/SF defensively. There are already 3 players on the roster better at guarding those positions. So we don't need him to do that. We're forcing that. He's not the best starter at any position this season. I'd love to bring him off the bench to develop as a 4/5 but his ego is so fragile I don't know if it will work. Defensively, this team needs to be: C - Sengun (guards bigs, protects rim) PF - Durant (hidden on slow forwards, roaming shotblocker) SF - Elite 3&D player (guards the second best guard/wing) SG - Amen (guards the best guard/wing) PG - A guard who can hit pull up 3's (guard the worst perimeter player) I understand it's position-less but that's roughly what we end up needing based on opponent personnel. It's so f*cking simple but Ime takes half a season to figure out the most obvious stuff. Every season of his life he needs a big second half to salvage the season. So tiring.
I'd be okay with any number clearing league average (36%) considering that Jabari's 3P shot volume is very high for a power forward. That's scoring efficiently and forcing defenders to stick to him on the perimeter. He can't have these prolonged slumps where his 3P% dips well below average though. That's when your defender starts cheating off you and helping on other players.
The only player that has improved his shooting of any of the young guys is Amen at the FT line. Its crazy that year over year....Jalen, Jabari and Sengun were statistically identical (or in Sengun's case worse). Tari's sample size is too small right now to make anything from his 3 pt %. Reed is 39% but still a far cry from where he should be. Amen's 3s went from 26 to 19 this year. Whats going on.
Personally I think league average efficiency at 5-6 attempts when 80% of your shots are open or wide open is unacceptable for what we need at that position. We have two starters who can't shoot, we can't afford this luxury. For me 38% on 6+ attempts is the bare minimum. We need more shooting from the 3 players around Sengun and Amen and we're not even close to what we need at the moment. That's why I'm lobbying for Reed to start in Jabari's place. We can get 7-8 attempts at 38% and hide him on the worst guard. Okogie and Amen will lock up perimeter threats. Durant has looked good as interior help defense recently. Using that massive wingspan a little more. I can't even fathom why we'd just be ok with a 36% shooter there it's an obvious deficiency. He's nothing special as a defender at the 2/3 position and he's trying so hard. He's doing a killer job for a PF out of position but it's not good enough. We have picks and assets and his contract. We should just get better there if he can't even eclipse league average. It's such a low bar for his salary. We have the assets to do it for exactly this purpose.
If Jabari is league average that's fine IMO, a couple of percentage points isn't going to determine his value. He's already a good enough shooter to keep the defense honest. He's shot 36% from deep before. For 3 and D players the defense is far more important than the shooting. Brook Lopez didn't have a single season shooting 38% from deep in Milwaukee. The season they won the championship he shot 34%. Ibaka shot 36% from deep for his career and 29% in the season Toronto won a ring. Iggy hovered around 35% in GS. Last year Caruso shot 35% in OKC. Players in this role are score around 10-15ppg and a slight change in efficiency isn't that impactful. As long as teams aren't sagging off them they make a tremendous impact on their teams. I don't think Jabari has the handles or post game to be a go to scorer, although he's still young and has room to grow, so I would be happy if he had an Ibaka type career.
Actually Jalen's efficiency was pretty consistently mediocre but at least his volume was going up dramatically each season. That doesn't happen without development. He was taking 9 attempts last season - no one on this roster can hit above league average on 9 attempts except Reed and maybe Durant. With that shaky jumper it's a miracle he hit almost league average at that volume. It was too much imo. Sengun has improved slightly. I wish he took more of them early in the season. His development is slower than I'd like but if it's linear he'll be a 34-36% shooter next season on 2-3 attempts. That makes him so much more of a nightmare player for defenders. They can't rest or sag when he's at the 3PT line, so now the paint is free for Amen and Durant to attack. I would be totally fine with Jabari being 36.6% at 9 attempts. It would solve a lot for us. Tari's looks legit and Durant/FVV both believe in that jumper. I think there may be something there. I mean, even if he finishes 37-38% that's so promising and valuable. Okogie too, I think he's pretty clearly a better shooter. Reed of course. We have pretty good shooting development even if not the best imo.
He's not untouchable.... but we certainly play better when the 6'11" dude is hitting his 3s at decent clip. We have him on a pretty good contract and he will turn 23 in May.
He's literally mathematically not keeping the defense honest. If 80% of your shots are open or wide open, an average shooter should not be shooting league average. They are daring him to shoot which means they're busy harassing our 3 playmakers. I know Jabari is better than that but man we need higher standards. We're trying to win a title right?
I just gave you four examples of role players that shot well below your 38% mark and won rings recently playing big roles for their teams. Brook Lopez shot 35.7% from deep with the Bucks. Serge Ibaka shot 35.5% with the Raptors. Did those guys space the floor for their teams or were teams daring them to shoot? I want Jabari to be a sharpshooter too, but saying he needs to hit at least 38% from deep to win a title is demonstrably false.
The only player in recent memory who improved his shooting after joining the Rockets was Dillon Brooks. (Funny he's falling back to his career average after leaving the Rockets. He's the "curious case" in this context.) Every player shoots worse wearing Rockets uni. We joke about a curse. But it can't be coincidence, can it?
