I loved both Sims and Kai Jones as prospects for HOU - Kai threw down a huge dunk in his game too. Freakish athleticism. It will make those guys a ton of money. Then we have Sengun! Just a steady, skill guy who will have the longest career of all the big men in this draft IMO. Hey - Jalen Green huh HUH!? Not one single dunk! TAKE THAT FOR DATA! LOL We may not win a bunch of games this year, but its going to be fun.
I‘ve only seen the highlights (and the other videos that also show the missed shots) - but so far I would say JG is who I think he was. A great scorer and athlete that can do stuff, that only few other players can - and a bad defender and also not a willing passer. Now I am not gonna knock him for that - he wanted to make an impression and he certainly did. But his defense did look pretty bad and he was missing open guys a lot and also tended to take bad shots over passing to a better positioned guy. Sengun especially was open or at least in good position a lot but Green took a difficult shot instead (and making them most of the time). But those are the areas he needs to improve, I would like to see a 5-8 assist game from him soon. Sengun was not what I expected. First of all, I though his by far biggest strength was his post game and touch close to the basket - but he struggled here. I guess that could be nerves. But he was way better at passing, ball handling and rim protection than I expected. I can really see him with the ball in his hands at the free throw line creating for others or himself. And I can see him as a great rim protector. He just needs to get better against stronger big men and when defending the pick and roll.
Yeah - that is similar to my assessment that he plays aggressively/assertively in a good way. He needs to get smarter particularly with the ball but he is a relentless pit bull on the court when locked in - picking up guys 94ft was surprising and probably not necessary but he seemed to get amped by it.
Green's defense was more good than bad if you watched the whole game. Multiple players tried to iso him and they couldn't go past him. On two occasions the player fell down and lost the ball trying to go by Green because Green bodied them which genuinely surprised me due to how slim Green's frame currently is. Shows he has good core strength.
Exhibit A of why you can't judge a game based on highlights. Green played very solid defense throughout the game. You're literally the first person to say otherwise and surprise, you didn't even watch the game.
I realize this is coming from the place of being a hater b/c he isn't on the Rockets, but I am loving the 'Cade is 2-3" shorter than advertised' journey. I've now seen 4-5 solid references (several shared on this thread) that lead me to believe Cade is ~6'5" barefoot at the very most. I assume Cade's current 6'6" listing for SL is close to his real height in shoes. Which makes him close to the same height as Green (also listed at 6'6" for SL, which I assume is his real height in shoes). Honestly, based on a one game sample size, I'm drinking the Kool Aid and saying I'd rather have Green. Cade's shot will be fine and he will be a very good NBA player, but I continue to think Green (and Mobley) have higher ceilings.
This was one Summer League game, so signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low. Still, it was good to see, and gave us more reasons to be excited/hopeful about the future than not. First, I'll talk about the team overall, then I'll focus four of our players (KJ, JG, JC, and Sengun), and also Mobley. I thought we started slow. We were clearly the faster team throughout, I thought, but we were sloppy many times. Both team shot really poorly, with a few of our players missing very easy looks. We gotta shoot way better, but the ball movement wasn't very good. The best 3s either team got were off offensive rebound instead of set plays. Then again, it's Summer League. These guys have barely practiced together. I know that Detroit lost yesterday, but they were in theory one of the strongest Summer League teams going in, and they'll be looking to bounce back. I don't see any favorites here, and we gotta play better if we don't want to have to grind another W. I'm pretty high on KJ Martin, but he had a poor start to the game. I was surprised to see that he had actually pretty good shooting splits (just him and JG, really). I like his defensive presence a lot, and I don't see that many issues in his mechanics. If he keeps working on his 3s (which he started hitting at the end), I see him as a huge asset. Great block on Mobley. Jalen Green was the second best player on the floor. He was a bit selfish--I think he wanted to show the crowd who he was in his first game--though he showed that he could make reads as well. Defense was poor, but there was effort. My biggest concerns with him remain his shooting mechanics and handle. I felt that he struggled to beat his defender off the dribble, and ended up taking some tough shots. Now, to his credit, he made said tough shots more often than not. But he also missed also had some bad misses: (off wide) and (not as bad, I think it was just short, but had the right direction). If he can keep proving me wrong and consistently make these shots, then it's not an issue, but I think he's making it harder on himself. It was 23 points on 18 shots with 1FT, which tells me that one way he can make it easier on himself is maybe driving more. I was really annoyed at Josh Christopher in the first quarter, but I thought he improved a lot. His shot selection and play at PG need to improve a lot. But his defensive reads are excellent, his handles are great, and he has great speed which he can use to push the ball up in transition very quickly. It's true maybe he could benefit from the G-League, but I think if he improves on a few things he can be a bench player in the NBA this season already. I was very impressed by Sengun, who I thought was the best player. He was a bit unlucky to go 3/10 on FG, he had a few easy shots. He reads the game very well, great touch, solid vision. In one play, he boxed out a rebound very well for JG, and then ran the floor and finished at the other end. He's undersized, so we will have to see him against centers who are not twigs. The one area he can improve his his shooting. His hands looked good, but his legs need to do more work on his shots. His low-light was a 3PA at the top of key that hit the backboard. Improving his shooting would be immense (to be fair, pretty much everyone on the team needed to shoot better last night). I didn't think he looked slow at all, but maybe it's in part due to his seemingly high basketball IQ. I thought Mobley looked like the low-floor/high-ceiling project a lot of people thought he was. Some plays he looked very fluid. But he struggled against the stronger Sengun (though he also sometimes used his length and skills to his advantage). I'm still pretty high on him, but he definitely needs to bulk up (which I think he will). Overall, fun stuff. We need to shoot better, but it's the Summer League, so offenses are always a mess.
Please don't be that guy that forms an opinion of said player based on highlight videos. Either watch the whole damn game or don't say anything at all. You gotta do better bro.
Autocorrect changes Mobley for me too. I saw it and changed it a couple of times. Now it actually doesn't autocorrect.
That was really fun to watch.... Josh Christopher had great energy. He was a bit too aggressive defensively, at times, but overall brought great effort with his energy and high defensive IQ. Sengun did what Sengun does... shake boys out of their shNikes and gobble up their boards (cookie monster 2.0). Jalen was aggressive offensively, which is great, but he really needs to turn it up defensively and keep active hands. All we were really missing was our big chocolate man in the middle (Usman) to complete the F4 of our summer league squad, so I can't wait till he's available to gear up. KJ is developing into a young cog for us, that brings athleticism and outside shooting (wow, surprising) to our young and already athletic lineup. Like what I've seen so far but there are so many spots for improvement. This will be a very entertaining watch this summer.
The Rockets are going to be fun to watch this year. Throw the missing Tate and Usman and we got dogs from 1-5 positions.
Ya the only time I noticed it was when someone actually replied to my post. Because I often have a habit of not proofreading my posts here.
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That‘s good to hear. That‘s why I explicitly said, I only watched the highlights - my opinion here is not worth a lot - and it is barely an opinion, since it is the first game of summer league and since I haven‘t watched the whole game. I am not trying to label him anything off of that - I just wanted to see if what I was observing was in line with what the majority of posters here were observing. So yeah, good to hear that he actually showed a lot of positive plays on defense as well! I hope he really has the will to be a great defender in this league - he definetly has the body and athleticism for that. Was my observation of him taking bad shots instead of passing to better positioned teammates also wrong? In what I have seen it looked like he was ignoring post players like Sengun regularly and instead opted to take a bad shot (that still went in).
Wow, didn't expect to be called an idiot for that post - what do you think why I prefaced my entire post with the info, that I didn't watch the entire game? To make sure everybody is aware, that I am only talking about the highlights - and to find out, if other people, that maybe have watched the entire game, agree or disagree, so that I can have a better informed opinion. Didn't read much about his defense before - now I have. Two guys on here are saying his defense was more good than bad, another one saying it was bad but his hustle was there. All in all - I am never saying "I am right, this is how it is". I am sharing an opinion and prefacing it with all the limitations this opinion has, to either start a discussion or be part of the discussion and then find out, where I am wrong and at what I should look more. Didn't expect this to be so divisive that people start attacking me for it.
