Its time to discuss trading Jalen Green while he's still worth a damn

Mock drafts are trying to predict what WILL happen. If i was making a mock draft i would have also put ayton first, because everyone knew that the suns wanted the local guy, and everyone knew vlade wasnt drafted luca for his own personal reasons. Feel free to listen to that podcast but my view of luca was the same predraft as it is now, nothing changed. He has not exceeded my expectations

 

Scoot hasn’t proven he can shoot from outside. No way you package all that for another guy with potential. If Green is in a package it needs to be for a vet in his prime, not an oldish vet or one whose game is on only one side of the ball (Dame).

 

1. Scoot Henderson has a 58% ts in the Gleague. Green had a 62% ts in the Gleague. They were roughly the same age coming from high school.

2. Let's compare the players you mentioned to Green. First let's get this out of the way. Per 36 is incredibly stupid because it implies linear scalability which pretty much ignores Ray Allen's comment about the most underrated difficult aspect of the NBA, getting up a clean shot attempt without being blocked. Believing that the same player can magically scales up their scoring while maintaining the same efficiency when things like stamina and defenses honing in are a thing is asinine.

Poole his second year(keep in mind he also joined the NBA after two college seasons) averaged 12 ppg on 58% ts. He also scored 25% of his fgm unassisted compared to 60% for Green this season. So I'm sure the 4% ts gap can be more than accounted by Green's volume(remember assuming linear scalability for guys like Poole is stupid), Green taking a significant percentage of his makes self created and not having these teammates named Steph Curry or Draymond Green or Klay Thompson on your team to increase spacing and easy looks.

Let's look at RJ Barrett. He scored 17 ppg on the same ts% as Green. So he scored 5 less ppg on on the same ts% while also having most of his points assisted unlike Green.

Let's look at Anfernee Simons. 8.3 ppg on 50% ts. Now this shouldn't even be a debate. He was asked to self create like Green but we see the results here of what that looked like for Simons at the same age as Green. 50% ts on significantly lower volume.


Now Beal. 17 ppg on 50% ts. He also did that with only 35% of his makes unassisted. Remember Green is at 60%. So again, lower efficiency, lower volume and significantly easier shot profile.


So come again?

Like do you see the massive difference in structure and easy attempts between guys like Poole and Beal with Green? Beal plays the same off guard position as Green yet the system he came into at least gave the vast majority of his looks assisted which should be how it goes for 19-20 year old young scorers. Green is being put through the fire and asked to beat three levels of defense off the dribble and he's still more efficient than most of those guys you listed when they were 20. Imagine if Green had 75% of his makes assisted rather than the reverse? How much higher do you think his ts% would be?

 

By being as bad as they are .. the Rockets have made a statistical analysis of green very hard .

What do his stats even mean ? How would they translate on even an average team ?

Is he less efficient than he would be because he's the only guy attracting attention ?

Or is he more efficient than he would be because teams give crap effort against us ?

I'd consider trading him if the price is right . I don't LOVE what I see .

This next off-season and year 3 are huge in terms of him being a star star .

He has to add strength finishing at the rim , shooting consistency , and a whole lot on D .

Imo I would have had him playing 25 focused,good minutes vs throwing him out there for 35 and giving him a blank check

 

The biggest problems with your arguments are your over-reliance on ts% and the unassisted fg rate.

You know Green struggles making fgs which is why you prefer to use ts% instead of efg%. And then continue to ignore his fg struggles by blaming his high unassisted fg rate on his teammates. Why are you so quick to dismiss the possibility that teammates do create open shots for Green, but he misses them b/c he struggles making fgs?

 

1. Jalen had 61% TS in the g league on hot 3pt shooting over 15 games which he has yet to replicate in the NBA. And scoring is literally the only skill he has. Scoot is at 58% TS and scoring is like his 5th most valuable trait. Ball handling, passing, defensive intensity, BBIQ, physical projectability are all elite.

Anyway, Wemby also has 58% TS this year. So what? That’s the depth of your scouting analysis? There’s a reason both players would go number 1 in 9 of the last 10 drafts. Watch an Ignite game, forget stats. Scoot would be the best guard on the Rockets if he walked in the gym today, and it’s not close.

2. Scalability is about usage percentage, not really minutes. Jalen doesn’t have significantly higher usage than those guys - he just gets more minutes because we don’t have anyone better to play and he can never be benched for mistakes. Thus his counting stats go up but his per 36 doesn’t.

And you want to split hairs about 2nd seasons vs 3rd seasons or age 21 vs 22 (because you want to avoid having to compare against Poole’s 60% TS or Anfernee Simons elite age 22 season), and % assisted vs unassisted? Fine.

Compare to Collin Sexton, year 2, same age as Jalen.

Sexton: 20.8/3.1/3.0 on 47/38/85 and 56% TS in 33 MPG, 62% unassisted

Jalen: 21.8/4.1/3.6 on 41/33/78 and 53% TS in 34 MPG, 57% unassisted

Thoughts?

22 and under players who give you 20 points on inefficient shooting and absolutely nothing else are not particularly rare in this league. almost always they turn into mid NBA players who sign big contracts but add little value on the court. For every 1 Devin Booker there’s 10 Sextons, Russells, Hardaway Jr’s, Herros, Pooles etc.

Take off your Rockets tinted glasses and there’s nothing in particular pointing to Jalen being that 1 in 10, other than he was picked high. We should be ready to move on if the opportunity arises.

 

Folks who use data to sht on green always like to ignore context. U think him having an inefficient game isnt influenced at all by the lack of an offense system, pg or an actual coach?

Man started his rookie season deferring to the likes of C. wood who is not even a starter on a playoff team and kpj a dude still learning how to play pg.
He has a coach that is about to lead a team to being the shttiest one in league once more.

If u are doing due diligence, u have to at least put your youngsters in the best position to succeed before giving up on them. Anyone who believe green and even smith were put in the best position to succeed on this team is just outright stupid.

 

Are you telling me it's splitting hairs to exemplify the difference in season 2 vs season 4 of guards who joined the league at 19?

19-22 is literally the most rapid time of development. Yes there is a massive difference in experience and training between year four Simmons and year 2 Green. In fact it's a common trope that year three is the big jump year for young guards. Green hasn't even reached the prototypical "jump year" in his career.


Also Green and Scoot played in the same league so their ts% one to one is comparable. Wemby plays in a different league and yes that ts% is concerning for an alleged generational talent in a lesser league.

So compare year 2s. I even allowed you to compare Poole even though he has an added year of post.higu school development before joining the league and ignore the massive difference in scoring profile between the two. Same with Beal.

Sexton is the rare one you found where he showed impressive eyesr two and hasn't made a jump. That's hwn basic things like eye test matters and it's clear as night and day that Green has the higher ceiling between Sexton and Green given Green's larger size and more explosion.

You ignore all the current stars like Booker or Beal who performed the same or worse than Green at the same age. Beal is a scoring champ in the NBA and in his same stage of development was scoring 35% of his makes unassisted with a much lower scoring efficiency than Green.


If you are telling me that per 36 scales linearly than you are lost. There are so many confounding factors. Look at your defense here. "Minutes scale, but not usage". Okay. Now let's actually examine this claim. If the difference in scoring can only be accounted by the amount of minutes Green recieves that means the minutes difference is massive. That means we are more than likely comparing Green, a starter vs at that time a bench player. That means their scoring output and efficiency is mostly done against opposing benches and not starters. That's one confounding factors you ignore amongst dozens. It's just an example of a confounding factors and why per 36 is a very stupid stat.

 

Send them to the G league

 

Sengun better than both of them.

 

It's funny though. These guys are so new into their careers and so young that Jalen Green could have a 10 game hot stretch and these guys can sustain another couple of weeks of this poor efficiency and the script ENTIRELY flips.

That's how fickle these comparisons are for players so young and at the beginning of their careers. When 10-20 games can completely flip narratives, then you know it's in the realm of "too early to tell".

 

Ha! Interesting, I never thought about it.
Jalen deserves credit for getting to the line more, and he's a good FT shooter, but that does inflate the TS% relative to eFG%. Interesting stat quirk.

edit: I don't think @fchowd0311 is doing it in bad faith, though.

 

Remember folks, when you're out there on the internet defending Jalen Green, never try to evaluate to evaluate his present performance, always dig up guys who started in the NBA 11 seasons ago - when it was harder to score - to make him look better.

 

Anfernee Simons, Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, Ant,, Poole etc have been on the league for over 11 years. Damn time flies.

 

Getting to the line more is a more positive sustainable development for future sustained efficiency than having for example a hot shooting month from three. You do know that right?

His ftr is amongst the highest of his draft class. That means he's breaking down perimeter defenses more than his peers. It's not like Jalen gets favorable whistles. His play style is bending around defenders rather than scoring through defenders.

 

It's time to discuss trading Paolo Banchero

 

Beal - who you specifically and repeatedly mention as one of the sacred archetypes - has been in the league 11 years now.

FWIW, he was a much better shooter as a 19-21 year old from 3 point range than Green, hitting 38-40-41% - in a substantially more difficult era for shooting.

But again, that's all a sideshow to distract from Green. Just focus on Green! He's pretty meh at shooting from distance, extremely meh at shooting from other ranges, not a great ballhandler or passer. That's pretty bad for a lead guard auditioning for honcho status.

 

Is it? Amongst his draft class on the Rockets only, he's second at 0.319: way behind Sengun at 0.396, and just a bit higher than Garuba at 0.315

 

And yet even adjusted ts% Green is higher with a 60% vs 35% unassisted fgm rate.


And what the hell do you mean about "much harder". No, Beal's era which isn't even substantially different than this era as it's still Morey ball era with guys like Steph and Harden running the league, Green probably wouldn't take 7 contested threes a game. That's how Beal''s three pt percentage was much better. Because he took less and he took significantly less off the dribble threes.

Green scored significantly more off the dribble and yet still even after adjustment for era, Green's ts is still higher and on higher volume.

 

Okay now post his efficiency for those games.

Greens 25+ scoring games are not the problem, they are typically when he catches fire.

It's when he goes 3-16 and scores 12 points that's the issue

I don't get the obsession with unassisted vs assisted. Getting assisted easy baskets is a skill in itself, which is why players like Curry or Klay are so valued.

If you are trying to create all your field goal attempts and failing to score efficiently maybe it's time to stop trying to create. If Green can cut down his "self creation" bricks, he would be a much better NBA player. Nobody is forcing to chuck and miss bad shots off the dribble