Let's not forget that Ant was a 2.9 assists/2.2 turnovers guy (on 32mpg) when he was a rookie. He has steadily progressed year-over-year in that category.
Ant has much bigger hands and is much bigger in general. JG actually reminds me of the guy that Ant just tore up, Jamal Murray. You look at the numbers, and JG is fantastic in the D-HO, which is where Jam lives with Jokic, and where Jalen should live with Alperen. Edwards is asking too much. He is too big and too strong.
I think that's the issue, Jalen hasn't shown progress in essentially any category. He's the basketball equivalent of a pitcher that ends their season with an 8 ERA and a 1.900 WHIP... but they threw a no hitter in one of their starts. That brief brilliance doesn't really look like progress, it looks like a fluke that isn't repeatable so they get sent to the minors. If Jalen was showing any real progress, the Rockets wouldn't have tried to trade him already.
Just so you know I was doing cartwheels during Jalen's big streak this year. I knew in the back of my head I shouldn't. I even commented here at the time that people shouldn't put too much stock on like 10 game streak against tanking teams at end of the year. But I was still optimistic in my head that this time, this time things are different. At least next year will be the last year on the wild ride of Jalen Green. If he doesn't break out by then, the Rockets will either re-sign him for a role-player type deal and put him on the backburner of development, or just let him go in RFA or through trade.
So let me get this straight you think this time things aren't legitimate because his shooting got cold for the last 5 games of the season? Isn't this really superficial? Like outside of shooting splits do you see whether his decision making has improved, defense? Ball security? He played 82 games as a starter where he also had to exert energy at high levels at both ends of the court for the first time in his career. He burned out. Another year of conditioning to get used to spending that energy is probably the more likely scenario. I know why his "hot streak" was legitimate this time by actually watching games and seeing how he impacted the game far more than just making buckets from his gravity to him actually making high level defensive plays and placing a constant stream of effort on the defensive end(Ime literally would not give him playing time if he didn't).
How he starts off the coming year will let us know how legit his hot streak was. Personally, I think he will finally break his streak of slow starts but I am keeping my expectations grounded to avoid major disappointment.
When a player is bad for 153 games then starts out a new season being bad for 66 games, then is good for 8, then bad for 8..... what sample is most likely representative of the player's true value?
It comes from... you?? https://bbs.clutchfans.net/threads/...kets-numero-uno.321957/page-104#post-15130519 Seriously what are we even doing here? Was it convenient for you to say his handles were always loose just a few months ago, so that you can spin up an improvement narrative, and now you want to rewrite history to say Jalen never had weak handles, so you can't understand where people are coming up with this narrative? You are the one continuously coming up with new narratives. I have watched the games this season, the difference is I watch them without extreme confirmation bias unlike you. We all remember how it was a pretty usual occurrence for him to get stripped on his drives or turn the ball over all the time. Sadly he hasn't improved on the handle strength front as much as you'd like to think, and while he's not zero on the creativity front he's just maybe above basic when he can pull it off. Definitely not elite or good even, at best adequate - definitely nowhere near enough to make him a good PG. If I was a coach I'd have a heart attack every game if Jalen was my primary ball handler.
Elite is something I've never stated. I e stated above average for a sg. Also I've been through this plenty. NBA.com exists. You can search for players like Ant or Booker and see how many dribbles they have had per game in their first few seasons and divide that by turnovers and see the rate of how many dribbles they do per turnover and Green is by far the fewest amongst the current crop of high end off guard talent outside of Mitchell's first few years but coincidentally he is the only off guard with high talent who entered the league at 21 in recent history while the likes of Lavine, Booker and Ant joined at 19. I can also show you his turnover rate on drives compared to other high end talent off guards. His handle entering the league was more refined than basically ever off guard in the past decade outside of Mitchell statically. This is assuming if you consider harden a off guard. If you consider him a sg then he has by far the best handles entering the league of any off guard in the past decade.
Players are generally expected to take a leap forward in their third year. Especially those targeted for stardom. This article written prior to last season wondered if Anthony Edwards could make that leap. Indeed he did, and appears to still be going. The article references several other superstars and how they made the leap. This 2013 article looks at six players that they were expecting to make the leap following their fourth year. They were essentially calling them late bloomers because they were making everyone wait longer than normal for their “leap year”. Those players were: Ricky Rubio – minor leap in his 7th year after moving to a new team. 25th in MIP voting. 3pt shot took an uptick, but assists fell almost in half. Nothing more than a minor blip in his career. Jonas Valanciunas – Made his leap 7th year following a trade to a new team. Didn’t really sustain that leap in future years and basically regressed to the mean. Iman Shumpert – Never made the leap. Gordon Hayward - Made a leap in year 5 based mostly on a better 3pt percentage. Enes Kanter – Started getting 25+ minutes in his 3rd year. Numbers remained at a pretty consistent level thereafter. Tristan Thompson – Never made the leap. This Bleacher Report article sets about defining the leap and points out several players who never actually made it. The article contains this chart in showing the growth of severaal superstars over their first 4 years. Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Kobe Bryant *7.6 ppg *15.5 ppg 19.9 ppg 22.5 ppg LeBron James 20.9 ppg 27.2 ppg 31.4 ppg 27.3 ppg Kevin Durant 20.3 ppg 25.3 ppg 30.1 ppg 27.7 ppg Carmelo Anthony 21 ppg 20.8 ppg 26.5 ppg 28.9 ppg *bench player There are players like Jimmy Butler who were relatively late taking the leap, as he was 25 in his 4th year when it appears to have clicked for him. But, I think for the most part, if a player is going to be great (or even really good) you will know it by year 4 when they take the leap, have already taken the leap, or gradually progressed to the player they will be.
Jalen isn't even close to Edwards. It's not a conversation. However the two people pushing the narrative on how bad he is think KPJ is good and he's playing in a he'll hole overseas because nobody wants him
It is funny that the first guy you mentioned.........for him it is an overcompensation because he cannot have KPJ, he needed his friend to be the scape goat. Green is essentially just a more athletic, faster version of KPJ ......maybe KPJ is a better catch and shoot player but that is all. Green just had the luxury to be developed by Ime, a top coach and is now further ahead.
Tmac of Greece Spanoulis was much better in Euro League. I dislike Green as well but reality is that Green is part of the Rockets and KPJ is not. One is violent and the other is just not very intelligent. Time to set sail.
Jalen can’t dribble especially under pressure in traffic, he has a low BBall IQ and he is weak physically. That’s not to say he doesn’t have elite quickness and athleticism though, but Edwards has big hands, a good dribble, a high BBall IQ and is super strong. If Jalen can drastically improve his handle that would be game changing, but he’ll never have the size or strength of Edwards.
Lmao so you invented a handle quality metric which is # of dribbles divided by # of turnovers per game I assume, and now we are supposed to take that as a 100% accurate evaluation of that now? What if a player is overdribbling, like Jalen does as those watching the game objectively can attest? Or maybe his usage is different? You know players who have a bigger role in running the offense usually also have high turnovers right? Not saying that's the case here necessarily, just many factors can impact those metrics, and a single number is never enough to make a conclusion like the one you are making here. Even if we agree to that, I mean in your own comment, you were claiming a few months ago that his handles were always loose - in those exact words! It's there for everyone to see. What happened in the meantime to make you say now that he's one of the most refined guards ever to brace the league in the last decade in terms of his handles? I'm super confused. Either you need to admit your eye test is junk and you don't know what you are watching, or your metric is junk - or you are trying to put out narratives and don't even care if they are consistent or not, after all it's super easy to throw out a made up, non-reproducible metrics or data points out there with a vague context to make your argument deceivably strong. One thing is clear: If I were you I'd stop being all smug and telling people to watch the games, because it's clearly not working for you.
Just to clarify, my personal stance here is these kinds of questions are dumb. Player X won't be Player Y purely on the account of them not being an identical copy of Player Y. JG won't be Edwards and Sengun won't be Jokic - they both have unique strengths and weaknesses compared to those players and it's up to them to utilize their tools to come up with the best versions of themselves. Within the context of this thread I don't see similar body types etc at all, I see more of a Tyrese Maxey in Jalen's play style. It makes more sense to phrase these questions as 'Can Player X be as impactful to winning as Player Y?' - I don't think that probability is zero at all for JG, and our best and fastest bet is almost always for internal folks to grow into the roles we need and close the gaps we need covered anyway. A lot of folks underestimate the importance of fit and chemistry, and the folks on this team seem to have it, and just that alone is enough to make me hope for internal development. I don't see that probability as 0 with Jalen and is a bit puzzled at guys who seem overconfident on this. JG is a bit of an enigma, we will have to wait and see. I wouldn't give him another chance at a March run, so we should make a call by next half-season - but even then to me it's a timing issue rather than completely giving up on his chances of ever becoming something. We have after all seen late bloomers before. Here's where that gets even trickier - even if we all agree on what that probability is, a lot of this comes down to personal tolerance - a super optimist guy, or someone who's a fan of JG will be fine with a 5% chance of JG being a superstar. A pessimist, someone with low risk tolerance, or someone who doesn't like his play style probably won't. So it's sort of moot to argue those things in a sense because it's very hard to find common language and do it without talking past each other. I personally just want to see us try the JG + Sengun pairing, and we will see how it goes - I've started to find discussing anything beyond that meaningless as I neither have a crystal ball nor impact the outcome.
Compare them at the same ages. You can make a case Sengun is same or better than Jokic. Can't do that with Green and Edwards.
