You’re assuming everyone else was great last night or in the games they lose. Tari didn’t play well. Jabari struggled a bit in the paint. And Sengun had difficulty scoring against a bigger player. They like most teams kept attacking Sengun in the paint as well. There’s many vulnerabilities with this team including overall personnel and the sets we run.
The Jalen situation is just sad man. I really hoped he could get it together but he still has the same problem he's had his entire career, which is that roughly half his games are just terrible. The team needs him so badly, and when he's on we're damn near unstoppable. But these horrific performances he puts up need to be few and far between, or ideally eliminated completely, by year 4. And he's still doing it in nearly half of his games. I just don't know if its realistic to expect this to get fixed at this point.
This is the funny thing he has been so bad that when he's just below average you think he's having a decent game. Go look at the box scores we have played 18 games this year and he might have had 4 decent games? Only 2 games over 50% from field only 4 games over 45% from field. If he was good for half the games I'd be ecstatic. We were so use to Harden who on a bad day would drop 30 and people would be up in arms about it. Now the bar is set so low with Jalen.... 4/18 games is not great....
Jalen hasn't really cost us any games yet this season until last night. Brutal game for him. 80% of his attempts were good looks and he just missed them all. They weren't even close.
I'm not sure what's up with Haliburton's decline in shooting percentages this year, but I don't doubt he will get back to his past averages. Either one of those two would give us a lift on offense.
It won’t happen, but this level of production should have him replaced in the starting lineup. Year 4 and very little has change in his game offensively.
I don't typically like to play this game because if we lose by 1 point it's easy to say any of our players could've made one more shot. But if you do a very simple method of looking back through all our games and putting him at league average efficiency in each of them, it flips 3 losses to wins. But it also flips one win to a loss. So he's "cost us" 3 games, but he's also won us 1. Net +2 wins if we assume perfect consistency at league average efficiency, which again, is kind of a silly exercise.
I think the problem is the same as it was last yr. And I've said it before, he needs the ball in his hands. He hasn't progressed enough mentally to play without the ball or off ball. He is the type of player who has to be constantly involved. Harden was that way, as well but he just had a better outside shot. He would be up and down but when MDA put him back on ball, like he was in OKC, he excelled. Last yr during their 11 game when streak, Jalen had the ball in his hands! He was guiding the offense, he was more involved. Ime is going to have to decide how he wants to play?
And he isn't good enough to trust with that - ...but I think you are right that is why I have said he would be better somewhere else...in different system. DD
This is true but misleading, he did play well during the 11 game win streak, obviously. But lets not cherry pick, what about the following 9 games? The rockets followed up the 11 game win streak with a 5 game loss streak. And for the remaining 9 games of the season, all without Sengun, all with Jalen having the ball in his hands, the team went 3-6. And in that stretch Jalen averaged 16.5 ppg on 47% TS, including one game where he got benched. So lets not pretend that handing Jalen the ball fixes the problem, he still puts up tons of really really bad games even when he has the ball and Sengun is out of the picture.
100%, he got his contract playing an inefficient shitty brand of basketball. That only reinforced his style of play. He's not changing. I don't even think if you benched him for a week it would change anything. He's just an athlete with poor basketball skills with no desire to work on improving those skills.
I can't speak for his true desire, but I think he is who he is, flashy in spurts, and horrible in spurts.
Look at how he is utilized and tell me if the sets we run takes advantage of his strengths and abilities. That said his shooting has been bad as he is once again rushing shots and not being aggressive but there’s more to this as we are playing a heavy 2 man FVV sengun game while teams are zoning it up and stacking the box again. I would again say let’s wait and see. But the frustration is why Udoka continues to stash him in the corner in almost every set. This was not how they played in the first 6 games. One concerning play last night was Green and Amen were indecisive on what to do with the clock running out in one play. If ur green ur the guy go out and get it. So to me there’s some confidence and or willingness there to be the guy. But again let’s see
Not making excuses but if you go back and look he got hurt the game they lost the 11 game streak and he was just trying to finish the season. Either way, I think he needs the ball to be effective either here or somewhere else. Obviously, the talent is there but how do you use it?
So him being hurt lead to him returning to the level of play he's been at his entire career outside of the 8 game hot shooting streak? Is that what we're going with?
Jalen is 13th in the league in PNR possessions per game, he actually runs more PNR than Fred does. He gets the second most touches per game on the team behind FVV. He also gets 2 isolation possessions per game, and on those possessions he is shooting 13%. I don't agree that he's getting stashed in the corner on every possession. He also leads the team in FGA by a good amount.
