How is Jalen on par with Booker, let alone better? Would Jalen himself say that he's better than Booker? Come on...
Jalen is not really on par with Booker offensively at this point. We might have been a little better this year with Booker instead of Jalen, but we wouldn't be contenders. We are still building a team to be a contender and potential and the natural progression of young players has to have a place in the front office's thinking as well as salary cap considerations. Green is already a better defensive player than Booker and 3 pt shooter this year. The odds are that Jalen will continue to progress and Booker is probably what he will always be and at a supermax contract. Booker just doesn't seem like the player we need to spend our cache of assets for.
Upgrading from Jalen to Booker is the best semi-realistic move this team can make for a player who fits a need and fits the timeline.
Jalen is nowhere near Booker, even in a down year for him…y’all need to stop it I’d still rather trade for KD tho…would cost much less while giving similar production KD still has several elite years left in him…he’s an anomaly like Lebron when it comes to aging
There are lots of players that fit our needs and might be available. Is he the best individual player that might be available, probably, but that should not be the prime consideration. The point most of us are making is that Booker is a marginal improvement in our backcourt next year that wouldn't have a material impact on our ability to compete for a championship. His contract and the assets to acquire him would severely limit our ability to one, add the skill set we most desperately need (3 pt shooting) and, two, hinder our ability to pay our core young players when the time comes. I would argue we could get role players that would greatly improve our ability to compete for a championship than adding an expensive upgrade to one position that is marginal at best and possibly a negative return in a couple of years. Guys like Naz Reid, Collins, Grant, Williams III, and others could arguably provide greater marginal improvement in areas of needs at a lower cap cost and for fewer outgoing assets.
Booker won’t help unless he’s coming to play PG - we have too many overlapping players FVV is a PG who can’t finish inside so he’s no threat to attack the paint Brooks is also horrible finishing inside and a blackhole on offense JG is one of our best finishers at the rim but the spacing limits his drives Amen is excellent inside but is no threat outside so it clogs paint Alpi is great inside but is no threat to finish outside the paint which clogs the paint Bari is horrible finishing in the paint but can stretch the defense out with his 3pt shot and is pretty decent midrange but doesn’t get many opportunities etc etc with Cam and Tari and Adams We need to unclog the paint and have a PG that can put enough pressure on defenses with his drives that it produces easier looks when he kicks it out
Amen is our starting PG next year, unless Stone and Ime do something incredibly stupid. We should concentrate on adding good defensive players that can shoot 3's to the frontcourt or have Sengun miraculously learn to shoot 3 pointers.
He can’t be our starting PG unless he greatly improves his dribble under pressure and develops a 3pt shot … he’s very effect at dunker spot, soon as teams defense that it’s when he has his worse games
My concern is he obviously isn’t good enough to carry a team even with a very productive Kevin Durant on his team. I like his game but I’ve just never seen evidence that he is THE guy on a contender. I think you only make a trade for him if you are able to line something else up that gives us another star. Otherwise I don’t see this team making a huge jump to top 3 team in West every year. I mean obviously you want to try to get him but at what cost and what comes at the same time matters more imo.
There are 3, maybe 4 guys if you still want to include Giannis who would classify as “the guy” on a contender.
Agree to disagree? He has already improved his handles and his mid-range shot, almost always makes the right read and pass, and gets us into our half-court offense quickly. He just needs experience and a little more range on his outside shot to take the next step toward his eventual superstardom. You stock this team with 3 point shooters and Amen will get to the rim with ease and distribute with the best of them.
True. Which is why I think you don’t cash in for a player like Booker unless you have another deal lined up to pair Booker with or we already have a superstar in the making (I’m meh on that. We have good players but nobody yet I think is a star) I know it didn’t work out due to injuries and SGA blowing up but I look at the Clippers/Kawhi/PG offseason as the blueprint here on how to do 2nd tier star acquisition. Of course if you don’t have to give up players than sure you can see a world where we just get better adding a talent like that but we all know it’s gonna cost us a decent amount of our rotation most likely along with a bunch of picks.
just watch the games, soon as teams start to pressure he gets off the ball and only Jalen brings it up … he’s best when he can rebound and push the pace but that’s not being a PG. with FVV and Reed out, pay attention to who brings the ball up after a made basket …8/10x it’s going to be JG I would love for him to develop into a PG because that’s a huge advantage for the Rockets, currently he’s a Swiss Army knife who can give other teams fits if he’s asked to not be the primary ball handler (he’s even having trouble inbounding the ball now)
I see us regretting the Booker trade by year 2 lol Much rather see how little you could get KD for a short term rental even for just a year or two
I didn’t initially take the time to deeply research Booker and Green’s true-shooting percentages since Green entered the league. That said, overall FG% and FT% throughout their careers still paints the same story. Booker is the better overall shooter and more efficient offensive player. This back and forth started because some posters were claiming Jalen is on par with Booker as a shooter and scorer. That’s why defense wasn’t addressed in my argument. I was only pushing back on the notion that Booker isn’t a significantly better offensive player. Green might get to Booker’s current level in the next few years, but he isn’t there now. I will say just because a player enters the league at 18, doesn’t mean they get five or six years to figure things out because they are really young. At some point, organizations have to make tough decisions. It’s also no guarantee that Jalen Green ever reaches Devin Booker’s current level as an offensive player.
He was referring to my comment “I must be taking crazy pills to think Devin Booker is a more efficient shooter and scorer than Jalen Green.” We both think Booker is better.
Sure, Booker is still a lot better--he actually knows how to pass the ball and his midrange is night and day better than JG's. The issue is that Booker is set to get paid $80M annually at the same time as we're going to have to pay Amen. If you assume Amen is going to be a max player at that point, we're over the cap with just Booker/Amen/Sengun. Kind of hard to field a competitive roster that way, we'd just be in the same position Phoenix is right now.
Amen's situation would be interesting, can the Rockets lowball his first real contract like they lowballed Alpe? But he is definitely getting max or super max paid on his 2nd contract......
