EARLY WARNING: Jalen Green WILL NOT play well with 2 non-shooters on the floor

I think it is worth a try, but no I don’t think it will work right now. It should have been used more and more gradually throughout the year, but Ime just does not have the ingenuity to pull that off. He needs offensive help and he probably needs to not have FVV on this team. For the rest of the year, we might have better success going back to the original line-up this year and using the terror twins off the bench. So one snail team and one fast team. At least opponents will have to have a couple of game plans.

 

https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/team/11/lineups#tab-four_factors

Best lineup in terms of DIFF (+30) mininum 100 possessions

F.VanV A.Thom D.Broo J.Smit A.Seng

 

The reason for the disconnect between normal basketball fans and Jalen Green fans is that the normal basketball fan or the Rockets fan will look at the overall picture when discussing players while the Jalen Green fan will only look at Jalen Green highlights and his best games ever to compare to the worst games of everyone else.

You just maybe are expecting too much from them.

 

FVV helps organize the offense and is currently the best guard on the team, fitting with Amen and Sengun for both winning and development.

For the purposes of development and winning, I'd use the following lineup groups
FVV and Amen, Brooks, Tari or JSJ, Sengun or Adams
Green and Amen, Brooks, Tari or JSJ, Sengun or Adams
Green and Amen, Brooks, Tari, JSJ
FVV and Green, Brooks, Tari or JSJ, Sengun or Adams
Double big
Tari and/or JSJ would sub for Brooks as needed, but getting them SF minutes would be not be a focus for me (i.e., enough to get them both over 30 mpg).

Long term, the Rockets need a guard to replace FVV and a SF to replace Brooks. I would not get rid of them until their replacement is here and ready (if the replacement is internal).

Short term, this puts a crunch on Reed and Cam. The rest of the young guys should be able to get minutes at their likely long term general positions going forward with Tari and JSJ needing to cover SF a little. I would start FVV, but even as a backup this would work.

 

Go Rockets!!!
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It's hard to measure both inside and outside gravity with a single metric. There is a reason this list is filled with perimeter creators and not frontcourt guys like Giannis, Jokic, and KAT.

I don't think your inference here is accurate. Jalen Brunson is playing with maybe the best stretch five in the league and he is third on this list.

 

because the metric does not measure what he claims to measure as a quick google search shows. It ıs about how close your primary defender is and gravity is a poor choice of name that suggests it measures the overall gravity. Any sane person with eyes would see Sengun has more gravity in that sense but of course he is not interested in the real meaning of the stat and tries to market it as something else.

 

I don't mind if Amen comes off the bench, but I don't think it changes much--he still should/will play 30-40 minutes every night and will end up sharing the floor with Jalen. If Fred keeps shooting this poorly, maybe he should actually be the one to go to the bench in favor of Jabari. It's probably still just a fluke but man has it not been good the majority of these games since he returned from injury.

Anyway, my larger point is that Amen and Sengun are still the two players who make the greatest impact on winning. Honestly, the non-sh!tty version of FVV is above JG too (not this one we've gotten too often this season). I'm not really blaming Jalen for anything, I'm actually pleased with his development this season, and I do agree that like all of our players his ability to get to the rim is being negatively impacted by our lack of shooting. However, I'm still skeptical that his shot selection would be significantly better with better spacing. I think that's pretty speculative. We largely played ISO ball under Silas and at times did have okay spacing around JG, and he pretty much took the same shots. Honestly, in a lot of his best games, if you look back at his game log, it's just because he's taking a ton of three pointers and is absolutely on fire from deep.

 

Thinking about this thread, if Jalen can't play well with the stars on the team, he'll need to be moved.

I don't personally think that's true now that he's hitting a higher percentage of his 3's and being only a little bit below league average for his position.... but if it was true, it's Amen and Sengun's team, you either fit with them or your future here will be brief.

 

I dunno. I'm as big a Green homer as they come tbh, but I think he has to step up to that next level of elite clutch scorer now. He doesn't have to be a great shooter, but he does have to either get buckets or get free throws. Now, I actually do think (despite all opinion to the contrary) that he COULD become a good enough playmaker to be the lead PG (with us getting a shooter at the 2 and Amen at the 3) but either way, he has to get buckets and he has to get to the line. He's shown now he can be that guy for a lot of the time, he needs to now take that step to be the offensive star. Amen;s going to be the 2-way swiss army knife but he's never going to have Jalen's scoring gravity, so Jalen either has to be an uber bucket, or he has to be the lead/point guard, but we're past excuse time for me. He's got the ability, legit superstar potential, now he has to realise it so he can swap his current contract for a max.

 

Though their population has dwindled to a handful, there are still a select few Rockets fans that refuse to see that Jalen is a tweener. You can absolutely be a tweener if you have other gifts that put you in the Top 3 or 5 players in the world at said gifts (Ja Morant, Jalen Brunson, Steph Curry). Jalen doesnt have these gifts. He either needs to go get a brain transplant or go and be given Anthony Edwards body or develop Steph's shooting ability.

The sooner these fans accept this, the less they'll have to come do damage control every time a Top 10 team in the league completely neutralizes him. He's not the only player on the team thats a tweener. Reed and Sengun are also. They too have to bring something else to the table to mitigate that.

 

Green played 4 minutes in the 4th last night and the Rockets lost the quarter. Alpern and Fred didn't hit a bucket at all in that quarter. Jalen Green is not your problem - Fred VanVleet getting 12 minutes in the 4th and only mustering 2 free throws, and 2 assists, and a TO is the issue....and really - that kind of makes sense for an older player on the 2nd night of a back to back....but why was he in the game for 12 minutes in the 4th after a similarly lackluster 3rd quarter where he missed 7 shots and the only plusses were 3 assists?

In a tight game, continuing to stick to Fred despite clear evidence he wasn't producing was the difference. Jalen put up comparable stats overall to "best player" Sengun last night.

...also worth noting - this game was lost because we prioritized making someone else on the Lakers beat us - in this case DFS and Gabe Vincent hit everything. That's clearly not sustainable but it worked in this game. I think to some extent, Udoka had counters but choose to take the loss rather than show his hand to a Lakers team we may face in the playoffs. I expect that game to go a lot differently in a 7 game series.

 

Yeah, I think this is a good observation. I'm a Jalen fan but completely agree that his slight frame makes it hard for him to play physically and that's always going to be a ceiling for him until he gets stronger(and he's never going to have a frame like Ant). I think he can be a really good starter though - in the same vein as let's say a Rip Hamilton...but your 1A needs to be able to overwhelm teams and Jalen will never be that guy against good teams....also agree about Reed and Sengun.

 

All season long Udoka has made foolish decisions with the rotations that hurt the team, I don't think anything was special about last night.... just Ime being Ime.

 

He has gotten really good at making great reads as a PG - I feel like he doesn't get enough credit for that improvement. For him it's just knowing when to take over and when to find his teammates. He kind of has these rigid switches between those two modes and doesn't necessarily read the situation in real time like let's say Amen.

 

The eye test suggests that he's gotten a bit better at it, but imo surprisingly the numbers don't support that narrative.

 

Yeah, I agree too. The only plausible path for him to become a #1 option type of scorer would be for him to become an elite jump shooter. He can get off a fairly clean jump shot whenever he wants, but for that to be enough given his other limitations, he has to be very reliable with it. Not Steph Curry level, but certainly approaching that vicinity. 40% on 9 attempts for game, that sort of thing. He does that and improves his midrange and rim finishing a bit and he's an efficient 25+ point scorer.

It's just hard to see him ever gaining enough strength to be a nonstop downhill force like a D-Wade, nor enough court vision to be a top assist guy. It's all about the jump shooting with him, as it's always been.

 

A tweener of what? He's a guard, obviously, is he between a guard and an assistant coach?

 

Well, the only way I could see it being used would be to say he's a combo guard... so maybe that was the intention, but I disagree with the statement.

Jalen is a shooting guard... there's really no "tweener" to it.