Lou Will " Rockets fans need to realize it's not a lot of Jalen Greens around"

I agree with you. He was not good and crumbled mentally as the series went on. I’m not saying this is an excuse for THE entire failure, but I just don’t think he has been put in the best positions either.

I still think he makes an All-Star game or two.

 

There's not many players in NBA history given as much opportunity as Jalen has been. Just about any other player would have been permanently benched and dumped WAY before now with such poor performance over multiple seasons.

This is the worst possible excuse.

 

That wasn't the point. The point was the ridiculous comparison between a teenager with little NBA experience vs. Green.

The expectation gulf between the two should be MASSIVE.

 

This. I will say his defense and defensive awareness has improved greatly. However, he was just completely neutralized offensively and couldn’t help his teammates. GSW has an elite coaching staff led by a HOF coach, but he just couldn’t figure out to be remotely effective offensively. Like he could not figure out how overcome GSW blitzing attack and kept getting caught in the corner.

 

Jalen has been a PRO basketball player for 5 years....4 in Houston and 1 in the Gleague, that means his FULL TIME job for 5+ years has been to get better at basketball.....

5 years.....do you guys see 5 or 4 years improvement, I do not.

DD

 

Give PHO their picks back + Green and some other assets they may want and get Devin Booker.

He's the missing piece.

Giannis doesn't fit and KD, while he fits better than Giannis, is old as dirt and doesn't fit as well as Booker.

 

his fans are professional excusers improving day by day. gets more ridiculous and crazy

but Silas
but Ime
but Alpi
but Amen
but Jabari
but no Jabari
but no Adams
but Adams
but spacing
but schemes
but Pods
but Hield

 

Let me ask you this. Did you see any improvement? And do you agree that people improve at different levels?

The reason why I ask is because of what I saw during the season. Because I've seen Harden play great during the season have horrible playoff series.

 

As much as I don't think you've been very fair to Jalen over the course of his career, I do think you're right on this one. We can all argue back and forth all day about what things Jalen Green has improved upon over the course of his four years in the NBA, what things he does well, how well he does them, what things he does poorly, what justifications or excuses there may or may not be for those things.

But when it comes down to it, he hasn't shown enough improvement, specifically as a scorer. Sure, he came into the league at a young age, and he's still relatively young. But he's had loads of time to show us what kind of trajectory he's on. And the line on the graph is not steep enough at this point to have any real confidence that he will be more than, at best, a #3 option on a championship contender--and maybe not even that going by his playoff performance in this series.

Saying that doesn't mean you "hate" Jalen Green or even that you think he's a bad basketball player. I actually like the kid quite a bit as a person from what I know about him and I do think he belongs in the league. I just think we need let go of the idea that he's a player you can build around and adjust our expectations accordingly.

 

Agree on your opinion on Green. KPJ is not a good example though. If they end up keeping him I'd take Jamaal Crawford at this point

 

My struggle with this is that, there are no excuses for him, all his comps Beal, Booker, Lavine etc. all had better first playoff showings. Some players did better at younger ages with the defense keying on them as well.

But he had his worst averages against GSW this season based on their game plan and if we had a different opponent, although he still hasn't been consistent, he may have had a less terrible showing and the perspective might be different.

There is also a chance he develops to Lou's point, albeit a slow burn with perhaps year seven hitting his stride. If he hits his potential on another in conference team like the Lakers that would be terrible.

But the opportunity costs are who can we get that is better during that time? An established star in a package? Free agent salary? Or use him to move up in the draft for someone with more potential?

I wasn't open before to trading him but now I am, but the deal has to make sense. If it doesn't, we didn't max him and just keep him with our core and see how he responds next season. Don't make an impulsive trade or just dump him for fan emotions.

 

players like jalen green are a dime a dozen, it's just that people are not deluding themselves to think those players are franchise players.

 

I really want to believe in Jalen but 4 years is a long time, man. 4 players from that draft have already become Allstars. There's a reason those rookie contracts are 4 years; that's supposed to be an adequate evaluation period. Eventually you're gonna have to start realizing your potential. He can still become very good one day but that'd be far beyond being just a late bloomer. I'd still love to see what he can do playing fully off ball with a real playmaking point guard though.

 

I wish Jalen had half of Kobe's brains.

And no, that's not an invitation to a helicopter joke

 

Plenty of future stars hadn’t become a solidified star by year 4 especially in the last 10-20 years. The 2003 class alone kept most the guard spots for years. Green had a tougher road to becoming an allstar than Sengun. Not that Sengun didn’t deserve it or play better, but being a guard in 2025 is STACKED.

 

Yeah there are not a lot of dudes out here painting their finger nails black then putting on a NBA jersey to hoop...

 

Silas and KPJ did hinder his development imo. Ultimately though he's had plenty of time to improve without them and nothing outside of defense

 

I agree, that's why I conceded that it's not completely over for him. Unfortunately though, to me it looks like he's plateaued or even regressed as an offensive player. Defensively he's much better than he used to be but on the offensive side I don't see much improvement. I'm stunned that he wasn't taking any pull up 2s against the zone in game 7. His toolkit is still just steph back 3 or throw your body into the paint against all the defenders. His reads still aren't very good. He jumps from too far away and doesn't finish assertively. Sometimes it looks like he's doing moves in midair just to do them and not to move the ball away from the defense. If possible, I would not give up on Jalen and I actually think his contract is pretty good still but he's gonna have to take a long look at his game and improve a few things.

 

Brains, work ethic. Competitiveness, skills ect..

 

Jalen has played 10,038 regular season minutes in the NBA.
Sengun has played 8101

For Alperen's Turkish League stats I only see that he played 56 games. But he only got significant minutes in his 3rd year. But whatever, lets give Alperen the full credit for 80 games. And lets go overboard with the minutes. Lets say he averaged 20 mins per game over the three years. He still wouldn't have made up the difference in actual NBA minutes that Jalen has logged. Jalen basically has logged a full season's worth of NBA court time over Alpi.

That's not a "luxury" given to a lot of top draft picks that still turn out to be successful--Most notably from the same draft. Cade Cunningham. Cade also only played college ball and didn't take the "pro-ready" route of going to the Gleauge Ignite. Cade came into a terrible situation and has arguably had it worse than Jalen. His team didn't even have a winning record until THIS season. He's on his 3rd head coach. He has way more responsibility to run that team and score. Yet in his first playoff appearance he didn't disappear.

He shouldn't have been handed the reigns, but I'm not a fan of how he was handled this year. Yet still...In four years if he's vastly underperforming I'm not going to put in on anyone but Reed.