Amen is 10 points worse than Jabari on defense? Eason is 11 points better than FVV on offense? That's why you can't use this kind of lineup comparison to single out one player's value. It does not tell you the contexts. For example, fit and opposing lineups would contribute to these numbers.
addition by subtraction F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson HOU 15 64 116.5 86.4 30.1 F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - A. Sengun - T. Eason - A. Thompson HOU 17 46 130.9 74.7 56.1 https://www.nba.com/stats/players/a...rters&TeamID=1610612745&dir=A&sort=NET_RATING
This is an intentionally dishonest usage of stats to defend a terrible player. When a single data point says something absurd, it's best to ignore it as a non representative sample. When multiple data points over 4 years day the same or similar things.... that's a completely different situation.
very interesting. That Sengun, Jalen, Dillon Tari Amen lineup was extremely productive. And interesting that the 2nd best lineup just subbed out Bari for Tari. Neither of our best two lineups had FVV in them. Lots of ammo for Fred skeptics like myself.
It's night and day watching real skilled basketball players in the playoffs. Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Williams, etc. These are the guys that have skills and aren't just athletes. Jalen legit has nothing that he can count on right now and no counters. That's why he can get shut down easy.
It tells us that this may be flawed and we need to look a little deeper. Especially since Amen was a part of the two highest rated lineups also.
Amen was also part of the worst lineup. And if you look at the defensive ratings, Amen subbed out Jabari lost 10.8 points on defense. You can't tell me Amen is 11 points worse than Jabari on defense. This kind of lineup comparison is clearly flawed.
Normally you could make that comparison. The thing is Amen replaced Jabari when Jabari was injured. The jabari 5 played the first half of the season, the amen 5 the second half. Since it is a different timeframe, although the names are same on those 5, their performances were not the same. Also, as the season goes on the rockets played a more open style where they scored and conceded more points. so Amen 5's doing worse defensively was more of a coaching choice than player impact.
People here are saying he got better a lot but all I am seeing is still a little improvement and his scoring above all has not gotten better much. He got more versatile, a better defender, a better teammate, a tad, but not a lot overall better like others have.
I'm with you on not pissing away assets just to slightly upgrade from Jalen, But I think we should move on in multiple ways - first we have the draft with several guard options in the lottery. Some very bigtime upside on several of them. Harper, Edgecombe, Johnson, Jakucionis, Fears, Richardson & Demin. Second, Free Agency - Use that MLE to bring in a dude that can produce. Doesn't have to be a superstar, just someone who is consistent. I'm looking at Ty Jerome here. Shooters shoot and he can play both guard spots if necessary - we saw how things went to shiit last season when FVV went down and the team had no alternatve. IF Amen or Shepard aren't ready, you have a backup plan. Sinking more time into Jalen is probably the worst thing Stone can do. It takes minutes from others who need development. Time is the one thing you can't collect - you get what you get and no more, when it expires, so do you. Don't piss it away.
One of the things that affect these lineup numbers is matchup. What do they play against? And tactics on both sides matter too, like you said. These kinds of numbers just don't tell the whole story. But people keep using them to prove the value of a single player's impact, good or bad. BTW, 100 minutes sample size sounds a lot. But it's just 3 games worth of a starter's minutes.
He did improve overall, he shot the best from 3 in his entire career...which isn't difficult to do, so it was still below average for his position....but that counts as improvement. His defense was almost a net zero, which is MASSIVE improvement over his first 2 seasons when he was one of the worst defensive players in the entire league.....but a lot of that was likely surrounding him with quality defensive players and having him be the sole weak link that gets covered by others. Either way, it still counts as improvement because I truly believe that at least some of the improvement was him actually getting better. His TS% was still trash....we can't expect miracles. Overall, he's still the same streaky player he's always been. When he's on a hot streak, he looks like a future star.....then he falls back down to earth and looks like he has no business being on a basketball court. The good is that he had a LOT more hot games this season than previous seasons. The bad is that in nearly half of the games, he was an anchor around the neck of the team dragging them down. I think in the end, the guy simply isn't a starting quality player. He could have some value as a bench guy where you can expand his role when he's hot, and bench him when he's not to mitigate the damage he does to your team....but yeah, still overall not great.
Same thing with the on/off numbers. Typically the off numbers are very small sample size played with highly varying 5s. I never thought they represent impact of a player. Not when green was doing well last year or doing bad this year. His problem is he doesn't make others better and he doesn't have a particularly strong suit for such a player. He also crashed mentally in the playoffs. I am fairly convinced that we cannot develop the current core altogether and my first choice for a change would be jalen green and/or fvv.
One thing I do like about Jalen is that he's very self aware ..... He knows he has to be better. He just hasn't figured out how to be better.
Normally I'd agree with this .... but in this case, because of that $100m at stake, I don't know if it's true or not. They may not be able to move away from him without adding substantial assets. When it comes to assets, they really don't have a whole lot of them - what they do have is what currently appears to be 2-3 high value picks. This year's lottery pick, the 27 Brooklyn swap, the 27 PHX pick & the 2 best of Hou / PHX / Dallas in 2029. None of their own picks are available until 2028 - after which they have all of their own but don't appear to be of high quality if they are a playoff team. Could you accept the cost being one or more of those Brooklyn, Phoenix or Dallas picks being the price to pay just to move off of that contract with little in return? That's a steep price to pay if you ask me. Then again, wasting more time on Jalen is just as steep a price to pay if he's getting minutes over a FA signing, draft pick, Shepard or even Cam. Those likely lottery picks just feel too valuable .... Though a lot of that will depend upon the actual return - is it just a salary dump or do they get value back? KD and or Booker don't feel like value. The timeline and cap implications don't work for me. We may be stuck with him at least another year if the price to move him is .... uncomfortable, and that may not tell us the truth of how they feel.
