Different team, different situation......but yes, I can see the irony. Every team, every year is different and requires a different approach. DD
I don't have the data. But my guess is that if Sengun has the ball in the low post with only one defender, of course he will shoot and it should be quite efficient. The problem is most of the time it's not 1 on 1. You keep saying that defenses scheme to stop Jalen. You don't think defenses also scheme to stop Alpi? Is Jalen our only offensive threat? If defenses are double teaming Alpi down low, then they can't blitz Jalen in the perimeter. When Sengun is being crowded inside, why does Jalen not take advantage of it? The answer is pretty simple to me. Jalen is not good enough at outside shooting, including 3pt and midrange. From my observation, the "scheme" they use against Jalen isn't blitzing. It's shading. They keep a guy behind Jalen's man. So even if Jalen can get past his man, he immediately faces the other guy. And if Jalen is not having a hot shooting game, he is being very loosely double teamed. He still has space to shoot. If he keeps missing or is scared to shoot, then the defense works. Basically, defenses can't double team Jalen and Alpi at the same time. If both of them can score efficiently 1 on 1, Jalen from the outside, Alpi from the inside, they will have to pick the poison. The guy who is being doubled should make the right pass. I have more confidence in Sengun doing that than Jalen. So that's that.
Against GSW, Sengun was being dared to shoot from the FT line. If he can’t hit that shot more than 50% without hesitation, he will not be a great player. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’ll fix that part of his game next year. We should concentrate on moving FVV and Jalen for shooters that also play D. We don’t have to use the picks for absolute superstars just for guys that fit with Amen and Sengun. Jabari already fits. Another backcourt player that’s ready (Cam and Reed should be backups at best next year). Another frontcourt player that’s can shoot 3 pters. Backcourt players that work would be Reeves, Derek White, Herro (poor defense), Coby White, Keon Ellis. Frontcourt players John Collins, Naz Reid, Jerami Grant. There are others, but the guys I mentioned are all gettable in my opinion.
Are the Cavs a contender? They just got stuffed in the second round. Are the Celtics a contender? They need to win 3 games to not lose in the second round? You act like losing early in the playoffs means the team doesnt matter and we can just tank games in the regular season lol. You should still earn minutes because we are trying to build a winning culture. If a guy cant hack it he should sit on the bench. Aside from FVV, Ime has done a good job making players earn their minutes.
Back to Jalen, this year has been an improvement from him however he hasnt improved in the most critical parts of his game. I. Jalen's improvement (all of this is in the regular season): A. Better consistency, Jalen was a lot more dependable and won lots more games for the team compared to season prior, basically if the team was a scrub highly likely Jalen will go off and if the team is good there was IMO 30% chance Jalen will go off. Much improved from last season when Jalen was bad 80% of the time and then went super saiyan in March. B. Better defense, Jalen became a really good defender and much better than FVV imo. C. fts and 3s. Jalen improved his ft becoming an an elite 80%+ ft shooter and also improved his 3 pt to league average (35%). Yes its literally a 1% improvement but given the dude takes 8 threes a game thats significant. D. Gravity. Jalen became a gravity magnet this year, he always gets defended by the best defender and is able to draw more attention than before. This actually helps the team passively whether he is hot or cold. II. Now where did Jalen still not improve? A. Decision Making. Jalen seems to have mediocre bball IQ. He isn't like "special" ala JR Smith or Tari Eason, but it looks like he doesnt have good feel for the game. He doesnt have "it". A lot of times when he has the ball when he has to choose between shooting, driving or passing, he makes the wrong choice. Like the team has a 9 pt lead, he takes a step back 3, misses and then the opponent grabs the reb and scores in transition. Or he tries to drive in a close game, gets hit with no call and losses the ball or something. You can also see this in his playmaking, dude is really bad at reading the floor. Lots of times he gives the ball at the wrong time, like he does a pick and roll he shoves the ball to Sengun before the dude even starts rolling. Or like when throws the ball to FVV at the end of the shot clock like its a live grenade. While he is able to have gravity, lots of time he cant capitalize on it. B. Doesnt know his strength and weakness. Now this may feed into point A, but Jalen in Y4 still doesnt know what his bread and butter is. If you look at his shooting splits, dude is a decent catch and shoot 3 pt shooter and an elite finisher. So what does he do? Step back 3s and mid range Js where he is converting at 13% lol. Dude is an athletic beast and durable af, he should be inviting contact and trying to be a ft merchant. Nobody can stop him from going to the rim unless they foul him, problem is he is too thin and gets shoved out of the way without too much contact. C. Weak handles, weak core strength. Again this is related to point B. Jalen thinks he is Kobe, but he is more like Zach Lavine. He should be working on his drives, handles and core strength. Like he is an 81% ft shooter, why is he only taking 4 ftas? Thats a joke. The reason for that is he thinks he is Mr. Finesse and does step back Js every other play when the reality is he doesnt have that kind of touch and skill. D. Weak mental strength. I feel bad writing this cuz Jalen is a good kid, but the guy is easily affected by all the negativity and doubters. We can see this in the playoffs, he knows he is doing a bad job but instead of rising up he folded. He turned off his socmed to avoid the doubters but instead of locking in he just got more distracted. Conclusion: Jalen Y4 for me is a mixed bag. Yes there has been improvement, but the critical areas that would level up his game the most has seen little to no improvement. It's like paretto principle but reversed, Jalen improved on the 80% that impacted 20% but didnt improve on the 20% that impacts 80%. This coming offseason will be critical for him, if I were him its time to make or level up his own development team because just relying on the Rockets team clearly isnt enough. It is obvious he needs a lot of guidance, he needs someone to develop a training plan for him and break down his tape and analyze his game cuz he can't do that by himself.
you don’t need data, it came from both coaches mouths and also players - he was being doubled and blitzed and also when they didn’t they shaded coverage in his direction - that’s a lot of attention for a player that sucks … usually you want that player to take more FGAs I can to back game by game but I know for sure Game 4 Alpi was 2-11 1v1 vs Draymond. Alpi admitted he needed to be better in those situations - if he was kicking the ball out guess what .. our bench wouldn’t have had only 5 FGA in 1 game … we wouldn’t have attempted less than 25 3pt FGA in multiple games this series being doubled up by GS by FGA Kerr could have easily doubled / tripled Alpi in paint if he was afraid of him … but he didn’t .. just like teams dare Amen and Alpi to shoot the 3 - GS was content on letting Alpi attempt to beat them in the paint while heavily game planning to stop the player that sucks but should be used in any trade to bring in a All Star / MVP - make it make sense
To be fair, Alp was doubled frequently when Draymond was not guarding him. Yeah, of course Kerr did not feel the need to double ALP with Draymond on him. Donkey is still one of the best post defenders in the L, especially against someone with more of a PF build than C. Did not help that Draymond was getting away with using two hands and pushing ALP either. Jalen was being guarded by scrubs (and Steph) who cannot play defense. Pods? Hield? Big difference, man and reason for the different defensive strategies
doesn’t matter how many scrubs as you say if it’s a double team or they blitzing you to get the ball out your hands - he followed the gameplan and got ball in paint where we had a 4-3 advantage and missed 31 shots in paint one game and 33 in another … Ant was having similar issues til his coach actually made an adjustment and even then he still was having single digit first half’s …. His biggest help was coaching and Randle is playing at a way higher level than Alpi like I said before - JG sucked with the shots he did attempt but he followed Ime orders and got off the ball end of day.. he was the player GS didn’t want to get going or many FGAs .. their plan worked .. and Alpi was missing bunnies vs the smaller players also and he has always struggled with Looney also - common sense is if you shooting under 20% from FT line in that’s not a good shot…
I don't want to give up Amen, Sengun plus picks for the Giannis. Then what are we left with? Jalen, (yeah right oif we want to win), Tari, FVV, Brooks? Cam who is toilet paper. Stupid move
These are good points. GS didn't double Jalen much, they funneled him into Draymond and he was helpless. Curry would stop him straight up sometimes and other times a second player would cheat over for a second and then go back to their man.
Imagine being someone who takes this data seriously and believing Jalen f'n Green has more "gravity" than James Harden Luka Doncic Jayson Tatum Anthony Edwards Trae Young Kevin Durant LMAO! BUT, lets say this data is legit....It probably is....Gravity is mostly measured by a players shooting and driving ability and how defenses react to that player when they have the ball. Jalen is the only player who was in the rotation that could do both at least around an average level. Combine that with his poor passing and bam...gravity... As a defender I'd feel pretty good about helping off my guy to stunt at Jalen when he was driving because I know the likelihood of him finding him and making a good pass is pretty low. If you want to see something that more accurately shows a players value look at the player impact rating. Not perfect, but better than Gravity. This is from the regular season: This is from the playoffs:
Problem is, this isn't 1995 where defense is all just one on one. Every team helps/hedges/etc. so unless you learn how to read defenses/adjust, you're not gonna be able to do much come playoff time.
Yep. People act like the defense against Jalen was legendary and hyperfocused. It wasn't. He was easy to stop one-on-one a lot of the time and shaded some. Very rarely double-teamed, though if you listen to some on this board he was double teamed all the time. It's not hard-watch the replay of his attempts and he is commonly guarded by one player.
playoffs showed that when defenses have a level of preparedness for Houston, unlike the regular season, JG's performance goes down a lot. He is easy to figure out and target because he has mainly one tool, using his quickness to get around and directly go to the rim. Combine that with bad decision making under pressure, we saw what happened. Again it is a problem of skill, not something losing rhythm etc., which was not highlighted during the regular season. It was quite a disappointment for me. i had better expectations for sure.
I've seen enough Jalen's low efficiency and inconsistency in 4 seasons. I wish we can trade Jalen for a good scorer this summer. Stone still does not show much on making good trades. Please dont let us down.
He’s 1% increase in ft% corresponds to 3 more points in the entire season. Hard to call it an improvement. Actually as a shooting guard, he is expected to improve on the number of trips to the line, where he had no improvement. He actually had a career low.
Nothing any of the rest of us would know anything about but I have heard the burden of being a genius is immense. We just can’t comprehend what it’s like to be so much smarter than everyone else. Life must be tough for him.
