Having someone around Harden wont turn them into Harden. Jabari isnt anything close to Durant. We just wanted him to be a taller less efficient Klay Thompson and he cant do that either. Hes kinda like taller worse Nic Batum. Rangey DeAndre Ayton.
Jabari had the worst game of his career. The whole Rockets team has forgotten how to shoot 3’s the last couple of games. Hope Tari isn’t down for a while as we need his shooting from the perimeter as well. Reed played the best defense I’ve seen him play, except for one stupid gamble that cost us big time momentum wise. I think he deserves to start next game against Sacramento to see if it will give him a confidence boost. He and Amen play well together when Durant isn’t the sole focus. Even though Ime didn’t take the blame, it seems he realizes that Durant only offense isn’t working.
he’s a huge disappointment as a #3 overall pick if Jabari clicked his heels 3 times, he’d end up in a trash can where he belongs
He has a good point. But shouldn't that be the job of the coach to tell the players what they are supposed to work on in the offseason?
I don't disagree with that and think it is his biggest issue. The first night, whatever, everyone has bad shooting nights even Curry...but the 2nd night was a confidence thing. Statistically, he was supposed to make at least THREE of those shots, at least, that he goes on to miss all of them and that you could see him hesitating... Maybe he's a guy that just doesn't react to the pressure of the role well. Like an Andrew Wiggins kind of thing, he's fine being a role player but he was asked to win the game last night and maybe he just buckled under that pressure. I still think this is something that is changeable but its something personal he has to solve. Get a wife and kids or something, meditation, a new pre-game routine, whatever the case. He needs to figure it out if he wants to go to the next level... But I will say here in this thread, lots of fans here would be terrible GMs. People talk about Deni and no doubt this board would have traded 22 year old Deni, hell, 23 year old Deni. They would have been Wizards. At the end of the day Jabari had a bad week and we're judging his entire season on that bad week.
He mentions the coaches do it but the players should ask more questions and tailor their workouts to it. Ime most likely tells the players what to work on, he's the most hands-on off-season coach I've ever heard of in my decades of watching the NBA. But when the summer shows up and Rockets coaches are not physically there, the players own motivations will come into play. "I can practice some jumpers alone but I'll spend money on an elite trainer for my handle" can easily happen. He needs to get his mindset right. It's time to put some pride in improving his shooting. Less confidence in his shooting is important. Be confident during the game but in training and interviews, be realistic. He's not one of the teams best shooters. Holiday, Reed, Durant and Tari are the teams best shooters and he's fallen behind.
This wasn’t just a bad shooting night by Jabari. He has cost us a number of game with his lapses, the pels is one just a couple games back. Bad shooting is one thing and is fixable, he just takes bad shots, gets tunnel vision, butterfingers and demonstrates a very low basketball iq he has been the weakest link all season, and that was supposed to be Sheppard who went from no PT to contributor in just a couple of games right now the odds are very heavily that Jabari will be a non impact ful player given lack of strides already in 4th year
All personal reports about Jabari is that he's completely a selfless player that sacrifices for the team, which I think is true, because despite being the 3rd pick he came in and immediately deferred to Jalen and Sengun, there was never a peep about him being upset about his role or lack of shots or anything, the guy even just took a team friendly deal. The handle thing we talk about, it's super unlikely, people thinking he's going to develop a useful handle just about the same people thinking Amen will get a 3 point shot. Hopeful....coping...not likely. Same thing with his perimeter defense lol, not many guys are elite perimeter defenders at 6'10, you just have guys that are switchable which means they won't get lost in space and can contest that. Jabari does that. Rebounding and overall defense, Jabari plays for that. I know people don't think so, but fans don't pay that much attention to defense. Fans see a tough contested shot made and still go "JABARI GOT SCORED ON!" when they have no idea what we're playing or what the goal of the play was. We do not evaluate this guy honestly first of all because half of the board has some odd hate boner about him while a quarter of that half actually seems to root for him to fail just so they can meme about it. Here's the facts though. JABARI is part of many of our best three man lineups by all metrics. Individual +/- is trash (although Jabari has good on/off too), but 3 man groups is a good metric of a player that is adding something to the team. In fact, if you look at most 3 man lineups with the best Net Rating. BARI is in MOST of them. I think sometimes people obsess so much on his shooting that they ignore every other good thing he does. The coaches don't, the players don't, its why everyone else talks so highly of him, but let him have even an average shooting night and people are moaning about it. But he's been shooting fine for all of this season, his shooting % dipped because he had two horrible terrible all time bad shooting games. If he goes out and continues this bad shooting, then yes, that's a BIG problem, but until it becomes a pattern I'm not going to panic about it.
My gripe with Jabari is that at times he often takes the shot if the ball gets to him, forcing it rather than finding a better shot for others. It’s going to take some time but he needs to learn it’s not always going to be his night and to look for others to score. That self awareness to know when you’re hot or not separates good role players from average ones. I do think it’s warranted to bench Jabari when he isn’t playing within the flow of the game to help him realize this. It’s going to be hard winning games when your 6’11 PF averages 43% from the field (lowest on the team). Unfortunately this is his career average as well and by year 4 if it doesn’t improve it might be who he is. Though that might be a far cry from the next purest shooter since Durant, he does bring other intangibles to help win if he focused on this vs scoring. I hope he realizes that putting up big numbers isn’t the only metric to success.
I'm too lazy to do it right now but you can go to NBA.com and look at lineups, I just posted about this, he's in many of those when you sort by minutes. This isn't a coincidence kind of thing. People unfairly blame him, the first portland game this week is an example of this. People say "He cost us TWO games" no, he didn't cost us that first game when the ENTIRE team shot 22% from three. Not just Jabari, but the entire team did that. Someone could say "Yeah if he shot better we would have won..." sure, it was a close game we lost by 1 point...that means if ANY single player that played shot better we could have won. No one did, including Jabari. I think team stats will back me in this too if people want to get into it, he's NOT been a negative player all year long. He might have been this week, but not the season. People want to see failure with him and are seeing it but I don't think its accurate to say he's the weakest link. If Jabari plays well no one talks about it or this thread is lucky to get any posts, the moment he shoots even averagely everyone trauma dumps about Jabari in this thread. I wish we had Mr. sub .300 from three in Paolo, maybe that's what we deserve lol. He's basically been fine in his role as an 3rd/4th option and has been inconsistent as the 2nd/3rd option once Sengun goes down. That's the reality of it. Once Sengun comes back, he'll probably go back to being fine in his role as a 3/4 option sine he can continue doing his underappreciated things and just score whenever the offense gets around to him. What people are upset at, rightfully so, is that he's not a good primary option. He's not a primary scorer or a secondary scorer, he's just a guy that is on your team that scores. 15ppg, not bad, not great, just a role guy. The expectations were this would be a a player that could score and he just hasn't shown that. But he's not a negative player, this idea that he does nothing at all good on the court is just flat out wrong.
If you search my history of speaking about Jabari, you'll find me saying all these same things. It's not enough anymore. It's like your accountant being honest but sucking at accounting for 3.5 years. Why the hell didn't he improve much in 3.5 years? All the intangibles in the world are not enough to cover for this. He's not flashed the inverse potential where he drops a 30 or 40 piece every month. Doesn't take this long to excel at a basic 3&D role. It's not going to be good enough for him to achieve league average shooting at the end of year 4 (36.6% on 4-5 attempts). He better give us 38% on 6+ attempts season average. Otherwise I'm out on a guy who I've defended since he was drafted.
I think this bad week for Jabari is simply because he's basically been asked to be the 2nd guy and he can't do it. He's being asked because Sengun is out and also because Amen picks and chooses when he decides to attack and contribute offensively, so right now its KD and its...Jabari...and this is not a role he's had for his entire career until this year. Until this year we've never NEEDED Jabari to score, that's what it means to be a 2nd and 3rd option, but since we had Brooks and Jalen he was 4th/5th option quite literally, and he would be that again actually if FVV were playing. So I think the perception around him changes. I guess my point is, this has been Bari's season to prove he could be more than a role player and yes, he's failing at that, no one can really argue at that, but he's still a good role player. I'm really arguing against that. The idea that he's a terrible player that adds nothing to the team, that's what I'm arguing against. We really should treat him as such until proven otherwise, I guess that's the difference, I've stopped expecting him to have huge offensive games. To me, he's the glue guy defensively, the length guy, the guy that (up until last night) usually makes his clutch shots, and the selfless team player guy that gives good effort every night. I've been out on Jabari being anything close to an all-star, its still possible, sometimes players just randomly break out because something clicks, but I wouldn't rely on that happening. Not here at least. Too many guys that we should put ahead of him, we should put Reed's development ahead of him at this point.
I think you're missing my point. I didn't even bring up these two games. I don't care if he fails at being a lead scorer. I never even expected him to take a step up to being more of that this year. He hasn't had a neutral shooting season in his life, why would I foist onto him the expectation of stepping up from something he never stepped into? I'm sounding the alarm because we're 3.5 years into his career and he's never had even an average shooting season while announcing he's one of the teams best shooters. He was 7th in catch and shoot 3PT efficiency on our team last season (or 5th among those taking a decent volume per minute). He's 9th this season (or 6th among those taking a decent volume per minute). That's his best skill. Now he has to catch fire for the rest of the season in order to barely meet expectations. I don't think it's reasonable to say we've given up on efficient catch and shooting from him. It's such a low bar for a 6'11 shooter we've invested 3.5 years in.
