Chapter 6: Green & Redemption

Did you see the video @fchowd0311 posted of the first game of his rookie season? He's come a LONG way.

The concern that he can't add muscle is gone AFAIC. If he continues that trajectory.

15lbs of pure muscle in a summer is not possible without PED's.

I'm with you though, adding muscle and refining his 3pt shot are keys this summer. Very hard to do those things simultaneously but fingers crossed.

 

Can't remember who it was that was trying to convince me that people who professionally talk about the NBA are probably right more often than the average fan, which is so absurd to me. These guys hit and miss as often as an average Clutchfans poster. They just speak better and prepare better for these discussions than you do, nothing more. No one evaluated them for being good at picking winners and losers, their job interviews were all about how many clicks they can get.

When people complain about overusing and misunderstanding stats, I often feel like Simmons is the poster boy for that. The persona he's chosen is a kind of intelligent guy but really he is a total moron when it comes to advanced stats. What he's doing here is simply saying Green scored 38 and it didn't lead to a win PLUS his advanced stats show that his points didn't move the needle. What he is intentionally or stupidly missing here is that a 2nd year Kobe Bryant would also move the needle 0% on this team so his assessment is not at all telling us if Jalen is a winner or not.

Having said all that, my overall thinking is that no one really follows another team as closely as their own not even analysts. It's not reasonable to expect these guys to understand the context of our past two seasons. It's not reasonable to expect these guys to understand that our PG play has been - not just bad - but all-time bad. I challenge you to find a team that gave two full seasons starting at PG to a player who after the 2 years is still a below average floor general at best and certainly one of the worst starting PG's in the NBA. That situation was forced onto the coach by the GM, and if you can't read between the lines then like Simmons you will shallowly think that this was an "oops" instead of a tanking strategy. I don't think Simmons understands that if you replaced KPJ with even a Corey Joseph we may not win more games but Jalen Green, Jabari Smith and Alperen Sengun would all have had more efficient offensive seasons. Very similar to how much better Wolves and Edwards got replacing a more talented PG (D'Angelo Russell) with a better floor general (Mike Conley). Stone played the tanking game very well, it was invisible to non-Rockets fans.

So what I'm saying is I don't blame them for being this misguided about what's going on with our players. I don't expect them to know. Simmons has enjoyed ******** on the Rockets even in the Harden years for reasons I can't understand. He may not be trying to **** on Green here, but his bias is strong. I wonder where it comes from.

What makes me smile instead of getting annoyed by this is that the young players are just automatically going to improve so much next season. That would have happened this last season but I did not anticipate Stone being the most aggressive tanker in NBA history. Who could have anticipated that? If I had known that's how it's going to be, I would have certainly tempered my expectations about the sophomore jump I was expecting from some of these guys. Instead, we just had to wait one extra season for that natural growth to appear and not be suffocated, but it's there. They're all going to shoot better and they're all going to take less stupid shots next season and people like Simmons will give the credit to the new coach even though the truth is any new coach under an organization that now wants to win and with veteran depth (veterans that want to be here) will achieve this bump in efficiency cause the players had already done their part.

I look forward to this plate of crow we'll throw at his face without much effort. He will change his mind because Jalen is going t be SO good and SO marketable that his bosses will not be happy to let his bias roam free anymore.