I dont get it, how can someone with so much god given talent to be able to make it in the NBA. Must have no work ethic and is probably a lazy guy.
Hopefully he can use this experience in Europe to work on his game. He'll never be an All Star though.
He's just dumber than a bag of rocks. The NBA isn't just about being fast, strong and athletic. Those things help, but there is a reason guys like Gerald Green don't make it and guys like Battier and Chuck Hayes can thrive. You need to be able to understand the complicated offensive and defensive schemes being run in the NBA.
Gerald's a good kid, but he never learned how to play five-on-five basketball. He scored 29 points in his debut in Europe.
Well I hoped he'd stay for a while in Houston but he didn't. Damn he was athletic in hs, jumping of both legs dunking like that. You rarely see that
For most guys -This is what happens when you go straight out of High School. He really never learned the game. Its not a coincidence that Shane and Chuck had 2+ years in College and have had real pro careers and Green has bounced around
Oh this is a real pet peeve of mine. Shane had 2+ years in College because he is a friggin' genius and he wanted to finish his degree. Chuck? What's the hurry? Nobody wanted to draft him anyway. But beyond that, he is again incredibly intelligent and mature. They didn't gain the intelligence and the maturity from staying in college. To the contrary, they stayed in college because they are intelligent and mature. As for Gerald Green, I don't buy that "he'd have been good if he just went to college" crap for a second. He had years in the NBA to acclimate. He even got to play some decent minutes in Boston. But what I'll never understand is how people act like practice doesn't happen. As if NBA teams don't scrimmage and the coaching staff don't mentor and help develop young players. As if there aren't people like John Lucas out there working with these kids for a little change to help them develop their games. College wouldn't have helped Gerald Green. Just like it doesn't seem to have helped Jermaine Taylor. It didn't help Harold Minor. It didn't help Stromile Swift. It didn't help Joe Alexander. And on and on and on and on. Sometimes stupid is just stupid. College can't make you smarter - only more educated (and in my personal experience, doesn't even do a very good job of that). But there was nothing College could offer Green in terms of player development that an NBA teams training staff can't offer as well or better. I simply don't buy it. It's interesting to me that people always want to say "He should have gone to college" but the only superstars I can think of off the top of my head in the last twenty years who did more than a year or two in college was Tim Duncan. Otherwise, all the players who defined this era of basketball - Kobe, Kevin Garnett, Lebron James, Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Tony Parker, Amare Stoudamire, and on and on and on, all came into the league as teenagers with one year or less of college. And what about the Josh Smith's and the J.R. Smiths? These guys aren't exactly geniuses either, but they came straight out of high school and they have developed here. I'm assuming they're tougher mentally than Gerald Green or that Green is just Forest Gump dumb. Point being - if you have the talent, the work ethic, the brains and the will to succeed - the teams have too much invested in you to let you fail. Gerald Green likely would be a failure even if he graduated from College (which, incidentally, he would have only done if they passed him because he's on the basketball team - which they usually do). Has everybody forgotten Jermaine O'Neal? It wasn't until his 5th or 6th season that he started playing like a star. Why was he able to develop from a young, raw talent who was unable to contribute to the Blazers all of those years into one of the premiere big men in the league for some years? Because a.) he kept working to improve and b.) the coaching staff helped develop him. It happens. However, in the case of Gerald Green - he apparently just didn't have it in him to make it in the NBA.
