Jalen Green is #9 in Defensive win share this season. He had offensive talents he is trying to harness with his defensive effort. Playing defense weakens legs! Would y’all rather he play matador defense and be an offensive guy or he play elite defense, and be a 3rd option? The Rockets say he works as hard as anyone on the team, he’s not an egomaniac, he plays within the game-plan. But some folks disregard the value of a Jalen Green because they made up their mind 2 years ago. But nope, I would not give up Jalen green for Butler.
Age and injury are two big concerns with Butler, but you start him over Jalen on this team and we are contenders. Butler’s 3pt shooting is not a concern because he still scores efficiently and keeps defenses honest. He scores the same as Jalen on 5 fewer shots per game. Jalen shoots 9 terrible 3s per game while Butler shoots 2, so the low percentage is not as damaging. He’s just a much smarter player.
If he could be an actual GOOD offensive player, i would happily sacrifice his defense. His defensive win shares is also behind james harden and ahead of wemby, so i would take that stat with a massive grain of salt
I look at Alpi and Green, and it seems they flipped from the spot in the draft they were drafted. Alpi is definitely looking like he will be the #1 or 2 guy taken in the whole draft. Green is currently somewhere between 8 to 16 best player taken. The amazing part of Green is he’s a hard worker and he’s a team player; so it makes it more palatable that he’s not looking like the top 2 player of the draft.
I'd rather trade for Herro than Butler. Fits everything you need as perimeter go-to scorer and shooter.
I would agree with you if stone didn't give him that insane contract and we could let him walk or trade him. Green is nowhere near the top 10 in his draft, and if he's the 15h best player in a draft that's likely a fringe back of the rotation player, which is what he's been so far. If jalen was picked 16th he would be looked at same as garuba and josh and would have been off the team already.
There's only a handful of players in the league I would even consider breaking up this young core for. And Jimmy Butler is not one of them.
I guess I’m just seeing Jalen as a piece of the core less and less. This team depends on him to produce quite a bit, and he’s just not doing it consistently. People look at replacing him with a player with less potential as a negative move. But getting efficiency and consistency from that spot would be a major boost to the team.
Jalen Green and Jabari Smith are the two that I'm least attached to out of the young players. The core trio to me is Sengun, Amen, and Tari. Too soon to send Reed Sheppard out so I'd consider him a possible 4th piece of the future core. But if Green and Smith continue to contribute in positive ways then I wouldn't trade them.
I would agree with you wholeheartedly, but with the exception of one caveat. He’s improved his defense by leaps and bounds. I think that Ime is getting Jalen Green right. He forced him to actually play defense. And when a player plays defense, he has to use his legs, hence he isn’t as fresh for jump shooting. As Green calibrates his endurance to meet his defensive intensity, Green will hone his offense to match his talent. I forget if Green is 23 or 22 years old, but is still young, and in a redraft of the 2022 draft, I think Green still goes between 6 and 9. Last year Green’s win share was around Cade Cunningham in the negatives. But in the span of a year he’s up to 16th in his draft class.
This year cade is blowing jalen away though. You have to be fair to cade, while he's been bad so far, he had a coach who did not want to work and actively sabotaged the team so he could get fired and collect his cash. I agree Jalen was improved his defense, but his job is also incredibly easy, because he's the worst defender of the 7 main guys who play so he has the easiest matchups. If you look at win shares, Jalen is 16th but he's played the 2nd most minutes in the class. By WS/48 he's 24th outa the guys who have over 1k minutes, his BPM is also outside of the top 20.
Jalen is putting up the 94th WS in the NBA. Easily the worst of the core 7 guys. But he is putting up the 9th best Defensive Win Share in the NBA. And that makes him the 5th worst defensive player on the Rockets! Kudos to the Rockets that have 5 players in the top 10 in the NBA in DWS. Alpi, Amen, FVV, and Eason have higher DWS than Green. And Jabari and Dillon aren’t too far behind Green. Having a defensive minded team is ample times more exciting than an offense first team. And Green, Alpi, Jabari, Eason, and Thompson aren’t too much all improving their offensive games every day that goes by.
Defensive win shares are very weird. Harden is like 8th and both harden and jalen are above wemby, which is obviously absurd
I completely understand what you are saying. But that win share is qualifying nonetheless. It’s not the tell all stat. For If anyone has followed basketball long enough, we are all too familiar with empty stats. A box load of stats, but a negligible impact on winning games. The way I look at it, if the player is putting up minutes and he is positively impacting his team, it means he is carrying the weight. Green used to be the poster boy for empty stats his first 2 seasons - all showboat and no impact on winning. Now this season, I’ve seen Green be stuck on opposing players, denying them the ball all together. His feet are continuously moving and his arms are swinging. He is marking it utterly disruptive on opposing players to light him up offensively. I do think Green is offensively skilled that he will be able to bring offense into the fold to accentuate his defensive efforts; but I add eventually. By the way, if I did not anticipate Green could improve his offense I would 100% agree with you the Rockets severely overpaid for his services. But I saw a very special athletic ability that if harnessed correctly will be remarkably, and worth much more than the contract extension he just recently signed.
Win shares are dependent on a team having wins. Terrible defensive players can get a disproportionate allocation of win shares compared to a good defensive player on a team that’s getting no wins. It’s pretty close to a useless stat. It’s only relative internally. How much is a player contributing relative to his teammates.
The problem is this is all hypothetical. We have never seen him ACTUALLY produce at a starting level. This season he has underproduced his 12 mil, forget his 20% of the cap contract that starts next season. Our offense improves a little and our defense improves massively when he's on the bench, so to say he's carrying his weight is not a fair statement thus far. There are probably 200 players in the nba who if they played "consistently" would be stars or superstars, but that consistency is what makes the stars, stars. If you like basketballreference game score, jalen in 20 games has: 3 games of 20+ 7 games of 10-19 10 games below 10, including 2 games below 1 Shai for example has: 12 games of 20+ 6 games of 10-19 17 of his 18 games are 15+ Just for fun Jokic, has 0 games below 20
Our 3 best players are mediocre to horrible shooters (Eason, Sengun, Thompson). Our focus should be finding elite shooters. Gotta pass on Jimmy at this point.
