Jabari Smith Jr. and Jalen Green can not make wide-open shots from three. Sitting at 7-4. Gotta think it turns around, right?
Surprising FVV is not on the list. Anyway, The numbers are not lying, showing why Jalen and Bari are not playing well with Sengun. Sengun's gravity is not helping them, instead clogging the lane for both to drive. Ime may need to rearrange the minutes and shift one of Sengun or Green more minutes with the bench unit.
None of FVV, Jabari or Jalen are good drivers. Jalen can barely turn corners against set defenses. Until further notice, everyone adapts to the (current) best player on the team.
Right now defenders are backing way off Jalen and Jabari because they know they can’t shoot. That’s what’s clogging the lanes, not Sengun. Meanwhile, Sengun gets swarmed by 2-3 defenders when he has the ball in the post. Unless our perimeter guys learn to hit their wide open shots (wide open due to Alpi’s gravity), there are no adjustments that will make the game any easier for them.
Sign PJ Tucker just for corner threes lol. Jalen's 3-point chart by closest defender is really weird. It's like...if he has too much space/time to think, he screws up or something. https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1630224/shots-dash?Season=2024-25&PerMode=Totals I remember it was similar last season for a long time (and he ended up shooting worse wide open threes (33.5 %) than if the defender was within 4-6 feet (37.2%)), but at the end of the season, he got less terrible at the wide open ones, so the gap wasn't as extreme as it is now.
The FT% is showing signs of improvement, so hopefully the mechanics made a leap and it is just too early in the season to really see it. Please basketball gods let it be so. This Udoka offense certainly doesn't help.
What even is Ben Sullivan doing for this team? I thought he was supposed to be a shooting guru, but everyone so far has gotten worse each year they’ve been here. To extend that , I can’t remember a time the Rockets took a player and made his outside shot better, in the past 20yrs at least. At some point you have to wonder if Ryan Anderson’s contention was correct, that our red court was messing with not only his eyes but everyone’s. The champion winners in the 3pt era have been either yellow (Lakers, Warriors, Nuggets), green (Celtics), blue (Mavs), or black (San Antonio). Meanwhile the red teams like Chicago and Atlanta have largely underwhelmed. The only one that disproves the idea is Toronto, but even that team aren’t they more of a black court than red?
Knew it had to be Jabari after reading the thread title. At this point, rather than taking a shot from 3, he should just chuck the ball off the backboard as hard as he can. He'll still miss the shot, but the defense won't be expecting it and we can use that surprise to our advantage.
Topic not important to me. I dare teams to leave them open all season....not just first 10 How do you like top dunks topic?
I remember Smith having similar problems during the Silas years. But IIRC he seemed to do a bit better when he dribbled the ball a few times before shooting rather than just catch and shoot. And for a while, that's what he did. Nowadays, though, he seems to predominantly attempt catch and shoot 3s, which I guess is what is needed in the offensive scheme. If that's the case, he'll just have to figure it out.
