Jalen Green is the Western Conference player of the Week

Exactly….

Rockets Team net ratings during Jalen’s career

22 : -8.3
23 : -8.1
24 : +0.9

No one is saying Jalen’s teammates this season are the 1996 Bulls. But the team is clearly light years better than it was before. It’s a completely different baseline compared to the 2 previous years.

 

Congrats to Jalen. He has played amazingly well the last few weeks. If only he wasn't such a Jekyll and Hyde player. If he played like this or even 50% of this all season we would be in the top 5 in the West.

 

Yes but what you’re not getting is it’s not this season that’s skewed in the data. This season he’s playing with a below average cast with a good coach that has some flaws on offense. This is a good environment to test him in. This is pretty standard.

The last two seasons were forced losing. Nothing was going to make his +\- better than that. Doesn’t matter if you put rookie Kobe Bryant or T-Mac there, they were going to be inefficient checkers with no chance of bringing team defense or offense. That’s not a natural environment and in no way will the stats show a perfectly symmetrical ranking of who’s a better player by ramping their on/off. That’s why they call it noise, this data is distorted as F. No one is going to play their best in that scenario.

 

No I get it.

I’m saying those tweets by Ben Dubose are doing many things. Underplaying how well Jalen played post AS break in his first two years. Which was phenomenal compared to before all star. Underplaying how much better of a team he’s playing on now compared to his first two years. Over playing how much better this year post AS is compared to the other two years. Which again is phenomenal.

When you compare his post all star net ratings to year by year next to the net rating of the team he was playing on this third year isn’t as huge of an improvement as he’s making it out to be. And that’s not me saying he isn’t any better this year than he was in those prior years. He’s clearly better.

Im not part of the “oh we have seen this before” crowd. I’m part of the I hate stats being delivered in a way that is misleading to make a point.

 

Anybody can do it given a green light on a weak team...

 

He has been impressive. I really hope he has turned the corner and (with some delay) taken that "third year leap". Would love to see him and Alpi both play at the top of their potential simultaneously, and for an extended period of time, consistently.

If we could be as good next year as OKC was this year, oh my.

 

I genuinely think we have the potential to be better in all honesty. I prefer our coach and intensity for one. If we can truly integrate the pace with Sengun's game as a cohesive strategy, then there's very few (if any tbh) teams as athletic as ours if we're running Amen, Jalen and Cam together. Most teams would kill to have a guy as athletic as them, I genuinely think we have 2 of the top 10 athletes in the league with Cam not far out of that argument either...

 

The year 3 leap on its own is such a dumb and meaningless “metric” to grade a player by. Players develop at all different rates because of many different reasons. Jalen is still so young and he clearly has elite ability. No idea what his ceiling is but I continue to think patience is the best approach on most of these young guys especially when they’ve all shown enough to merit that.

 

Once the consistency comes, Jalen's going to be a monster.

Year 1: 15 x 20 pt games, 7x 30 pt games, 1 x 40pt game
Year 2: 29 x 20pt games, 12 x 30pt games, 4 x 40pt games
year 3: 21 x 20pt games, 9 x 30pt games, 1 x 40pt game, and 13 games remaining...

Sure, there was regression this year with a massively reduced role. But a "bust" who doesn't shoot well having this for a resume 3 years in bodes well for once the consistency comes. Think about it, he did this playing "badly," what happens once his good games become the norm?

 

Rockets are a -6 when Jalen isn't on the court during a 8-2 stretch. That's like MVP level impact on winning.

 

I simply cannot find any statistical evidence that we play at a higher pace since Sengun got injured (we are playing at a higher pace compared to the start of the season though for some time now).

Rockets pace by month from nba.com:

Jan 100.59
Feb 101.75
Mar 100.5
last 5 games 100.6

Green pace stats:

Jan 101.22
Feb 101.75
Mar 101.19
last 5 games 101.38

One factor is Cam is not playing, so probably these numbers would be slightly higher if Cam were playing as well.

 

I totally understand this sentiment. I am not holding up my hope very high.

But what I keep asking myself is: How is he even able to do what he did (and is doing) in the latter part of each of his three seasons if he doesn't have what it takes to do that?

I mean, this clearly is not just another Linsanity flash in the pan thing that lasted a few weeks. He has done it three times, each time for more than a month. And if he has it, why can't he reproduce the performance earlier in the season?

 

making the shots, which is the most crucial thing, is similar to previous years but he is driving to the rim better, see passes better, more effort on defense, so it is not the same thing. But why does this happen in this time of the year? 3 times is too much of a coincidence.

 

Jalen is playing amazingly well right now. His on/off numbers prove that. It is also true that for a majority of the season, he made everyone worse when he was on the floor. We all hope this is the new and improved Jalen that is here to stay. We will be a great championship contending team going forward with him and Alpi leading the way if this is indeed the new Jalen. The big question is: will he keep this up next season or go back to playing like crap for the first 2/3 of the season again only to turn it on and play well to finish the season again? We need consistency or at least for him to be a net neutral rather than a net negative for the start of next season. Fingers crossed!

 

I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I'm not saying we have already, I'm saying we should in the future. You work with the talent you have, and 3 of our young guys are amongst the fastest and/or highest jumping players in the entire NBA. Both Amen and Jalen could arguably be top 5 in truth. And we also happen to have a big man who's a passing savant (ie, somebody who can get that ball out on them breaks and capitalize.) I genuinely think the long-term strategy should leverage BOTH the athleticism of the guards/wings AND the grind them down in the post game of Sengun. If Jabari cements himself as a solid shooter (especially as a trailer) then I see no reason we couldn't have both an elite fast-break/lightning speed attack and a measured, deliberate half court offense through Sengun. How do you honestly defend both of those styles at the same time whilst also facing a top 10 defense?

 

On defensive rebounds you go for the fast paced guard centric offense of Jalen and Amen pushing it and on inbound passes from opponent makes you play the set half court offense through Sengun. I think that is probably where the ideal balance is.

 

I wasn't objecting to what you were saying. I have seen so many comments saying that the pace has increased after Sengun got injured and that's the main reason that is unlocking green and, I assumed you were saying that as well and just took the opportunity to question that. I agree with what you said overall, just noting that the difficulty in integrating them hard is not sengun slowing the pace down, because that assumption is not true, at least not backed up by the stats. It is a also a curious point for me, the discrepancy between what the stats say and what people see, something that needs an explanation.

Sengun and Amen are guaranteed special players imo. Green is a good candidate to join them. And we have Bari and Tari very high quality support cast. And a wild card in Cam. Good vets in FVV and Adams now. We are on the right track.

 

Yeah I agree actually. To my eyes FVV is actually where the ball slows down usually, Sengun's reaction time is probably the fastest on the team (hence the no look touch passes he does) and he's always had a motor. I think we do slow to a crawl when we focus on the FVV/Alpi 2 man game, but it's not due to Alpi, FVV's a tiny lil dude, his game is predicated on him taking his time in the lane to create his opening through all the screen traffic. Jalen trying to run the same thing had disastrous results as we saw earlier in the season. I think generally the pace will pick up organically as FVV is phased out in favour of Amen/Jalen/Cam in the back court. If I was to hazard a guess I'd say that rather than hindering that progression, Sengun's more likely to facilitate it. Imagine Alpi playing quarterback on the break (either grabbing the board or taking the fast/short pass from Bari/whoever and then looking to make the critical pass) with Amen, Jalen and Cam as receivers leaking out and Jabari coming up behind for the trailing 3? That's money whatever way I look at it.