Green arrives at two pathways, one narrow and the other wide. The wide pathway offers a financially secure life with plenty of money, women, fame. The narrow pathway offers nothing but hard work, uncertainty and a tiny glimmer of hope to being an NBA superstar. To understand how this goes, we need to understand who he really is... Behind Jalen is 15 years of mostly winning, bad habit reinforcement and countless lost development opportunities. Bad luck piled on bad choices. For Jalen, COVID cancelled his McDonald's All American game, Nike Hoop Summit and Jordan Brand classic appearances. He added to that with a bad decision - in retrospect - turning down Oregon/Memphis/Auburn to join the G League Ignite. The G League Ignite has almost exclusively produced players with seemingly the same issues as Jalen - inconsistency, poor 3PT shooting and a lack of fundamentals. Green, Kuminga, Scoot, Hardy, Beauchamp, Daniels, Cissoko, King, Miller, Todd. Those are all their NBA players. I understand he made this choice because there was more money involved and his family really needed it. Fine. We've talked about this a lot, you will find reports of Jalen working on his game a lot going all the way back to high school. Practiced five hours a day in 6th grade. All the way through to G League coaches, Teammates and NBA coaches, no one seems to have a complaint about Jalen Green. It seems there was a portion of last season where everyone gave up and we've heard reports that he was not serious at practice for a while. But we also heard that as a 19 year old he yelled at Christian Wood for being a bad role model for young players like him. All in all, you must admit the majority of reports about Jalen's work ethic off the court are neutral or positive. So where the F are all these training hours going if he's skinny, his jumper is broken and his handle is not elite? It's clear he worked on random general stuff, which you often see in his videos. A no-fundamentals HS player with a jack of all trades approach to development. All the hours working on midrange and he's 41%. All the hours working on the 3PT shot, only to keep extending the range on his attempts before his % has even stabilized. Unfortunately, whether he worked on his game a lot or not, it has just not come through. It looks like he did a little bit of work on every relevant and irrelevant thing. The result is his game remains heavily dependent on his athleticism without much strength. The result is he has trust in bad shots (aka bad habits). Bad habits that have been ingrained for 15 years now, most people start kicking bad habits in college. He's on the right team, in the right position, with the right teammates. There must be something he learned in these messed up past 4 years. Udoka has given him plenty of coaching, minutes, shots. Jalen now has to come to terms with the fact that he can't make the 2 basic shots a big scoring SG should be able to make: get fouled on drives and make 3pters. These are the brick and mortar of a basic young offense. It's time for Jalen to drop his ego and start working on only these 2 shots and taking only these 2 shots, and keep taking fewer of them till your TS% is above league average. Once we get to that point, we at least have a 15ppg scorer who tries his best on defense most of the time. The team can use a player like that somewhere in the rotation. It's not going to require muscles or skills development. It's just a choice. Jalen's old world is collapsing and he can collapse with it or escape in these final moments. Udoka does not seem interested in forcing better shot selection out of Jalen, so he just needs to do it himself quietly and seriously. It's not clear what he will end up if he takes this path, and that's what inflames the ego up. Uncertainty. The only solution to that is: trust yourself and those worth trusting. My specific prediction is this: whether from the bench or a starter, on this team or another, Jalen Green is going to have the type of post ASB numbers that you hoped to see from him the whole season. All I've seen from him is that he's willing to do what Udoka wants, but doesn't know how to execute it autonomously. I think what will happen is that he will coalesce and allow Udoka to heavily dictate his shot chart. He will see good results from that and start buying into it. Which path will Jalen take this season?
everything will work out eventually with time... this system[Udoka's/Rockets']... or other teams/systems where he could fit in
Nearly every young rookie who has some talent will be at crossroads, it is nothing new. Chapter 6: Should be titled Crossroads and not Redemption.
Can't help but feel this is a 'got ya' thread, considering the only thing Green has proven in the past two years, is he'll bump up his play in the backend of the season when more teams have quit and others are resting for the playoff run. Where's the 'he's terrible, will play several good games to end the year to once again fool people into thinking he's improved, then after another offseason he'll commence season 4 in the NBA just like he has 1, 2 and 3 with zero improvement and we go back to step 1 of the Green experience.' option?
He'd still manage to shoot 1-7 despite going to the line 15 times or so....and score over 30.... At this point push him to the bench and tell him his role is to be a 6th Man, clear and simple. Then the first time in his life, the starting spot would be earned instead of given. He is going to be grateful for it as well. Just do not lollygag....
Whatever happened to Chapter 7: Exit Stage Left? How many Chapter 7's are there? Is this a parallel universe? What's going on??
