Jalen’s always been pretty good on the fast break—he seems more than happy to give the ball up to a streaking teammate or throw them oops of variable quality Contrast this with Dillon Brooks who almost always would rather just go to the rim himself, regardless of who’s running alongside him, and I can’t help but disagree with the notion that Jalen has ever been a “selfish” player. Lacking court vision, perhaps, but not SELFISH, and as his confidence grows and his shooting hopefully improves, his assist numbers will rise as well (This post was meant to be a reply to another post that I can now no longer find…)
Harden was close to the Finals around the same age....just showing the gap there.....and the gap in the development department and FO.
I don’t think Jalen is or will ever be anywhere as good overall as James Harden was for us. But if he can become the best version of himself all the time, that’s a player that is very, very useful
It is actually interesting, Russell Westbrook was the 4th pick like Amen Thompson....and Jabari the 3rd pick like a certain Edward Harden. There are some striking parallels and now you got Steven Adams a Thunder relic......Jeff Green even older relic. Houston area is just a much steadier market and can keep their players opposed to OKC but OKC those guys are darn smart.....IMHO. HIstory of Oklahoman players in Houston like Oladipo, Cole Aldrich, or Jeremiah Robinson Earl etc.
Oh yeah! The goal post stay moving. Remember Jalen being the worst player on the team? Where are these posters now
The problem is he's had plenty of games this year where he played well but shot poorly. Issue is posters around here don't believe in good games without efficienc. So everyone hyper focuses on the misses rather than the improvement he's been showing everywhere else all year long. Only a matter of time until jalen plays the same game as last night but without the good shooting and haters will come out and say "see he's terrible, just a fluke." People will continue to ignore everything about jalen except his efficiency, because for some reason that's the only skill in basketball that matters anymore.
That was more to do with the fact that Harden was playing with KD, Russ and Ibaka than him setting the world on fire, have you actually compared their age 21 stats? Harden age 21: 26.7mpg 12.2ppg 43% fg 34% 3p 84% ft 3.1 reb 2.7 ass 1.1 st 0.3 blk 1.3 TOV Harden age 22: 31.4 mpg 16.8ppg 49% fg 39% 3p 84% ft 4.1 reb 3.7 ass 1.1 st 0.2 blk 2.2 TOV Jalen age 21: 31.1 mpg 18.7 ppg 41% fg 32% 3p 80% ft 4.9 reb 3.4 ass 0.7 st 0.3 blk 2.2 TOV Now, Harden's obviously a whole tier above Jalen as both a natural talent and a player, but the gap at that age is nowhere near as huge as y'all are making out.
Let's see how he really plays against a real team, the Wiz..I mean Chi...Ja...B...Thunder! Let's see how he'll play against the Tunder.
jalen's been playing very well hopefully the effort and focus is here to stay he'll still be young , even next season .. so its hard to have too high of expectations.. but , he needs to play with this kind of effort for 82
Very active on defense and shored it up on offense towards the end. A solid NBA caliber game from Jalen. Still wouldn't go into next season with him as the solution at SG.
I generally agree however you can definitely work on your tendon strength, you can probably update yourself on that take. I definitely agree it is unlikely but he is at least aware and well positioned so far compared to former giants. I wasnt trying to actually say he will be healthier for longer than Jalen, he can be here for a 15+ years way healthier than Embiid for example, is my take.
But you would have to agree it’s the most important, right? Even more so when you are your teams 1st or 2nd option. Offensive efficiency is so high in todays game you just can’t afford to put out higher volume, lower efficiency guys regularly and expect good results.
I’m excited to see Jalen improving the second half of the season, and I do think it’s sustainable. He always had the ability and it was always gonna take a half a season for the new coaching to set in. The effort has also improved. I suspect it was a combo of the criticism he’s been hearing and the accountability Ime’s been demanding. but until I see the shooting improve I’m out on Jalen. I hope he keeps playing well, but for me it’s about keeping his value up so he can be moved in a good deal this offseason. If we are building round Amen and Sengun, the rest of our guys have to be shooters.
You're not wrong here, there are many things in basketball that are also important. But efficiency is by far the most important thing. That's how you win games, by being the more efficient team. The more efficient team is the team that wins every time. Every single winning superstar in the history of the game has been an efficient scorer. We can't act like it's "just another thing." Sure, there are other parts of the game. And the Jalen haters love to ignore his drastic improvements in all those other areas. But efficiency is by far the single most important thing for a scorer like Jalen. No matter how much he improves elsewhere, he can't be a star if he can't score efficiently.
