Jalen Green's Star Leap, Houston Rockets' Play-In Push [Sam Vecenie]

This is the best Rockets content going right now. Sam and his partner in the video know what they are talking about.

 

Hope he keeps it up. Haven't followed the team as hard past couple of seasons and posters say he usually surges late-year. Hopefully he maintains this new level consistently.


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Generally I’m still blown away that nba players are actually making decisions in such tiny fractions of a second that make the difference between a winning play and not. If it is actually a decision and not reflexive (based on repetition/habit forming) then it’s absolutely incredible that Jalen learned it, understood it, and is putting it into practice regularly and with success, in just a few months time. I really hope we see him retain the learning (or even reflex) to start next season. That’ll decide whether he’s a star or not and subsequently if we tether the franchise to him or not.

For Amen, I’m not convinced that the role of the big is good for him or the rockets long term. I think we start to get the same defense adjustments that the rockets got when Westbrook was in the role for us and started to become ineffective (either right before, and definitely during the bubble). Just develop Amen as the ball handler and help him increase his 3pt%.

 

Really nice, balanced dive into Amen and Green's games recently with play breakdowns. Recommended listen.

 

More posters should watch this breakdown

 

Sam loves the rockets. He’s been pumping up the rockets for a while now.

 

A lot of people here get defensive when strength of schedule is mentioned - and Sam harps on it a lot. But all you can do is win the games in front of you.

 

Very good overall. I think they undersold his defense.

 

many good points made.

Comparing Amen to Draymond (at the end) is something that I noticed, too. Udoka liked Amen from the beginning, even though he looked pretty bad, he stuck with him, put him in this interesting role that nobody expected, and it is paying off handsomely.

I also liked Bryce’s comment that Green’s effort and intensity goes UP when his offense is rolling. I’ve noticed it too. Some high-usage players would take possessions off to catch their breath, Green seems to get energized.

Also, kudos for showing a box-out and a screen-dodge by Jalen. People focus too much on whether he makes baskets or not, but for 2years+ this kid was probably the worst in the NBA in terms of this type of fundamental things, was really detrimental for my blood pressure to watch his ballerina act. Now there is progress, good thing they highlighted it.

One thing that I disagree with many of these commentators is that, see, somehow Jalen’s decision-making is getting better. That’s not what’s happening, he always was pretty good at reading the play, that was never a weakness. The reason he got reputation as a chucker and ball hog is 1. he was forced-fed by the Silas regime to make plays, 2. Defenses were giving him space to shoot because his percentages were bad. I personally never had issues with Jalen’s decision-making on Offense. The issue on offense was always that he wasn’t converting at a high rate. He’s not taking easier shots now, he’s just making them.

 

Keep in mind that we only see the games. The coaching staff (Udoka in particular) also see the practices, the workouts, the film sessions. They have a much better idea of whether someone is qualified to be a starter or to get valuable rotation minutes than we fans ever will. We saw Jalen sucking game after game, and Amen, too, and lots of fans thought they didn't deserve that court time. Udoka knew that they did, and he rightly assumed both would come around with sufficient reps. Props to him for not caving to public pressure.

 

Overall, I agree with a lot of Vecenie's takes. I think he underestimates how much Tari, Sengun, and Cam being out means. I'd rather have SGA than those three (mostly for playoffs), but the Rockets missing those three definitely offsets a lot of SGA's value in the regular season.

 

I think coaches have a much greater ability to assess what will happen and nuances of the game plan. That said, Udoka pulling Green often in the 4th shows that fans are capable of properly assessing that Green was not playing well and that in those games was not the best choice to play at that time. Green was playing for long term wins as Udoka was trying to develop him. Rockets are reaping those rewards now even if playing time was not based solely on accountability (i.e., past results and not predictive)

 

Jalen doesn't have issues making basic reads like with roll men in a one situation.

Green's main problem has always been he doesn't know when he completed his job as in collapsing the defenses and getting gravity to create open teammates. He often accomplishes this task but rather best the double team himself sometimes.

The last two possessions against the Jazz you saw this issue. Green was drawing multiple defenders as soon as he touched the ball and tried to hold on to it thinking he can put run the double and delayed the open read to where FVV had to make a running bank shot to seal the win.

These are easily correctable things though. This is simply just an issue of Green just thinking he has to do more than he has to. Just find the open teammates as soon as you attract a double.

 

This was great work.

the main thing I disagreed with was his comment on the spacing around the FT line.

does Alpi operate around the FT line sometimes? Yes. Is it all the time or will they spacing go away with Alpi back? Absolutely not.

the reality is just Jalen didn’t get a chance to attack that spacing a lot… because he sucked so Ime stopped letting him. Instead we saw FVV-Alpi spam PnR in that same spacing over and over. Fairly effectively. And Jalen relegated to jsit standing on the wing or in the corner.

some will point to that as bad by Ime but the reality is Jalen was just trash. He had opportunities early in the year across a variety of lineups and sucked. Then they tried getting him going in first quarters and that sucked.

credit to Jalen for being awesome now.

in my view it wasn’t as overnight as it seemed. First Ime broke him down and said idgsf about offense. Defend, rebound, take in the game and provide value regardless of scoring. That started happening. Then his finishing had a leap for a couple weeks. For whatever reason then he had a little 1-2 week reversion on that, I think he refocused - or Ime made him - on the rebounding and defense and then it came back along with better shooting.

finally someone has to take Alpi’s usage and most going to this Jalen makes sense.

 

Like I said before if Alpi returns this season or at the beginning of next season, the next step for Jalen should be FVV/Alpi pnr/dho possessions being transfered over to Green/Alpi pnr/dho possessions. Lets see what we got with the two man game between them.

 

lol we still like Sam now?

 

I'm not gonna listen to his 2 hour podcast but does he really say this? Is there a timestamp? Or is it an old quote? Saying that before this season started is a lot different than saying it yesterday.

 

Starts around the 46:00 mark (as he talks about Miller then eventually brings up taking Miller over the Rockets core guys).

He brings up Miller's last 30 something games as justification, though I looked up Jalen's last 30 something games his rookie year, and they were as good or better IMO (and I didn't think Jalen had *that* great of a rookie year). I don't watch a lot of Miller, so if this take is based on how he plays, that's fair. But based on (advanced) stats, I'm not sure this take makes much sense, especially since Miller is basically the same age as Jalen and Sengun (older than Cam, Jabari, Amen). But I'm a homer, and this is also just a fun basketball discussion they did where it is probably a good thing to get fans of multiple teams talking.