Words on Jalen Green, Scoring Guards, & the Natural Balance of Archetypes...
23-year-old Jalen Romande Green was the subject of a blockbuster trade this offseason, the Houston Rockets attaching multiple first-round picks and trade filler with the in exchange for the Phoenix Suns 36-year-old All-Star Kevin Durant. Presumably, for Jalen Green to have avoided trade talks, his year-four body of work required to either been analogous to that of any successful starting scoring guard in their fourth season, or a body of work when compared to his prior seasons, illustrated clear offensive growth. Neither option was achieved.
23-years-old, still, is an early age to forgo the future of a healthy, 20ppg, athletic guard. As the number two pick in the draft, sandwiched between two uber-talented, refined prospects, Green, portrayed en masse by draft analysts as “raw”, and unrefined, made his name with grand, distinguished highs. The feats commenced with a commitment to G League’s prospect development arm, Ignite, turning down the NCAA as a whole. Green, 18-years-old, embraced the potential upside and simultaneous unforeseen challenges intertwined with facing post-collegiate, professional competition. Though, with no history of the Ignite program prior to Green, the concept of a pre-draft developmental program within the G League unproven in its efficacy, the efficacy of the G League itself as a development system of the NBA in contention—the endeavor by Green held risks far greater than the preservation of his draft stock.
Still, in July of 2021, Jalen Green was drafted second overall to the Houston Rockets. As the number one high school prospect in the country by ESPN 100, the second-best prospect per 247 sports, subsequently drafted second overall into the NBA, at face value, his tenure with Ignite and G League was a proven success.
Every G League performance by Green featured at least one sensational highlight. One possession his feet linger above ground far longer than the law of physics states one possibly could—the following possession Green tween-tween dribbles into an erratic yet alluring stepback three, reminiscent of the stepback magnate himself, James Harden. Another possession, Green throws a braggadocios right hand dunk to the basket, slamming the rim with utmost authority for a dunk. Cade Cunningham nor Evan Mobley, the first and third overall prospects of the class respectively—the two prospects in which Green’s name was continuously pitted against—couldn’t manufacture the highlights, the fashion of excitement and entertainment that Green brought with his game.
Above all, he’s a scoring guard. Micheal Jordan. Kobe Bryant. James Harden. Anthony Edwards. Dwayne Wade. It’s an archetype of player one watches with adoration and reverence as a youth. Their total embrace to the artistry of scoring—sophisticated, a radicalized form of basketball that embodies the pinnacle of elegance and autocracy, an expression of creativity, brashness, avant-gardism—one that spreads its influence on the next generation and thereafter.
Ignite Jalen Green, in addition to his gratifying, entertaining nature, had a professedly undeniable parallel to his scoring guard forefathers. And as Green was approvingly drafted second overall, it is unquestionable the difficulty there existed in separating the reality of Green as a prospect, and his resemblance to hall-of-famers with every stepback three, crossover pull-up middy, or high-flying dunk.
The prolonged 82-game NBA season, a schedule that in its length exposes all good, great, bad, and abysmal, consequently revealed the full, undistracted composition of Jalen Green. He was marked for a most impressive rookie campaign, citing his presumed advantage of competing in the G League prior to, already familiar with the professional environment, substantiated with productional success. A magnificent three-game Summer League stint reaffirmed expectations, once more Jalen Green etched parallels to the great shooting-guards with silky smooth bump drive turnaround middies, impromptu yet precise stepback threes, and an excess of drawn fouls.
First-team All-Rookie, the single-game scoring record high among rookies with a 41 point performance versus the Atlanta Hawks, and the second rookie to score 30-plus points in five-straight games, the first being 1997 Rookie of the Year (ROY) Allen Iverson—Green’s rookie campaign was chalk full of accolades and accomplishments. Still, a discrepancy persisted between Jalen Green and the constructed ideal of Jalen Green.
The euphoric moments were curbed by the cardinal emotion that plagues all sport fans alike; anxiety. A pattern had developed within his rookie season: With every handful of rapturous performances followed weeks stretch of dreadful, unrecognizable games. The unparalleled experience of instability, volatility. Eventually, one no longer revels in joy, and instead is overwhelmed by the anxiety, ousted by the premonition of inevitable unpleasant showings from Jalen Green. An unfolding paradox. He led all rookies in 30-plus point games yet placed sixth among starting rookies in 15-plus point games, all while ranking second in field-goal attempts.
Indeed, the environment of his first two seasons with the Rockets were decrepit, janky to say the least. The departure of Russell Westbrook and James Harden prior to Green’s arrival (their departure enabled the Rockets organization to “tank” games, positioning the franchise to win the second pick in the lottery and consequently draft him) also entailed a brain drain of meticulously selected front office and coaching talent. Future Hall of Fame Head Coach Mike D’Antoni, innovator of the “7 seconds or less” offense alongside MVP point guard Steve Nash with the Phoenix Suns in the early 2000s, thereafter the orchestrator of the iso-dense offense led by MVP James Harden with the Houston Rockets in the mid 2010s, two all-time, league-altering offenses, abruptly announced his exit following the Rockets capitulation in the 2020 playoffs. General Manager Daryl Morey, heralded for his analytical, technical foresight and keen eye for overlooked talent, correspondingly announced his exit from the Houston Rockets as well. Rafael Stone, then assistant general manager, was promoted—with no prior experience—to general manager. Stone’s first crucial hire was Head Coach. Stone selected Stephen Silas, another individual with no prior experience to their hired role, who in his previous two decades in the NBA functioned as an assistant coach to a multitude of teams, best acknowledged for his offensive insights with the Dallas Mavericks and a young superstar Luka Doncic. Coach Silas then recruited and assembled his own personal cabinet of assistant coaches, 60% of which also had zero prior experience of the role. Upon securing the second overall pick, and subsequently the acquisition of Jalen Green, the roster was further hollowed out of any remaining experienced personnel. A move that can only be interpreted as an aggressive, high-risk scheme to once more tank for a season, staking future success in the ever-eluding lottery odds. Former All-NBA and All-Star point guard John Wall, under contract to the Rockets in Green’s rookie season, was requested to not only to sit out for the season in favor of stacking minutes for Jalen Green, Kevin Porter Jr., and other rookie guard Josh Christopher, but to completely remove himself from the team, disallowed from participating in practices and workouts with the Rockets. In turn, by design, Green was left with a subdued, overtly introverted, Eric Gordon as a mentor. Gordon, a prized scoring guard and defender, did not possess the breadth of expertise requisite to appropriately guide Green in his overbearing quest to lead a franchise to success. To score in volume off the advantages created by others, Gordon understood with unwavering confidence. To initiate, organize, facilitate, and create, not at any point in his career did Gordon achieve expertise in those concepts. That is not to demean Gordon, but to emphasize that Gordon’s function on the court did not entail leadership, but instead to execute. So, it was unfair to designate Gordon the responsibility of mentoring the mind of a 20-year-old second overall pick who was uniquely tasked with such weighty responsibility. And conversely to be assigned with Eric Gordon as his mentor, someone who additionally had no desire to be a part of non-playoff/championship aspiring teams—recognizing his own career mortality at a then 33 years-old—wishing further opportunities to compete for a championship, was and proved to be an unfair circumstance to Jalen Green.
Adding further complications was the presence of presiding feature players Christian Wood and Kevin Porter Jr., two individuals with less than meritorious reputations. Their tenure with the Rockets is spotlighted by mid-game walkouts, off-court altercations, infamous locker room meltdowns, in-house suspensions, and overtly selfish on-court tantrums. Green couldn’t possibly manage these characters, nor be expected to as a rookie. He could only adapt to these personalities, for better or for worse.
Few prospects in interchangeable scenarios with Jalen Green maintain their star outcome. It’d require a player with a personality and commitment to work resilient to an environment composed of abject incompetency and distraction. Further, it’d require a player whose skillset can at its minimum persist through turbulent headwinds, and lead where there’s no true leaders, guiding in absolute crisis. The state of the Houston Rockets was no condition for those who necessitated guard rails along their journey to striking success. No condition for the “raw” ilk of prospect that requires firm, exemplary mentorship concerned with leadership, discipline, intellect, and the cultivation of team culture.
Entering tumultuous conditions as a rookie is an experience non-exclusive to Jalen Green. Bad teams produce poor records, poor records earn best odds to acquiring best talent, best talent drives bad teams out of despair into prosperity. The drive is an interminable pressure steered at the general manager, in which they are bound to design a roster as ambitious and competitive as their best talent. Failure means replacement.
The Detroit Pistons, Charlotte Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, all contemporary examples of franchises fitted with “best talent”, armed with failing executives, and statured by defective rosters. Eventually the failing executives were replaced, defective members of the roster traded and replaced, head coaches replaced, and best talent once more fostered through the draft. All efforts to align the franchise with the ambitions and ability of their premier best talent.
In the 2021 draft, following the Rockets selecting Jalen Green second overall, general manager Rafael Stone in an aggressive pursuit, relinquishing multiple (protected) first-round picks, acquired the rights to Alperen Sengun at 16th overall from the Oklahoma City Thunder. Unknown at draft night, Sengun, likewise to top picks Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, was a best talent. An extraordinary privilege extended to Jalen Green, the benefits to gain sharing the beginning of his career with another high talent that furthermore plays at the frontcourt, enabling the potential for a degree of chemistry and firepower that could serve in due time as the foundation to a championship team.
Sengun likewise experienced the incompetencies and dramas as Green were exposed to, though hindsight would suggest Sengun benefited by head coach Silas relegating him to limited minutes off the bench—whereas Green fronted all good, bad, and ugly.
Sengun prior to entering the NBA played three years of professional basketball in the Turkey Basketball Super League (T-BSL) with the Bandirma Kirmizi at 16-years-old, Teksut Bandirma at 17, and Besiktas Icrypex at 18-years-old, each season marking a progression in competition and an increase of responsibilities, and in triumph earned league MVP in his final season, becoming the youngest in league history to win the award. His Turkish accolades and hence draft acclaim were owed to extraordinary offensive talent, with emphasis to his aptitude for playmaking, a rarity of his position at center.
The divergence in fate between Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun—Sengun earning an All-Star nod, glorified as the face of the Rockets franchise, while Green becomes the defining bargaining chip for a near 37-year-old Kevin Durant—lies in the misconception of Green, the effect of an over fixation with innate talent, and the disregard for the intrinsic value of mastery in the intellectual and bodily fundamentals.
Contradictory it is for Jalen Green, master of exhaustingly intricate shooting sequences—side-step middies and threes, double stepbacks, tween-tween pull-ups—to be labeled “raw”. Raw is to be unrefined, rough around the edges, prone to involuntary errors, yet explosively effective in specific conditions. It is a label predominantly assigned to athletes whose sole weapon is athleticism. Green indeed is an elite, top-percentile athlete, but invariably accompanying his athleticism, tracing back to his AAU days, was his tireless shotmaking. Raw suggests an absence of experience, that with repetitions, both in practice and in-game, the player develops to a satisfactory, possibly proficient manner of ability. Green was not a raw prospect. Green was an inconsistent prospect.
Physically, mentally, the process of sustained improvement, development, even as theory, is wondrously mysterious and obscure, it’s nonlinear form the only fundamental truth. Practice a known requisite, of course. Yet every player practices. Josh Hart, New York Knick’s purported Swiss army knife, was noted by star teammate Jalen Brunson for his concerted efforts this past offseason honing his prominently dull jumper. Following a heart wrenching seven-game series loss to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Semi-Final Playoffs, Hart, in his efforts to drastically improve his shooting, professed his own transfiguration from indispensable regular season asset to hemorrhaging postseason liability, as calculating defenses brazenly exposed his inability and apprehension to shoot threes. And ensuing his devoted offseason, preseason, even in-season efforts, Hart finished the regular season still shooting far below league average. Defenses remained contempt to granting him wide open threes.
How many offseasons of relentless efforts would it take Hart to gain a respectable jumper? Upon attaining a respectable jumper, could Hart maintain it beyond a single season? 39.6% 3pt Hart shot his rookie year, never to achieve such efficiency again in his subsequent 7 seasons. Hart, his trainer, his teammates, nor his coaches could, if questioned, provide an accurate answer, for there is no system guaranteeing the outlook of one’s future. The fruits of labor are nonguaranteed in the NBA. C’est la vie.
Green reforming his deficiencies is likewise, nonguaranteed. Prominent deficiencies, three-point shooting efficiency and half-court rim efficiency to name, are two incredulously difficult skills to markedly improve upon and further sustain at great volumes. It is not as though Green is not a strong perimeter scorer or rim finisher entirely. Dating back to his rookie season, Green consistently features an ostensibly watershed stretch of high scoring, efficient-laden performances. Rockets fans harken back to his 15-game stretch in March of 2024, in which Green averaged 27.7 points per game, shooting 40.8% 3pt on a whopping 9.5 attempts, masterfully leading the Rockets to a much needed 13-2 record as they desperately fought for play-in seeding. Compared to the 59 games prior to his March takeover, Green was averaging a mere 17.9 points shooting 31.2% 3pt on 6.7 attempts, while the mean efficiency amongst players to attempt six or more threes per game (minimum 50 games played) sat at 37.9% 3pt. An insurgence in scoring by a third-year former second-overall pick is assuredly attributed to an imminent approach to proficiency. An approach that further, given its arrival at the close of the season, is expected to sustain and advance through the forthcoming seasons. Instead, Green his fourth year returned to the shooting/efficiency splits of the past, the imminent approach to proficiency derailed. Once more, there was a feature stretch of performances from Green; 25 games from Thanksgiving Day to the closing days of January, averaging 23.8 points shooting 40.9% 3pt on 7.9 attempts. The season in its entirety paralleled the previous seasons he was expected by all to progress from.
There is no indicative evidence suggesting Green escapes from his consistency of inconsistencies. Only the presumption that with his aging comes maturity, and with maturity brings stability, and stability welcomes improvement, and the improvement vacates the chasms of his game.
The disregard for the intrinsic value of proficiency in the fundamentals within scouting. In a context wherein teams feature players 6’10, 7’0 and beyond, capable of obscuring paths and angles to the basket by way of sheer size, a fundamental ability requisite of a player inferior in stature, for instance, is scoring at extended distances from the basket; shooting. The fundamentals are the abilities that first make use of one’s talents, then anthropometric strengths, and finally the countermeasures to one’s anthropometric weaknesses. They’re then further refined, potentially reorganized, tailored to the player’s archetype/role. Brooklyn Net Michael Porter Jr. and once-more Houston Rocket Clint Capela, sharing a height of 6’10, own a distinct list of fundamental abilities despite their similarity in stature, as their on-court talents are nearly inverse to each other.
Speed, agility, and space creation, hallmark talents of Jalen Green, complemented with a score first mentality, fit the archetype that of a scoring guard. The creativity and doggedness in approach great scoring guards accumulate points en masse fundamentally requires resilient handle and body strength—repeatedly navigating through waves of defenders distinctive in size and approach, all targeting the ball, one’s body, the spot they anticipate one heading to, a combination of two, potentially all three, managed entirely in a high pace, omnidirectional environment—the pressures incessantly befalling one to yield turnover demands indomitable control over the body and its extension thereof. Talent in solitude floats Green’s scoring production above water—his talent the source of periodic 25, 30, 40-plus point performances—a life raft sheltering him from the ocean depths of “expendable fill-in rotation player”, the single-digit, sub-fifteen point games act as mighty currents, its subsequent waves challenging the integrity of the life raft and consequently Green.
The fundamentals are inescapable for the heights Green envisioned to reach. The NBA surely isn’t marketed as a contact sport—major media outlets at every opportunity share their distaste for the present level of physicality and policing thereof, harkening back to the blatant assaults by defenders of the 80s and 90s that were masqueraded as tough defense—though todays leading scorers all boast an unwavering, outright dominant and abrasive style of offense anchored in brute strength. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s scoring preeminence is repeatedly underscored by his colossal shoulder strength, strength that unlocks space creation with heavy shoulder bumps into stepback jumpers or open drives to the rim. Luka Doncic dictates spaces with uncanny denseness of his body, free to displace defenders at will, inversely a fixed being grounded to floor as defenders futilely impose their figure unto him. Embiid, by nature of being an athletic, seven-foot, 280-lb big, an everlasting rim creation threat, sheds smaller defenders with ease, while often overwhelming the bigs comparable to his size.
With emphasis to the ilk of scoring guard that is Jalen Green, a class of scoring guard that leads with speed and bounce—Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards contemporary examples of its pinnacle—experiences narrow success devoid of strength creation. The force exerted to accomplish the consistency, efficiency, and volume of an Edwards or Mitchell requires a body that sustains and surmounts. The burden of responsibility for Edwards, Mitchell, as the go-to scorer for an offense whilst being one of the shortest/smallest players on the floor, bumped, shoved, swarmed, hacked—efficiency is not given through strength, it’s the quality of resilience that is earned instead.
A player’s regular season is first evaluated by their scoring efficiency, then scoring volume. High scoring averages achieved on inefficient splits can be construed as stat-padding or an embodiment of “empty calorie” scoring production. Both narratives devalue and diminish the value proposition that ultimately attracts volume scorers.
The playoffs, however, are evaluated with scoring volume taking precedence, then scoring efficiency. The playoffs, a postseason tournament comprised of several rounds of best-of-seven series, directly challenges the limits of a team’s strengths and weaknesses through its win-or-go-home, high-leverage, antagonistic structure. The schedule condenses from a certain 82-game, around-the-country, play on the fly blitz to a concise, yet uncertain limited game series, the foreseeable future fixed exclusively against one team. The playoff structure enables refinement and game planning specific to the sole opponent, in contrast to the various teams scheduled through a two-week block within the regular season, for instance. Defenses are given the advantage of familiarity, intimacy, and repetition—the sharpest defenses can transfigure the most potent, precise regular season offenses into sluggish, defective nonfactors. Accordingly, dare say inevitably, rises amidst the postseason a great credence to the quality of resilience. Contrasting Jalen Green’s first playoff series to teammate Alperen Sengun’s—staggeringly inefficient in their seven-game first-round series loss versus the Golden State Warriors—Sengun demonstrated, above all, an ability to put up shots in conditions where defenses had thrown the kitchen sink at him. By no means was Sengun efficient, but as Green, Houston Rockets regular season leading scorer, was effectively shut down from even attempting to create any avenue of offense, let alone his likewise efficiency woes, Sengun acted as the sole shot creator on the team.
The Warriors, enabled by the NBA’s openly lenient officiating throughout the playoffs, and further encouraged by former defensive player of the year and future hall-of-famer Draymond Green, who has garnered a reputation for reckless, hard-nosed, physical, cunning defending, designed a gameplan that challenged Green to score against waves of ball pressure, wagering his offense would completely collapse against the physical toll. He did.
The form of great players consists of a natural balance. Where there is lack in one direction there is an abundance in the approximate opposite, the balance confidently tilted to the direction that of abundance. And within this natural balance there consists further measures of talents and skillsets on speculative balance scales, illustrating which approximate opposites are imbalanced or offset to one another—all amounting to the overall natural balance. Natural balance, observed at the surface level, is a primary shot creator with poor defensive efficacy, for instance. Simply, an offensive asset and defensive liability. Luka Doncic fits this illustration, and the extent to which he produces and delivers offense as a primary shot creator comfortably outweighs his profile as a defensive liability. This balance generates positive return on investment, the minutes, usage, and sovereignty extended unto him representing the investment, regular and postseason success representing the return.
The balancing deepens, in which the particulars are measured, delineating a player archetypes distinct form. Doncic, a shot creator: His form illustrates the balance between wizardly technical ability (shooting, dribbling, passing), and the pronounced absence of explosive athleticism (first-step, twitch, running speed, jumping power). It is a form that generates scoring advantages by precise technical execution, recurrently exploiting whatever slight gaps yielded to him. Juxtaposed to fellow shot creator Ja Morant, who instead harnesses his superfluity of explosive athleticism to generate interior scoring advantages, in which offsets his subpar perimeter shooting proficiency. Morant’s form generates scoring advantage through sheer athletic prowess—to outspeed, outjump—wagering his physical peak will surmount that of his defenders.
The scoring guard archetype is an imbalance tipped expressively towards technical scoring proficiency against one’s comparatively scarce playmaking talent. Donovan Mitchell and Anthony Edwards as examples once more: Mitchell, one of a few players in NBA history to score 70 points, and Edwards, one of five players to cash in over 300 three-pointers in a single season. Neither have an accolade or accomplishment concerning assists that rivals their respective scoring achievements. Green follows in those footsteps. And thus, without playmaking as an additional arm as a scoring guard, his contributions to offenses archetypically founded in scoring, the margin for inefficient, inconsistent, low-tally scoring are rather thin. A thin margin fully realized when additionally accounting for the scoring guard archetypically falling into the player bucket of “defensive liability”.
To offset negligible if not detrimental defensive impact, in addition to bolstering negligible to incrementally positive playmaking impact, top percentile scoring creation, efficiency, volume, becomes requisite of a starting scoring guard. Otherwise, as the league has demonstrated over the past three years, the scoring guard is considered expendable.
2025:
Utah Jazz dealt 26-year-old Collin Sexton for a second-round pick and trade-filler contract-expiring rapidly declining 30-year-old Jusuf Nurkic.
The rebuilding Portland Trailblazers exchanged 25-year-old Anfernee Simons scoring guard for 34-year-old point guard Jrue Holiday.
Closing his first season as Clippers starter, achieving his best season with the organization if not of his career, a most-improved-player finalist, scoring guard Norman Powell was subsequently dealt for power forward John Collins.
2023:
The Golden State Warriors targeted and acquired 38-year-old point guard Chris Paul to deal 23-year-old scoring guard Jordan Poole, attaching a first-round pick and additional assets to Poole to finalize the deal for Paul.
Now, it is 23-year-old Jalen Green exchanged for 37-year-old Kevin Durant. Though the foreseeable upside was great, the tandem of athleticism and shotmaking promising offensive abundance, in practice, his surmounting approximate-opposites dragged the scale into a balance illustrating inconsistency and setbacks, approximate-opposites to his offensive talents too great to overcome under the responsibility of a franchise player. The allure of Green will always spur hope and a discipline of faith in those devoted to the potential of a superstar future. Entering his 5th year, now a veteran to the game, expected to lead, guide, and prepare incoming rookie talents, not owing to being the former number-two pick, but for the 300-plus games played, the journey hitherto, as a starter, a leading scorer, and the valleys of those peaks that influenced the breakup from the Houston Rockets. Therein blossoms opportunity to rebalance his form, to trench the existing, failing habits, to supplant those with the principle, structurally critical fundamentals, to redefine his character at scoring guard. It is a massive undertaking, to delve into the unfamiliar, likely to incur error upon error, the threat of sacrificing the parts that presently bring one success, whilst fulfilling the expectations placed upon oneself, by teammates, by franchise, by fans. And as time passes, the form solidifies, to reform the valleys amidst the peaks no longer feasible, and instead are refined, as one finally accepts the maximum of their contributions to stave off the depths of the turbulent valleys.