I remember watching one game where Green looked amazing. He was abusing his defender with turnaround jumpers in the post and other nice little moves. It is easy to only remember moments like this.
Yet I also remember games where he tried essentially the same move and missed horribly or, as he did tonight, lost the ball in a double team.
It is like people who remember Melo's lucky game 2 while forgetting that the chucks he hit in game 2 where many of the same inefficient shots that he missed in the other games.
I am not going to pretend that I can forecast Green's game. But I am aware of how easy it is to remember only a player's good moments or only their bad moments, depending upon what we expect to see from them. This is why stats are a valuable check. Yet this is not enough to forecast since players can vary greatly in efficacy depending upon the system they are playing in. Because of this there is great value in understanding the toolset a player brings to the table. Green seems to be interesting in this respect.
Green is the epitome of a player that needs to be stat-checked because he's so versatile and he plays so smooth.
When he does something right, he looks amazing doing it and it looks like he could repeat the feat 10 out of 10 times. And because he's so versatile, fans will remember him hitting a three, or going up for a huge rebound, or sporadically playing some great defense. So he gives off the impression he's an amazing player if you only remember the things he does right, and that leads to a lot of people around here calling him a potential superstar.
The stats cut through this bias and reveal that he's nothing more than a decent bench player on a contender.
Also, people seem to think that he will continue to improve in all aspects of his game, and that in two or three years from now he will be exactly the same player skill-wise but just better in every aspect, like a Jeff Green +plus+.
That's completely unrealistic for a player that's in his fourth year and who came into the league when he was already 21 years old. There's a saying, and it has a lot of truth to it, that you are what you are by your third year in the league. While that's not always true if you come into the league without getting many minutes, Jeff Green came into this league as a starter and has played tons of minutes. Further, he hasn't really shown much improvement at all during this time, so there's not even a positive trend in support of such a theory.
Jeff Green WILL get marginally better, but not by much. He'll never be an all-star, and that's for sure. He's just a good bench player, and it's refreshing to see what a real bench player is like after having to deal with the likes of Glen Davis, etc.
I disagree.
He was a stud in Georgetown that came to a seemingly great situation that in all actuality stalled his development. They played him out of position basically the entire time.
He is a player that has all the tools. You can say he isn't efficient because "the stats don't lie," that's fine. But he doesn't need to learn anything new, just hone the skills he already has. That comes with practice and confidence.
I honestly have no idea how things were done in OKC, but it seems like he was basically the leader in the locker room, while all plays were run for Durant/Westbrook. Then, they get other talents like Harden and Ibaka who fill positions of need, and he falls further down the depth chart. Here, he will be the student for the next few years.
This kid (he's only 24-years-old!) will be a very good player in this League, ESPECIALLY if Doc is his coach for the next few years.
PS - I fail to see how his numbers were so poor. In just 23 MPG, he averaged 10 PPG on 48.5% FG, which is pretty good to me when getting familiar with a new team, new role, and not getting plays run for you regularly.
Where they dominating numbers? No. But they weren't all that bad.
Topic: Jeff Green a great and crucial team player. Why don't more people see this? (Read 25015 times)