Jeff Green Concerns

[Roy H.]

I hate how everything gets blown out of proportion. Jeff Green is not now, nor has he ever been 'mediocre'.

He ranked 94th in the NBA in scoring last year, which I'd say is pretty mediocre.  His PER ranked 158th.  He ranked 100th in points per minute (in his career best year), and his career points per minute would have ranked him 143rd in the NBA last year.

Historically, the guy has been mediocre.  He played very well during the second half of the season, and that's reason for optimism.  However, evaluating his career as a whole up until now, "mediocre" is definitely fair.

[vinnie]

I guess the concern is that for the majority of his career, Green has been a pretty mediocre player statistically, both overall and per-minute.  He hasn't shown a lot of improvement until the latter half of last season.  Those statistics coincide with observational passivity.

In March and April, Green was outstanding.  Is he going to build off of that, or will he regress to the player he's been for his career up to this point?

As usual, Roy nails it. And, as others have said, if Jeff Green is going to be this team's go to guy, then 25-30 wins is probably right.

If Green can build off from the 2nd half of the season, I can definitely see him averaging 25/7/5 next year...

I think the whole Green has been a mediocre player throughout his career is blown out of proportions. He was the third option behind Durant and Westbrook in OKC, and he still averaged around 14 ppg. In Boston, he was behind Pierce/Allen/KG/Rondo...

Last year during the second half of the season, we saw a more aggressive Green and a more confidence Green...
If he can build off that, then I agree with KG...he can and potentially can be a top 5 SF, and with Rondo, that is something to be proud of going forward.

Five players (FIVE) averaged more than 25 points a game last year. If this happens, I guess Jeff Green will become one of the elite players in the NBA.

[hwangjini_1]

I guess the concern is that for the majority of his career, Green has been a pretty mediocre player statistically, both overall and per-minute.  He hasn't shown a lot of improvement until the latter half of last season.  Those statistics coincide with observational passivity.

In March and April, Green was outstanding.  Is he going to build off of that, or will he regress to the player he's been for his career up to this point?

As usual, Roy nails it. And, as others have said, if Jeff Green is going to be this team's go to guy, then 25-30 wins is probably right.

If Green can build off from the 2nd half of the season, I can definitely see him averaging 25/7/5 next year...

I think the whole Green has been a mediocre player throughout his career is blown out of proportions. He was the third option behind Durant and Westbrook in OKC, and he still averaged around 14 ppg. In Boston, he was behind Pierce/Allen/KG/Rondo...

Last year during the second half of the season, we saw a more aggressive Green and a more confidence Green...
If he can build off that, then I agree with KG...he can and potentially can be a top 5 SF, and with Rondo, that is something to be proud of going forward.

well, i suppose stranger things have happened in life.

however, some more context on what we might be able to expect from green might be helpful. no one in the league averaged 25/10 last year.  NO ONE. how close to those numbers are people expecting from green?

as context, five guys averaged over 25/game and eight guys were over 10 rebounds a game last season:
 
- lebron averaged 26.8 pts and 8 rebounds
- melo 28.7 and 6.9
- durant 28.1 and 7.9, and,
- aldridge 21.1 and 9.1

aldridge is not a sf, but it shows what sort of rarified air we are talking about when we say 20+ points and lots of rebounds a night for green.

david lee was the only guy who averaged more than 18 points and 10 rebounds, by the way.

green will probably be the leading scorer for the celtics. but he wont rebound remotely like a top sf in the nba. 

[LooseCannon]

I hate how everything gets blown out of proportion. Jeff Green is not now, nor has he ever been 'mediocre'.

He ranked 94th in the NBA in scoring last year, which I'd say is pretty mediocre. 

If you're going off of PPP on mysynergysports, that's probably not mediocre.  It's probably the best number on the team.  On last year's Celtics, it was better than Pierce, Garnett, Rondo, Sullinger, and Bass.  (I didn't bother checking anyone else.)  Spot-checking a few SFs, it's better than Deng, Iguodala, Gordon Hayward, Nic Batum, or Rudy Gay (by far the worst of the numbers I checked) but not Durant, Chandler Parsons, or Steve Novak.  His overall PPP is the same as Carmelo Anthony.

[Roy H.]

I hate how everything gets blown out of proportion. Jeff Green is not now, nor has he ever been 'mediocre'.

He ranked 94th in the NBA in scoring last year, which I'd say is pretty mediocre. 

If you're going off of PPP on mysynergysports, that's probably not mediocre.  It's probably the best number on the team.  On last year's Celtics, it was better than Pierce, Garnett, Rondo, Sullinger, and Bass.  (I didn't bother checking anyone else.)  Spot-checking a few SFs, it's better than Deng, Iguodala, Gordon Hayward, Nic Batum, or Rudy Gay (by far the worst of the numbers I checked) but not Durant, Chandler Parsons, or Steve Novak.  His overall PPP is the same as Carmelo Anthony.

The inescapable conclusion here, then, is that Steve Novak is better offensively than Carmelo Anthony.

[mmmmm]

I guess the concern is that for the majority of his career, Green has been a pretty mediocre player statistically, both overall and per-minute.  He hasn't shown a lot of improvement until the latter half of last season.  Those statistics coincide with observational passivity.

In March and April, Green was outstanding.  Is he going to build off of that, or will he regress to the player he's been for his career up to this point?

As usual, Roy nails it. And, as others have said, if Jeff Green is going to be this team's go to guy, then 25-30 wins is probably right.

If Green can build off from the 2nd half of the season, I can definitely see him averaging 25/7/5 next year...

I think the whole Green has been a mediocre player throughout his career is blown out of proportions. He was the third option behind Durant and Westbrook in OKC, and he still averaged around 14 ppg. In Boston, he was behind Pierce/Allen/KG/Rondo...

Last year during the second half of the season, we saw a more aggressive Green and a more confidence Green...
If he can build off that, then I agree with KG...he can and potentially can be a top 5 SF, and with Rondo, that is something to be proud of going forward.

well, i suppose stranger things have happened in life.

however, some more context on what we might be able to expect from green might be helpful. no one in the league averaged 25/10 last year.  NO ONE. how close to those numbers are people expecting from green?

as context, five guys averaged over 25/game and eight guys were over 10 rebounds a game last season:
 
- lebron averaged 26.8 pts and 8 rebounds
- melo 28.7 and 6.9
- durant 28.1 and 7.9, and,
- aldridge 21.1 and 9.1

aldridge is not a sf, but it shows what sort of rarified air we are talking about when we say 20+ points and lots of rebounds a night for green.

david lee was the only guy who averaged more than 18 points and 10 rebounds, by the way.

green will probably be the leading scorer for the celtics. but he wont rebound remotely like a top sf in the nba.

Did someone here actually predict 25 & 10 ?

If so, missed that.

The guy you are responding to predicted 25 & 7 -- which is also a wee bit crazy optimistic.   Just not quite as crazy as what you are arguing against.

Not sure why folks are all so bent over it though.

Whatever the numbers, folks are just optimistic that Green will continue to play like he did in the second half last year, when he was finally healthy.  Is that so unreasonable?

Do we have any actual reason to believe Green will regress to playing similar to how he did in OKC when he was clearly third or 4th option?

Or how he played last Fall when he was just coming back from open heart surgery and missing a whole season?

The question certainly can be asked, "Which Jeff Green will we get?"

I would submit that given the varied contexts he played in were all so different, that it is perfectly reasonable to assume the most recent extended sample is the most relevant.

In other words, it is perfectly reasonable, until we get new data indicating otherwise, to assume the most recent trend will continue.

I'm expecting somewhere around 33 mpg, within a couple points above or below 20 per game, and a small handful of rebounds and a couple of assists to go along with great perimeter defense.   I think that's a reasonable expectation until we learn something new and I will be very happy with that level of production.

[LooseCannon]

I hate how everything gets blown out of proportion. Jeff Green is not now, nor has he ever been 'mediocre'.

He ranked 94th in the NBA in scoring last year, which I'd say is pretty mediocre. 

If you're going off of PPP on mysynergysports, that's probably not mediocre.  It's probably the best number on the team.  On last year's Celtics, it was better than Pierce, Garnett, Rondo, Sullinger, and Bass.  (I didn't bother checking anyone else.)  Spot-checking a few SFs, it's better than Deng, Iguodala, Gordon Hayward, Nic Batum, or Rudy Gay (by far the worst of the numbers I checked) but not Durant, Chandler Parsons, or Steve Novak.  His overall PPP is the same as Carmelo Anthony.

The inescapable conclusion here, then, is that Steve Novak is better offensively than Carmelo Anthony.

This is where the value of shot distribution and shot creation comes up.  Steve Novak had 9.4 field goal attempts per 36 minutes last season.  Carmelo Anthony had 21.6.  (Jeff Green had 12.9.)  A shot by Steve Novak has more value than a shot by Carmelo Anthony, but it's probably easier to keep Novak from shooting.  It's like a big man who looks good in measures of efficiency because he gets a lot of "garbage" baskets, but who has a limited opportunity to take those shots.

I'm not sure if Green would thrive if you tried to force him to be a guy who takes 16 shots per game.

It's annoying that you can't get a ranking of players by PPP.  I'd guess that there are a lot of bench offensive specialists like Novak plus a bunch of limited big men such as DeAndre Jordan who are ahead of Green.  I'd guess that Green is in the top ten among starting SFs in PPP.

[CelticConcourse]

I dunno if y'all have checked out the thread in my siggy but does anyone here think it's unreasonable for Green to have a statline of:

24 points
6 rebounds
2 assists
1 block

because that's what I've been saying for a while now. Of course we could be optimistic and say 25/7/4/1.5 or something but he isn't exactly the best passer out there. I think it's within the realm of possibility that he scores 25 a game because that's simply something he can do. 1 block a game is reasonable. 6 rebounds a game is a stretch but he could reasonably get 5.

I continue to believe that he can be a top 5 SF in the league in two years, but there's nothing wrong with being a year early. He can be a top 5 SF next year as well; he's got all he needs and this might be his chance as he enters his prime.

[CelticG1]

I guess the concern is that for the majority of his career, Green has been a pretty mediocre player statistically, both overall and per-minute.  He hasn't shown a lot of improvement until the latter half of last season.  Those statistics coincide with observational passivity.

In March and April, Green was outstanding.  Is he going to build off of that, or will he regress to the player he's been for his career up to this point?

As usual, Roy nails it. And, as others have said, if Jeff Green is going to be this team's go to guy, then 25-30 wins is probably right.

If Green can build off from the 2nd half of the season, I can definitely see him averaging 25/7/5 next year...

I think the whole Green has been a mediocre player throughout his career is blown out of proportions. He was the third option behind Durant and Westbrook in OKC, and he still averaged around 14 ppg. In Boston, he was behind Pierce/Allen/KG/Rondo...

Last year during the second half of the season, we saw a more aggressive Green and a more confidence Green...
If he can build off that, then I agree with KG...he can and potentially can be a top 5 SF, and with Rondo, that is something to be proud of going forward.

Five players (FIVE) averaged more than 25 points a game last year. If this happens, I guess Jeff Green will become one of the elite players in the NBA.

Not necessarily. Monta Ellis has averaged 25 and 24 points a game and I never considered him a star.

I'm interested in Green getting an efficient 18 points a game or so while affecting the game in other ways. Defensively I think he can be very good and improve, offensively creating ft opportunites is something I'd love to see more out of him which was something we saw more especially I the playoffs (8 attekpts a game)

[CelticsFan9]

I dunno if y'all have checked out the thread in my siggy but does anyone here think it's unreasonable for Green to have a statline of:

24 points
6 rebounds
2 assists
1 block

because that's what I've been saying for a while now. Of course we could be optimistic and say 25/7/4/1.5 or something but he isn't exactly the best passer out there. I think it's within the realm of possibility that he scores 25 a game because that's simply something he can do. 1 block a game is reasonable. 6 rebounds a game is a stretch but he could reasonably get 5.

I continue to believe that he can be a top 5 SF in the league in two years, but there's nothing wrong with being a year early. He can be a top 5 SF next year as well; he's got all he needs and this might be his chance as he enters his prime.

I think the PPG total is a little high (by maybe 5 points).  I say that because Green is our #1 option now, a position he's never had before.  I think he'll struggle with it at the beginning of the season, but by the ASB, he'll have adjusted.

I'd also give him a steal a game to go with the block, and I'd say he does it all in 36 MPG.

In short, a borderline All Star.

[LooseCannon]

As a starter last season in 17 games, Green averaged 20.1 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 1.1 blocks, and 35.9 minutes per game.

There are reasons to think that he will do better and reasons to think that he will do worse.  It's a small sample size, so maybe he was playing better than usual.  He was recovering from heart surgery, so maybe he has the potential to perform at a higher level.  He either performed better because he was playing with Pierce and Garnett or his counting stats will go up because he has more opportunities in their absence.  Either he felt freer in the absence of Rondo or he was better towards the end of the season simply because of better health/conditioning or playing next to Rondo when both are 100% will provide more opportunities for a guy who mysynergysports ranked as 35th on spot-up attempts with 1.17 points per possession.

It could go either way and that will be one of the interesting things about this season.

[CelticConcourse]

I dunno if y'all have checked out the thread in my siggy but does anyone here think it's unreasonable for Green to have a statline of:

24 points
6 rebounds
2 assists
1 block

because that's what I've been saying for a while now. Of course we could be optimistic and say 25/7/4/1.5 or something but he isn't exactly the best passer out there. I think it's within the realm of possibility that he scores 25 a game because that's simply something he can do. 1 block a game is reasonable. 6 rebounds a game is a stretch but he could reasonably get 5.

I continue to believe that he can be a top 5 SF in the league in two years, but there's nothing wrong with being a year early. He can be a top 5 SF next year as well; he's got all he needs and this might be his chance as he enters his prime.

I think the PPG total is a little high (by maybe 5 points).  I say that because Green is our #1 option now, a position he's never had before.  I think he'll struggle with it at the beginning of the season, but by the ASB, he'll have adjusted.

I'd also give him a steal a game to go with the block, and I'd say he does it all in 36 MPG.

In short, a borderline All Star.

Agreed, but I don't see why he can't go for 24. Look what happened to James Harden after he got off the bench and became a first option; it's possible Jeff goes through the same process too.

I think he's a borderline All-Star and that he's just as good as Paul George and Paul Pierce (if not better) and better than Gordon Hayward, Chandler Parsons, Nic Batum, Demar Derozan, Andrei Kirilenko, Rudy Gay, etc.

Basically he's two tiers below LeBron and Durant and a tier below Carmelo (and maybe PG).

[moiso]

I hate how everything gets blown out of proportion. Jeff Green is not now, nor has he ever been 'mediocre'.

He ranked 94th in the NBA in scoring last year, which I'd say is pretty mediocre. 

If you're going off of PPP on mysynergysports, that's probably not mediocre.  It's probably the best number on the team.  On last year's Celtics, it was better than Pierce, Garnett, Rondo, Sullinger, and Bass.  (I didn't bother checking anyone else.)  Spot-checking a few SFs, it's better than Deng, Iguodala, Gordon Hayward, Nic Batum, or Rudy Gay (by far the worst of the numbers I checked) but not Durant, Chandler Parsons, or Steve Novak.  His overall PPP is the same as Carmelo Anthony.

The inescapable conclusion here, then, is that Steve Novak is better offensively than Carmelo Anthony.

This is where the value of shot distribution and shot creation comes up.  Steve Novak had 9.4 field goal attempts per 36 minutes last season.  Carmelo Anthony had 21.6.  (Jeff Green had 12.9.)  A shot by Steve Novak has more value than a shot by Carmelo Anthony, but it's probably easier to keep Novak from shooting.  It's like a big man who looks good in measures of efficiency because he gets a lot of "garbage" baskets, but who has a limited opportunity to take those shots.

I'm not sure if Green would thrive if you tried to force him to be a guy who takes 16 shots per game.

It's annoying that you can't get a ranking of players by PPP.  I'd guess that there are a lot of bench offensive specialists like Novak plus a bunch of limited big men such as DeAndre Jordan who are ahead of Green.  I'd guess that Green is in the top ten among starting SFs in PPP.

That's because any shot of Steve Novak's is worth 3 points if it goes in.

[CelticsFan9]

I dunno if y'all have checked out the thread in my siggy but does anyone here think it's unreasonable for Green to have a statline of:

24 points
6 rebounds
2 assists
1 block

because that's what I've been saying for a while now. Of course we could be optimistic and say 25/7/4/1.5 or something but he isn't exactly the best passer out there. I think it's within the realm of possibility that he scores 25 a game because that's simply something he can do. 1 block a game is reasonable. 6 rebounds a game is a stretch but he could reasonably get 5.

I continue to believe that he can be a top 5 SF in the league in two years, but there's nothing wrong with being a year early. He can be a top 5 SF next year as well; he's got all he needs and this might be his chance as he enters his prime.

I think the PPG total is a little high (by maybe 5 points).  I say that because Green is our #1 option now, a position he's never had before.  I think he'll struggle with it at the beginning of the season, but by the ASB, he'll have adjusted.

I'd also give him a steal a game to go with the block, and I'd say he does it all in 36 MPG.

In short, a borderline All Star.

Agreed, but I don't see why he can't go for 24. Look what happened to James Harden after he got off the bench and became a first option; it's possible Jeff goes through the same process too.

I think he's a borderline All-Star and that he's just as good as Paul George and Paul Pierce (if not better) and better than Gordon Hayward, Chandler Parsons, Nic Batum, Demar Derozan, Andrei Kirilenko, Rudy Gay, etc.

Basically he's two tiers below LeBron and Durant and a tier below Carmelo (and maybe PG).

I think the reason Harden could go for 24 and Green can't is simply because Harden is a better scorer than Green is.  Now, maybe Green adds some new moves this offseason and it opens up his offensive game, but I'm skeptical that he could go for 20+ because I think he will struggle as the #1 option (teams are going to game plan for him as the Celtics' only viable scoring option now).

If he puts up the stats I predict he will put up (19/6/2/1/1), then I could see him getting a few votes.  In a conference filled with talented forwards (LeBron, Melo, George, Pierce, Granger, Gay, Deng, etc.), I think it's going to be difficult for Green to get in.

[LooseCannon]

If he puts up the stats I predict he will put up (19/6/2/1/1), then I could see him getting a few votes.  In a conference filled with talented forwards (LeBron, Melo, George, Pierce, Granger, Gay, Deng, etc.), I think it's going to be difficult for Green to get in.

With those numbers, I think he gets talked about as a possible all-star if the Celtics are on pace to make the playoffs and gets ignored if the team looks like it might not make 30 wins.