Why the Rockets need Jalen Green

The defense is solid. Some scoring punch would help an iffy offense, even with Alperen Sengun becoming a star.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Plum; Edouard Manet; 1878

Jalen Green is your reigning Western Conference Player of the Week, and on top of that just dropped a career-high 42 points in one of Houston’s better offensive games of the season.

The Wizards are awful on defense, so a 40-spot might seem cheaper against them. But the two-level scoring Green did points to something real — the first-step agility and dribble moves to get downhill consistency combined with space-opening moves on the perimeter to get clean looks, that’s the recipe for a good scorer in today’s NBA.

Houston has won six straight to climb right back into the play-in race. Four of those games have come since losing Alperen Sengun, the team’s best player. In those four games, Green is averaging 30-9-4 on 63% effective field goal percentage. The Rockets are three games behind the Lakers and Warriors in the loss column.

Two things are especially intriguing about this turn of the worm for Green.

The first is that Houston continues to have a top-10 defense and has been held back by its offense. Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet are good-to-great defenders who score inefficiently overall. FVV is a good deep shooter but the overall efficiency lacks. Sengun has improved as a defender and rebounds well. Jabari Smith Jr.’s value will continue to be driven by his defense. The Rockets have defenders, and a coach whose reputation is one that lends itself to a hard-nosed, defense-first team. What they need is some pop on offense beyond Sengun’s Jokician stylings and some occasional hot shooting from FVV or JSJ. Green has been less efficient than even Brooks for the season. But if this recent spell is closer to the new norm, that unlocks something for the Rockets offense that, when paired with a good defense, could make Houston a top-6 team as soon as next year.

The second thing is that the pairing with rookie Amen Thompson, who replaced Sengun as a starter as Udoka goes small and athletic, looks incredibly promising for both Green and Thompson. Defenses don’t really know what to do given Green’s scoring explosiveness, the shooting on the perimeter and Thompson’s raw electricity. The dude cuts hard constantly, he crashes the glass (11 offensive rebounds in three games) and he has really nice vision for a young rookie. Green, Thompson and three shooters provides some real WTF decisions for the opposing defense.