Jalen Green holds key to Rockets’ ceiling, but how long will this latest hot streak last?

Jalen Green is having another one of his smoldering stretches for the Houston Rockets. Over eight games in January, Green is averaging 30.2 points on 52/48/92 shooting splits. That 48% from 3 is coming on more than nine attempts per game. 

Last Monday, Green put 42 on the Grizzlies. On Wednesday, he gave Denver 34. Then it was 28 in an overtime loss to Sacramento as he refused to let Houston go quietly, sandwiching 57 feet worth of 3-pointers around a tough finish at the rim over two defenders at their peak inside the final two minutes. Houston’s back-to-back on Saturday posed no problem for Green, who went for another 28 in a win against Portland. 

Green has made at least four triples in each of his last eight games, over which he’s averaging over 30 points while registering 54/51/94 shooting splits for an incendiary 70.4 true-shooting clip. 

Houston, meanwhile, has won seven of its last nine and currently owns the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed. Asked what has been the difference for a Houston offense that has jumped from 11th in offensive efficiency, and 25th in the half-court, through the first two-plus months of the season to No. 1 since the calendar flipped to January, Fred VanVleet’s answer was simple. Jalen Green. 

Right now, this is a match made in basketball heaven — a Rockets team built on top-end defense and depth that is a consistent alpha-dog scorer short of genuine contention. Notice the word consistent. If Green played like this all the time, there would be no question regarding his franchise-player status and, perhaps, about whether the Rockets, ahead of schedule as they are, are ready to compete with the big boys come playoff time. 

But he doesn’t play like this all the time. In fact, entering play on Sunday, the Rockets are more than six points better per 100 possessions when Green is off the floor, per CTG. Take that in the proper context. They’re still plus-5.7 per 100 with him on the court in non-garbage minutes, and in January no starter is registering a better net rating than Green. It’s just that over a longer timeframe, albeit in smaller lineup samples, Amen Thompson with the starters has been a preposterous plus-31.1 unit for Houston on the strength of an impregnable defense. 

And again, Green hasn’t played like this all season. He’s coming off a two-month stretch in which he shot 29% from 3 and just 40% overall. He’s a 32% midrange shooter this season, per CTG, and 36% on all jumpers. His 34% clip on pull-up 3s waters down much of the excitement that his smooth, athletic shot creation evokes. 

The fact is, Green hasn’t even been penciled in for consistent fourth-quarter minutes all season. There have been games he’s played virtually the entire quarter and games he’s sat for long stretches. You may think that a player of Green’s profile would have his most meaningful minutes decided by whether his shot is going in, but Ime Udoka is looking a lot closer at the defensive end, where Green, to his credit, has been much more committed this season and especially of late. 

“[Udoka] doesn’t really care what’s going on, he’s going to tell you the truth and make you come sit down [on the bench],” Green recently told NBA TV. “Playing defense was a big part of that. Staying engaged. I think he knows that I can score naturally; he wanted to see it on both sides, and [see me] do other things other than scoring. If I wasn’t playing defense I had to go sit down. I’m just trying to stay on the floor and earn his trust to play the big minutes in the fourth quarter.”

It’s true, Green has to pull his weight defensively if Udoka is going to fully trust him, but at the same time the Rockets are loaded with stout defenders. As currently constructed, however, nobody else offers Green’s dynamic brand of three-level offense; if Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks were brought in to raise Houston’s floor, then it’s Green, and always been Green, who raises the ceiling. The evidence of Green as a barometer has shown up in these spurts that have yet to be sustained. 

Over Houston’s 11-game win streak last March, Green averaged over 30 a night, with a pair of 40-point games, on 50/45 shooting splits. But that sample fell in between a January-February stretch and a nine-game finishing sample in which he shot under 30% from 3. The year before that, just his second in the league, he put up 15 30-point games and two 40-pointers. 

Entering this season, just four players in history had made more 3-pointers than Green’s 545 through the first three years of their career, and only 12 have more than his 115 so far this season. Green’s highs are super high, and he tends to take the Rockets with him. But we’ve seen it before. The question is, can it sustain this time?