Since joining G League Ignite in August, Jalen Green has been waiting eagerly to reveal how far he has changed.
Jalen is the No. 1 recruit in the class of last year and is the face of the latest developmental team of the league, including some of the world’s best high school recruits plus a couple of veterans. Jalen and his team have been trained anonymously over the past several months. A pair of scrimmages against the team of G League veterans in December was the only footage that has been publicly exposed. Their coach, Bryan Shaw, planned to make their training private to avoid transmission of the COVID-19 virus and for the people to be shocked by the G League Ignite’s performance.
Weightlifting, skill work, film study, scrimmages, and extensive walk-throughs with different NBA-style programs are their regular day.
Off the court, prospects are learning about financial planning, sleep management, and lessons in mental health through presentations of experts on life skills.
After three straight 20-point games, the Scouts have pushed past the underwhelming debut of Jalen Green. He resisted negative knee-jerk reactions to errors across five matches in the G League while retaining support as one of the elite prospects of the draft, even though teammate Jonathan Kuminga was a strong winner in the bubble, creating more hype with bursts of advanced talent for his stature that scouts hadn’t seen in reputable settings before.
But due to clear on-court benefits and commendable improvement, as well as comforting details from background checks, there are also other people who feel more relaxed with Green.
From a pure basketball growth point of view, after the first game against the Santa Cruz Warriors, scouts have been fascinated with the changes Green has made.
He had failed to pick his places and find chances for quality scoring to rapidly work out court positioning and when or how to attack.
His ball handling must be tightened when he dropped the ball struggling to squeeze through tight openings. But Green rattled a few defenders in space with specialized dribble motions that he evidently mastered.
Since the first game, he has grown more secured. Jalen hits off the dribble and doesn’t focus too much on the burst. To contort his body in the air and finish around contact, he uses his athleticism.
JALEN’S HIGHLIGHTS
Green totaled just 13 points on 6-of-15 shooting, along with four rebounds and four assists. Kuminga led the team with 21 points and 10 boards, while Nix had 13 points, 11 boards, and five assists.
The Erie Bayhawks were given off to a robust begin and in no way allow up in a 127-87 demolition of Team Ignite, Wednesday at the Walt Disney World Complex in Orlando
“We lost by 40 today, but it just counts as one loss in the loss column,” said Ignite coach Brian Shaw after the game. “We can flush it down the toilet. We have another game tomorrow, so we just gotta get ready for the game tomorrow.”
“They were hungrier to play against us today than we were to play against them,” the coach also conceded. “This is the kind of thing that I expected to feel when we came into this bubble, trying to prepare them for the hunger that these teams are gonna come at them with.”
“They got to see it tonight. They hit us in the mouth early in the game, and we didn’t respond.”
This was the first loss of the NBA G League season for the young team, featuring Filipino-American guard Jalen Green and a host of other young prospects, including Jonathan Kuminga and Daishen Nix.
Before crashing into the Bayhawks, who used a balanced offensive effort to knock off the younger team, Ignite had opened their campaign with four straight victories. Naji Marshall had 21 points, while Jarrod Uthoff and Jalen Adams each scored 17 points. Cassius Winston and Caleb Homesley each added 16 points, as Erie shot 54% from the field including 17-of-41 from long range.