Jalen Green is growing up fast — and could soon push Rockets to new heights

WESTLAKE, Calif.

Jalen Green typically doesnt say much.

Through much of his first three seasons with the Houston Rockets , the 2021 No.

2 pick has kept his thoughts to himself, preferring an education by observation.

Listening, learning and letting his game fill in the blanks.

Well, he used to at least.

These days, its hard to get the 22-year-old from Fresno, Calif., to stop talking.

Life is different now.

Advertisement Have you seen my daughter yet? he asks.

Its 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, and Green is decompressing from another grueling August workout in a gym roughly 40 miles west of Los Angeles.

Hes exhausted, but with each step he takes toward his 3-month-old daughter, Lyght Green sleeping peacefully in her stroller his body finds new energy.

Fatherhood gave him something extra to work for, says his father, Enoch Green.

Hes working for someone outside of himself now.

That will take him to another stage in life.

That leap to a new stage is showing up on the court too.

Through the first eight games of the season, Green is averaging 22.6 points a game while shooting an impressive 38.2 percent from deep on 9.5 attempts per game.

He also leads the Rockets in clutch time scoring with 4.5 points per game.

Greens determination to become the best version of himself couldnt have come at a better time for the 5-3 Rockets, who are expected to compete for a playoff spot after a turnaround last season saw them finish a few games out of the Play-In Tournament.

For Green, who saw plenty of losing in Houston early in his career, the results have been particularly rewarding.

And it all comes back to his personal growth.

I have a family now, said Green, who signed a three-year, $106 million extension just before the season.

Im not a rookie anymore.

Coming into the league, it was a little different, especially with the Rockets organization.

We were losing and in a rebuild.

Now, weve found ourselves and the goals were trying to achieve.

With that comes more responsibility and maturity how you carry yourself as an NBA player, a professional.

The goals are the same from my rookie year; now I just have to grow into it.

Eight months ago, Houston sat eight games under .500 and Green was in the midst of a slump, averaging just 11 points per game.

But an oddity in the regular-season schedule four consecutive days in Phoenix allowed Green to adjust and focus against a veteran Suns team.

From that moment on, Greens game elevated.

Despite an ankle injury to starting center Alperen Sengun that deprived the Rockets of their offensive fulcrum, Green took on the scoring responsibilities and committed to defense.

Houston flew up the standings.

The Rockets won 13 out of 15 games in March, with Green averaging 27.7 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game, with efficient 49.2/40.8/76.7 shooting splits.

It wasnt his stats that were the most impressive; it was his attitude.

Advertisement Green became dependable.

Necessary.

It felt good, Green said.

Its never too late for your blessings to come.

The work I put in, it paid off.

There were a lot of highs and lows at the beginning of the season, but thats part of the process.

I had to change my whole game.

It was something to adjust to, and I figured that out towards the end and we had fun and did it as a team.

Pay close enough attention to Green over the last few years, and youll hear him talk about highs and lows frequently.

Its directly related to his NBA career: The peaks of clutch-time performances and valleys of fourth-quarter benchings.

Its all part of the process: Learning how to be coached by Ime Udoka, sharing a backcourt with an NBA champion in Fred VanVleet and organizing a players-only minicamp in California before training camp and preseason all components of a man attempting to find his voice and place in the NBA.

Me being here from the beginning of the rebuild and understanding that I have to be a professional, Green said.

I have to approach this every day like Im trying to get 1 percent better.

Be something for my team, someone they can rely on and ask questions be a leader.

Before Houstons preseason home opener Oct.

15, Greens representatives made the trip down to hammer out the final details of a new contract, finally landing on the three-year, nine-figure extension.

GO DEEPER Vecenie: The Rockets made one great and one baffling decision on contract extensions Its a unique structure, the first of its kind never before has a rookie negotiated a player option in the final year of an extension.

But it gives both sides flexibility.

The Rockets reduced Greens cap hold in the process and negotiated an extension at an amount below the maximum allotment.

For Green, he gets an opportunity to lock down security in the interim, bet on himself and have a chance at earning more money than any of his draft peers in three years once the salary cap jumps as expected and another extension opportunity presents itself.

Advertisement It was an amicable solution to a potentially tricky situation.

At one point during the summer, Green admitted it was impossible for him not to feel a way about how the process was dragging out.

But he never made it public.

One of Greens mantras is stack days, a phrase not simply about working on your craft continuously but working on yourself as well.

Now the Rockets are off to a strong start, and Greens efficiency has spiked as well, the biggest indicator of his growth.

He has utilized his 27.7-percent usage rate into 54.0-percent true shooting career bests.

Hes just grown up.

Were watching him turn a corner and grow into a man, Van Vleet said.

You just see the maturity and work ethic from day one.

He works hard, comes in trying to be better and does what the coaches ask of him.

I give him a lot of credit hes going to continue to grow, and were watching it unfold.

Its not just his teammates and coaches who have taken notice.

When he first came in, he was all about himself, Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green said.

Hes playing team basketball now.

Hes not forcing it.

Hes defending better and taking that side more seriously.

And I watch more than just the game I recognized he held a team camp this summer in L.A.

Thats a level of leadership that we didnt see from him coming into this league.

Its just good to see him grow.

Green and NBA trainer Jamal Dash Lovell are seated in a covert gym in the hills, watching film on a propped-up MacBook.

This offseason, Lovell has worked alongside All-Stars such as Kevin Durant , Paul George and Karl Anthony-Towns.

During the week, Greens two-a-day workouts consist of film work with Lovell, focusing on expanding his game and tightening his fundamentals with skills coach Mark Edwards.

The two-pronged approach allows Green to grow both sides of his game simultaneously without having one area suffer.

Advertisement This afternoon, Green and Lovell are rewatching all of last years pick-and-rolls from the left side of the floor, which he rarely uses.

According to Synergy, Green was most comfortable running pick-and-roll from the top of the key 75 percent of the time to be exact scoring .945 points per possession.

Green fared better on left-sided actions, scoring 1.108 points per possession but has only reverted to this 13 percent of the time.

Lovell is walking Green through the mechanics of his pull-up jumper after the screener (typically Sengun) creates space from contact.

Green is instructed to identify the spacing around him and the nearest defender, and Lovell shows him how he should react in similar situations.

Weve been locking in on him being low and being able to use his eyes more, Lovell says.

Change speeds better and understand how to play with his teammates better.

Being able to raise his IQ and get his feel for time management, score/clock situation.

From a mechanical standpoint, Lovell wants to clean up aspects of Greens game, focusing on drills to improve his balance and strength with the ball in his hands.

In one instance, Green works with a medicine ball and has to start with a left-to-right dribble in one hand before quickly using his opposite hand to touch the ball.

The emphasis of the drill is to bait defenders into an action before switching to his pull-up shot.

Becoming stronger with the ball makes that motion more fluid and compact.

But from a cerebral standpoint, Lovell likes to work backward.

Identifying what type of defense is being shown for Green, where the help is coming from in addition to what angles Green is displaying as a ballhandler.

The hope is to open up space for additional actions.

Its almost like reconstructing the play in real-time, reworking Greens processor.

Im still working on that s till this day! Green yells.

A year ago, I would just come off the screen and one speed, he adds.

This year, I slowed it down and made the right reads.

One thing Ime was saying is, Dont be predetermined.

I have all of that in my tool bag.

I have everything you could ask for.

Its just a matter of putting it together and this year I can really show that.

Im going to be on the ball a lot, just like last year, and Ill have a higher responsibility because of what I showed at the end.

They wont expect anything less.

Advertisement Lovell also likes to zero in on the times Green held on to the ball too long and what he should have done in those moments.

Often, the decision-making trickles down to the two-man game between Green and Sengun.

A big part of Greens development is learning how to play off of the Turkish big and how it can open up even more scoring opportunities.

For years, Green and Sengun have been compared to Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic in Denver, who turned their chemistry into an NBA championship.

The blueprint is there.

I love playing with Alpi, Green says.

Weve had our ups and downs, Ive played terrible, hes been good the whole season it was really me who was trying to find myself from a whole new system standpoint.

The games that we won and both of us scored well, those are the games that will come when its playoff season.

You see how (Nikola) Jokic and Jamal Murray are Im not saying were like them but they compare Alpi to Jokic all the time.

So why cant I be something similar to Jamal? Not saying I want to be, but someone that can get off too.

Its a two-man threat every night.

Whether the Rockets are able to approximate something like that relationship and more importantly, the success it leads to likely depends on Greens continued ascendance.

Just winning in general, Green says of what pushes him.

When you win, everything else will take care of itself.

You see what we did last year, going on that 11-game winning streak trying to chase the Play-In.

We got a taste of it, and thats what the young core needed.

We havent seen that in all three years.

That just drove us as a group and gave us extra push, being able to see what that tastes like.

The Western Conference, of course, is expected to be tight.

Even in Houstons division, the Memphis Grizzlies , San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans all improved over the summer.

Toss in the Dallas Mavericks , coming off an NBA Finals appearance, and all five division members could have the playoffs in sight.

Theres pressure on the Rockets and himself, but Green isnt paying attention to the outside expectations.

Hes focused on what he can control.

Nah, I dont feel pressure, Green says.

This is what its supposed to be.

This is how me and my teammates envisioned it, and this is what I worked for.

As far as pressure, I just gotta go out there and be myself.

(Top photo: Tim Warner/Getty Images).

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