Memphis Grizzlies Midseason Grades: Jeff Green

At the NBA regular season’s midpoint, we are grading each Memphis Grizzlies player based on his performance and progress through the first half of the season. Today we grade forward Jeff Green.

Regardless of how he plays on a given night, and he played extremely well last night with a 30-point outburst that lifted the Grizzlies past the Orlando Magic, Jeff Green tends to generate more questions than answers. Examined through either a positive or negative bias, or somehow through a lens that is as close to objectivity as humanly possible, Green’s talents and playing style engender more intrigue than certainty.

You’ve probably heard the rumblings, assertions, polemics, praises and apologetics regarding Jeff Green’s role as a Memphis Grizzly and as an NBA player in general. They’ve been echoing and reverberating through the sentences of basketball columns, through the airwaves of sports talk radio, and through the cavernous depths of the basketball blogosphere and Twitter-verse for years. The following collection of queries does not represent an exhaustive list of every question or every debatable point, but consider this a basic Jeff Green Frequently Asked Questions reference:

Uncle Jeff FAQ’s

• Are the Grizzlies better since gaining Jeff Green?
• How could the Grizzlies possibly be worse with Jeff than they were with Tayshaun Prince?
• Why does Dave Joerger keep trying to play Green in that terrible lineup with (insert names of other forwards or wing players)?
• Why doesn’t Dave Joerger always play Green in that amazing lineup with (insert name of other forwards or wing players)?
• Why does Jeff Green need to start?
• Why would the Grizzlies ever not have Jeff Green in the starting lineup?
• Why would Jeff Green ever settle for that lousy shot?
• Why doesn’t Jeff Green ace more three point shots like that one?
• Why doesn’t Jeff Green drive to the basket and dunk all over everyone every time he touches the ball?
• Do the Memphis Grizzlies see Jeff Green in their short-term or long term plans?
• Does Jeff Green want to be a Memphis Grizzly in his long term plans?
• Has Jeff Green turned the corner and figured out how to maximize his potential with the Grizzlies, or is he only playing better to leverage his perceived value for the impending trade deadline?

Interested parties like Chris Wallace, Dave Joerger and Green himself will have to continue to round out answers to these questions and time will tell which responses are correct. We’ve seen how good Jeff Green can be when at his best, and we’ve discussed why the Grizzlies might consider parting ways with him. There’s no formal rubric for grading a player on half an NBA season, but stats can help.

On the season Jeff Green has averaged 11.2 points per game with shooting splits of .415/.276/.785. A quick take on those figures supports the notion that Green, a player gifted at driving the lane for scores and an above-average free throw shooter, should attack the basket more and, as a well-below average three point shooter, avoid taking outside shots unless they are incredibly wide open and no better options are available.

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Last season Green shot a better yet fairly pedestrian 32.7 percent from beyond the arc, but that included a sensational 47.5 percent on left corner threes that lead many of us to implore Jeff Green to create more shots from that hot spot. During the 2014-15 season, Green only attempted 40 shots from his most successful shooting zone (and only 47 attempts from the right corner where he made a respectable 38.3 percent), compared to the 82 attempts he jacked up from the right wing where he averaged a dismal 22 percent.

This season, despite only taking a total of 9 shots from the left corner so far, that corner is still his best long-range shooting zone as he’s connected on 33 percent of his attempts from that area. Despite doing his absolute worst shooting of the season from the left wing where he has only connected on 22.6 percent of three point attempts, it’s this same spot of the court where Jeff Green takes the most three point shots (31 3-pt attempts from the left wing so far this season). He needs to  limit those attempts, maybe dribbling in if gets the ball there while open.

Jeff Green has been most effective for the Grizzlies right at the rim and is shooting 45.4 percent in the paint. His mid-range game has been decent too, particularly on the left wing(55 percent), just inside from where he misses so many threes,  and also at the top of the key(47 percent). 

As far as lineups go, Jeff Green has received opportunities to play with several quicker small-ball groups intended to highlight his skills. According to advanced lineup stats provided by the NBA, the Memphis lineup that has played the most minutes (appearing in 26 games for a total of 200 minutes) as a collective unit on the season includes Green, Matt Barnes, Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, and Courtney Lee. This group has one of team’s better offensive ratings, averaging 101.6 points per 100 possessions, but because of a weak defensive rating this crew actually has a negative net rating of -3.3 points per 100 possessions. 

For reasons not entirely attributable to Jeff Green, Green is also a member of two of the Grizzlies’ four most played lineups that have yielded similarly discouraging results: a Conley-Tony Allen-Green-Zach Randolph-Gasol lineup that has a net rating of -12.9, and an ineffective lineup of Conley-Lee-Green-Randolph-Gasol that has a particularly rancid net rating of -24.7.

A simple conclusion from this may be that Green and Randolph should never play as complementary forwards because, at least on the surface of the lineup comparison data, the combination appears to be a consistently bad mix for the Grizz.

In lesser utilized lineups with relatively smaller sample sizes, Green contributed to more successful groups including the Conley-Allen-Barnes-Green-Gasol squad that is the seventh most frequently used (eight games, 55 total minutes) and produces a net rating of +9.9, as well as the Grizzlies’ eighth most frequent lineup (eight games, 41 minutes) of  Conley-Lee-Allen-Green-Gasol, a squad that boasts a net rating +19.9. We’re dealing with fewer minutes as they apply to per-100-games ratings here, but oddly enough, the ninth most played lineup this season for the Grizzlies features both Jeff Green and Z-Bo in a Conley-Barnes-Green-Randolph-Gasol squad that has an absurdly high net rating of +35.5 in nine games and 39 total minutes on the court together.

If Green remains a Grizzly into the postseason, Coach Joerger and the Grizzlies may be able to optimize his strengths by getting him more run with a small, quick lineup (particularly while Randolph is not on the court) while encouraging Uncle Jeff to drive at his opponent like there’s no tomorrow so he can finish at the rim and/or get to the free-throw line as often as possible.

As for outside shooting, the Grizzlies, in dire need of all the three-point production they can muster, need to find ways for the offense to allow Green to get quality looks from the left corner. Additionally, it would help the Grizzlies if Green can improve on his less than ideal defensive rating (allows 108 points per 100 possessions), although 108 is his career average in that category.

Grade so far:

C+

Highlight of the season so far:

Jeff Green has thrown down some ferocious dunks, hit some clutch shots, made some difficult chase-down blocks, and provided more than a few A+ moments through the first half of the season, but this game-winner was his best moment of the first half of the regular season:

How would you grade Jeff Green on first half of the season? Add your comment below to join the discussion!