AROUND the NBA: Pat Bev Suspended 4 Games Next Season| PHX Fires Vogel

[F Gump]

People are all the time saying Josh's game is based on confidence.  If that is true, his confidence is based on minutes.  When he gets them, he's a different player.....

....I can't believe more people don't see this.

The issue I have with that idea is that the cause-effect is not reliable. Would he know from game to game whether it's slated to be a big minute game or a little minute game, so he would know as he played whether to be confident or not?

I see a couple of real alternative possibilities that may provide better explanations, and there may be more:

1 Josh was getting more minutes when he played well, and less minutes when he was not. So your cause-effect may be completely backwards - ie, his level of play determines the minutes, rather than the other way around. I think this would have been the most likely explanation.

2 Or, when he played more, was it due to injuries (or tanking), and necessity, in which his rotations were increased and his context (the exact players he played with) were altered, creating a different dynamic for him? (And before we say the coach needs to keep doing that to make his game better, we have to wonder if that made the TEAM better, or if it only made Green's stat line better?) Maybe he was used more in games/rotations where someone had to get some extra stats, so he got them? If that is the case, while in one way that could be seen as a positive, in many ways it's not, because it means he is only going to offer strong play if you strip your lineup of talent around him, and that's not a path to winning.

I certainly do agree that Green has to play with more assertiveness if he's to be given a higher dollar deal, but I'm not convinced it will be an automatic result, if the Mavs simply give him more minutes. I want to see more from him first, rather than pay for it and blindly assume he will become what we hope, even though he's never done that before. That latter type of deal-making has led the Mavs to awful deals over the years, one after another.

I'm also wary with him because the 2022-23 season was supposed to be the one where we saw a huge difference in his game, and it didn't happen. The shooting pcts went up, but the MAIN issue of assertiveness -- the willingness to take shots -- stayed the same (9 shots per 36 minutes, in both the prior year and that one). Shyness to take shots, or a focus on only shooting when you get your perfect shot, those almost completely negate the ability to shoot well, because he doesn't offer a threat who has to be game-planned for.