Jalen Green makes gut-punch admission Rockets fans will hate to hear

The Houston Rockets unequivocally pulled off the biggest blockbuster of the offseason when they swung for the fences and acquired superstar Kevin Durant from the Phoenix Suns.

In fact, the consensus opinion among both fans and pundits seems to be that it was the best move made this summer.

Considering Houston is the reigning second seed in the Western Conference standings and managed to add a sure-fire Hall of Famer and two-time Finals MVP who just dropped 26.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game on 43.0 percent shooting from deep to their arsenal, it's hard to argue against such a notion.

That being said, it's not like the decision to pursue Durant was all that easy to make. Though certainly a fair deal as far as what the Rockets plan to achieve with their new star tandem of KD and Alperen Sengun is concerned, the cost that it took to ultimately land the veteran's services was quite steep.

Now, it seems that cost has the potential to grow even more agonizing following Jalen Green's recent remarks.

Jalen Green has been working on 'in-between game' since Rockets trade

Easily the biggest gut-punch from the exchange was the loss of the aforementioned budding star two-guard, who had just come off what was his best season since entering the association.

And, as if this didn't make his loss painful enough for the organization, since his departure, it appears Green has seen an uptick in desire to hone his craft in his "in-between game," an area of play that Rockets fans had been dying to see from him since his arrival back in 2021.

During Tuesday's media day presser with the Suns, the 23-year-old revealed that he had spent the summer working on his mid-range shooting, floaters, and everything that will officially make him a "complete three-level scorer."

As the Rockets faithful are well aware, this was an area in which he struggled mightily last season, especially during their ill-fated playoff run.

Though Green may have wrapped up 2024-25 with an impressive 21.0 points per game (the top mark in Houston), 75 percent of his buckets were made either inside the painted area or from beyond the arc.

This means just 25.0 percent of his points from last season were generated in the mid-range (10-19 feet), where he shot a putrid 35.9 percent. His success rate would plummet even further during the postseason, where he cashed in on a mere 20.0 percent of such attempts.

If he had even a slightly better mid-range game in his enviably deep bag of tricks last year, there's a real possibility that the Rockets would have been able to fend off the Warriors in the quarterfinals rather than being ousted in seven games.

If this had happened, the odds of Green staying put in Space City and allowing their young core to continue developing alongside one another would have been as close to a sure thing as possible.

Instead, he now resides out in Arizona and finally seems to be working on the one aspect of his game that, if tapped into earlier, could have kept him in Rockets red.