Houston Rockets’ GM, Rafael Stone, prioritized filling the end of the roster with younger talent, preventing Jeff Green from reaching multiple milestones. Will this pay off?
The Houston Rockets had a chance to make franchise history this season, and while it’s technically not too late to still do that, those chances seem slim now. That’s in large part to veteran forward, Jeff Green, not being re-signed by Rafael Stone and the front office yet.
Perhaps he’ll be signed later on in the day as a nice birthday present. After all, he is turning 40 years old today. However, I don’t see that being the case, meaning the Rockets won’t break their previous record for the oldest player. Not just the oldest guy to suit up, because Jeff Green was actually getting minutes last year. He played in the playoffs, for crying out loud.
With his contributions last season, he tied the franchise record at 39 years old. Kevin Willis had the record first, though, managing to play 52 games with Houston in the 2001-2002 season. Incredibly, he saw 16.6 minutes of action per night, and even started in five games at that age, as seen on Basketball-Reference.
For comparison, Jeff Green only played in 30 games last season, getting 5.8 minutes of burn on average, per Basketball-Reference. Clearly he contributed a little bit less than Kevin Willis did for this organization a quarter century ago, but I still would’ve liked to see him back on the roster.
Instead, the team opted to stick with Jae’Sean Tate, who is obviously younger with more to offer in that category —— but he only got 8.8 minutes per game, according to Basketball-Reference. He’s no spring chicken either, as he’ll be turning 31 on October 28th. That’s only five games into the season.
While that’s still almost a 10 year difference in age, I think we can all agree that Uncle Jeff is an absolute freak of nature. He came back from open heart surgery to play more than a decade of NBA basketball. He was just dunking on people last season. I don't know how much worse he is than Jae’Sean Tate, even with the age gap.
I’m not sure how to quantify their impact off of the court, but if anything, I’d expect the elder statesmen to have more knowledge to pass down. If neither player will be getting substantial minutes, and therefore not having a significant impact on the game, I am curious why they still chose Tate over Green.
Tate isn’t a major defensive stopper, though he can definitely be used as more of an irritant than Green. Maybe that will make the difference in one or two games, but I’d rather give the job to the 40 year old who’s trying to play 20 seasons.
It was going to essentially be a handout to someone that no other team would sign anyways, and I personally like the storyline of Jeff Green more. Now, it seems like he’ll be forced to call it a career along with Russell Westbrook.
