Jalen Green became the leading star of Summer League before a hamstring injury put him on the shelf in Las Vegas, as the No. 2 overall pick looked every bit of the star Houston hopes he can become in his three games of action.
Summer League always figured to be a comfortable place for Green to shine, as his best attribute is as an on-ball scorer, a role that is regularly augmented by the Summer League environment. As Green showed out and stole headlines, the overreaction machine began spinning and some began to wonder if Detroit had erred in not taking the young guard out of the G League first overall. Detroit instead took Cade Cunningham, who had been the presumptive first overall pick for more than a calendar year, and while Cunningham showed flashes of brilliance in Vegas, he wasn’t as consistently dominant as a scorer as Green, which is the area that first jumps off the page at Summer League.
Green hasn’t been shy about saying he wants to make Detroit pay for taking Cunningham ahead of him, but he also wants it to be known that he didn’t want to live in Detroit anyways, telling Chris Haynes of Yahoo how he wasn’t impressed with the city in his time there for workouts.
“I wanted to be the No. 1 pick, but as for the location, I didn’t want to be in Detroit,” Green told Yahoo Sports. “I felt a lot more comfortable in Houston. It felt like a real homie environment. With Detroit, it felt like I was just going back to the G League bubble, and I just got out of the bubble. That’s pretty much what it was.
“In the [G League] bubble, I didn’t really have anything to do but just stay in the gym. I didn’t have any time to get away for myself. The only time I had to get away for myself was in my apartment. That’s what it felt like in Detroit. I wouldn’t be stepping outside in Detroit. There are not many things you can do in Detroit like that. You’re going to stay in the gym and then go back to your apartment.”
You can be sure that quote won’t sit well with the folks up in Detroit, and it is funny to think about how differently he would be talking about the city had the Pistons taken him. Still, it’s kind of fun to imagine a very random Rockets-Pistons rivalry forming by sheer force of will from Green to talk enough trash about Detroit to turn an entire city against him. Pistons fans will hold tightly to this one, and if Green and the Rockets struggle to emerge from the pack in the West before Detroit and Cunningham do, you can rest assured they’ll be ready to throw this one back in his face.