The Houston Rockets have not seen a third-year leap from athletic shooting guard Jalen Green; to start the 2023-24 season, Green's scoring numbers have been down, his efficiency metrics have been discouraging, and his overall fit alongside a core of Alperen Sengun and Fred VanVleet appears to be up in the air. In fact, during the Rockets' Monday night 121-116 loss to the Golden State Warriors, head coach Ime Udoka decided to roll with Aaron Holiday, the combo guard the team signed this past offseason on a minimum deal, to end the game instead of Green.

While this may be concerning to those who are expecting a breakout campaign from Green,  the Rockets simply decided to stick to what was working in the fourth quarter of their contest against the Warriors, which, incidentally, involved Holiday instead of the 21-year old shooting guard.

“The group that was in was playing better and that had a good spark there. Obviously, [we] scored 35 in that quarter and just liked the energy,” the Rockets head coach said in his postgame presser, via ClutchFans on Twitter (X).

This isn't the Rockets of the past three seasons; Ime Udoka is coming in to re-install a culture of winning to a franchise that has gone wayward over the past three years. Thus, playing time for Jalen Green, as important of a piece as he may be to the Rockets organization, is far from a guarantee, especially if he's not providing what the coaching staff is expecting out of him.

Against the Warriors, Green was a game-worst minus-13; single-game plus-minus stats are noisy, but it just goes to show that the Rockets struggled a fair bit whenever the third-year guard was on the floor. (On the other hand, Holiday was a plus-eight, making three threes and tallying four steals, doing a bit of everything for Houston on both ends of the floor.)

At this point, Jalen Green is still trying to find his way on a more stable Rockets team. It's easy to forget that he's only 21 years of age, so this simply may be part of the growing pains he must endure on the road to becoming the best version of himself.