There are countless questions surrounding the Phoenix Suns as the season approaches. Media Day rarely provides all the answers, yet it has a way of pulling back the curtain enough to let light spill in, even if it reveals more mysteries in the process.
Among the storylines worth watching, Jalen Green stands as one of the most compelling figures. Acquired from the Houston Rockets in the Kevin Durant trade, he arrives in Phoenix young, athletic, and remarkably durable. It’s a combination that makes
him one of the most fascinating additions of the summer.
To say that Green holds the key to this team’s fortunes might not be exaggeration. His growth could mirror the Suns’ trajectory. A former second overall pick, he now enters a defining season, one where the sting of being moved from a team that finished as the Western Conference’s second seed could serve as fuel. The question becomes whether that fire propels him into the next phase of his career, the phase where potential transforms into presence.
Media Day always brings the familiar refrain: “What have you been working on this offseason?” When Green answered, I felt my eyebrow rise.
“I’ve been working on my in between game a lot more,” Jalen informed the media on Wednesday. “The mid-range. Float. Just the in between game because as the season went on it was either three or to the cup and they was forcing me to have to score that in between game. Not allowing me to get all the way to the rim. And they would take away the three a lot more.”
I’ll start by saying this. I understand where Jalen Green is coming from.
The NBA is a league of scouting reports and counterpunches. Opponents will take your strengths, put them under a microscope, and strip them away until you’re left with nothing but your flaws. For Green, the mid-range is that exposed nerve. Force him into it, particularly to his left, and the odds tilt heavily in your favor.
Pull up his shot chart from last season and the numbers don’t lie. From the left corner three he hit 26.7%. From the left short mid-range he landed at 25%. From the long mid-range on that side, again 26.7%. Three misses out of four in those zones. That’s not an “area of opportunity”. That’s a liability.
His self-awareness in acknowledging that weakness matters, but it also reveals the paradox of his game. Because while the mid-range is shaky, the three-point shot isn’t exactly ironclad either.
Green shot 35.4% from deep last season. Respectable, but not something that bends defenses in half. And yet nearly half his attempts — 46% of his shot diet — came from beyond the arc. By comparison, only 20.3% of his looks were mid-range, with 33.7% inside eight feet. His diet leaned heavily toward threes, and while defenses tried to chase him off the line, the truth is they might not have needed to.
Even more telling? He was only marginally better in the mid-range overall, connecting on 36.2%.
In other words, he lived between inefficiency and streakiness, carving out bursts of brilliance but rarely sustaining them. The data paints the picture of a player caught between archetypes: not the relentless rim attacker, not the deadeye shooter, not the mid-range maestro. Instead, he floats somewhere in the in-between, a talented scorer still searching for the place on the floor where his game becomes undeniable.
And that is why my eyebrow went up.
Of course you should refine every part of your game, no one faults a player for putting in that work. And yes, the mid-range has been a clear weakness for Jalen Green, particularly on the left side where his percentages fall off a cliff. He looks far more comfortable when he goes right, and the numbers bear that out.
Still, within the context of this Suns offense, prioritizing the mid-range feels out of step. That real estate belongs to Devin Booker. It’s where he feasts, where his rhythm is born. And over the past two seasons, Phoenix already had two other players who thrived in that same space. The last thing this team needs is more traffic in Booker’s kitchen.
Green’s pathway is different. His game should live at the rim, exploding to the cylinder and warping defensive gravity, which in turn opens up lanes and clean looks for everyone else. Layer on top of that the development of a reliable three-point shot, and suddenly he’s not clogging Booker’s territory. He’s complementing it.
Which is why his Media Day answer surprised me.
The offseason felt like the perfect window to push that 35.4% mark from deep into sturdier, above-average territory. That was his career-best season from beyond the arc, and it came in a year where his shot diet leaned heavily toward threes. Booker as the primary playmaker should, in theory, create even better looks for Green out there, not in the teeth of the mid-range.
Flip the script and put Green on the ball, and now you’re asking Booker to slide into a Klay Thompson-like role: working off screens, curling into his mid-range spots, punishing defenses with the most polished aspect of his game. That’s symmetry. That’s balance.
So no, I don’t fault Green for grinding away at a weak spot. Improvement is never wasted. But from a hierarchy standpoint, from the way this offense should hum, the mid-range isn’t where he’ll make his mark.
Maybe his Media Day answer was a throwaway line, the kind you give when the question is routine and you’re eager to move on. Maybe he really has found growth there. Time will tell. What I hope is that he also poured hours into the three-point line, because if Green can level up from respectable to reliable out there, it changes everything. It changes his game. It changes how defenses guard him.
And it changes the ceiling of this Suns team.
