PHOENIX — Well, they don’t call it a second impression.
You only get one, and Jalen Green ingratiated himself rather nicely during his Phoenix Suns debut, scoring 29 points in a 115-102 win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday. His 29 points were the most by a non-Devin Booker Sun this season, showing immediately where he provides the most value.
Green was composed, efficient and in a flow all evening across an exceptional debut. For a player with a bit of a wild side reputation, he was seeing everything on the floor just fine and letting his incredible gifts take over from there. The distinction of whether or not someone is a “winning player” was reflected perfectly in Green holding a game-high +30. His impact to winning was crystal clear on Thursday.
Jalen Green Suns debut
29-3-3-2 (10/20 FG, 6/13 3P), +30 in 23 MP pic.twitter.com/haZWMouduQ
— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) November 7, 2025
In just 23 minutes, he was 10-for-20 from the field and 6-of-13 on 3s.
“Takes a lot of pressure off anybody,” Booker said of Green. “Just a high-level talent. With the opportunity and space he can pretty much do anything.”
It was not surprising to hear the guy who hadn’t missed a game in over two years say he couldn’t sleep at all for his usual pregame nap after sitting out the first eight of the season.
“Any hooper that wants to be on that floor, it’s pretty frustrating to sit down and watch but that’s part of the mental game right there,” Green said.
There are two main areas on offense where Green will help the Suns tremendously, and it’s on him to dictate how much of an impact he will make in those areas.
Both looked fantastic on Thursday.
The first, of course, is with the ball in his hands as the tip of the spear at the start of a possession.
Green reminds me of the two-guards I grew up watching: Mitch Richmond, Allan Houston, Eddie Jones and Nick Anderson, to name a few. Those guys were out there to score and that was pretty much it on offense. Houston cracked three assists per game just once, as did Richmond with five and Anderson with four.
The game has changed. The secondary guard now has to be a secondary playmaker in some capacity, especially if they take as many shots as Green, so his career assist mark of 3.4 simply isn’t good enough for what modern basketball is about. Reggie Miller in the 2020s is averaging seven, eight assists per game, not three. Michael Jordan’s touching the double figures, easily.
And that is the part of Green’s game that has to improve. Cleaning the Glass has assist-to-usage ratio that charts how much you’re balancing that playmaking to how often you have the ball, and it’s a metric Green has charted terribly in for all four years of his career. His 0.58 mark last season is nowhere near someone like Booker’s 0.98 last year, as a comparison.
Green’s shot selection at times gives tunnel vision that is reminiscent of that aforementioned era. The decision-making within those choices off the bounce is another step to take forward. Offenses cannot be sustainable off that type of scorer anymore, even if Green does get to the basket and put pressure on the rim. So, it’ll be fascinating to see if he can make that progress, to adapt like a player transported a quarter-century into the future.
This guy that inspires that concern was nowhere to be seen on Thursday. While there were a few middies he was getting a bit ambitious with, those are the shots the Suns still need him to hoist at times with the limited creation skills elsewhere. As long as everything else is in motion, like making the simple pass he repeatedly did off the extra gravity, let ’em loose. His assist total of three was not an accurate representation of his playmaking.
The amount of room Green had on the floor was notable. The always-tantalizing question with hyper-talented players like Green is if a change of scenery is all they need. Houston’s offensive structure was quite honestly garbage for most of his time with the Rockets.
When asked if he had ever had this amount of space in Houston, Green smiled with a laugh while not caring to elaborate, responding with a, “Next question.”
The second area should be easier for him to find a groove in, and it comes via playing with Booker.
To that point on Houston, Green has never had this much of an opportunity to showcase this part of his game.
The most important offensive piece to put alongside a star ball-handler is someone trustworthy on the “second side” of the defense, a.k.a. where the off-ball help defenders will rotate from to collapse on that star. Whether it’s shooting or good dribble-drives, the guy over there has a lot of responsibility. That’s where we saw Dillon Brooks a few games in getting a lot of his shots, and that’s where Green will get some too. And as we’ll get to in a minute, him on the ball allowed Booker to play over there as well.
Green found plenty of those shots on Thursday in catch-and-shoot scenarios, eight of his 13 3-point attempts, in fact. That’s where his percentages have always been better, with a 40.9% knockdown rate last season as opposed to a 31.6% mark on pull-up triples. Those will come in the flow of Jordan Ott’s offense, as the beginning of the year has shown with the Suns among the league leaders in 3-point volume. Green noticed.
“I feel like our offense just has a lot spacing, it allows us to get up a lot of 3s and allows us to play fast,” Green said. “Those are the two things I love to do.”
Phoenix (4-5) struggled to find an offensive rhythm in the first half, fortunate to be playing a very shorthanded edition of L.A. (3-5) without James Harden (personal reasons) and Kawhi Leonard (right ankle sprain) so the score stayed fairly even.
And that’s when the gears of the offense got spinning, thanks to the constant threats Green and Booker presented. Phoenix went 7-for-16 from 3 in the third after a 7-of-20 rate in the first half, while overall it was eight assists on 12 baskets after 11 on 19 in two quarters.
Green early in that third quarter darted to the rim and glided through the air to athletically finish over a big. The next time down, the help was crawling over a bit too close, and he tossed a rapid-fire assist to Booker for a no-dip 3.
The sequence is essentially the whole sales pitch of how Green on the ball could thrive in Phoenix.
Jalen Green working in space in Phoenix. High P&R, turns the corner and finishes vs. Zubac. Attacks 1v1, drives middle, sees the help and kicks it to Devin Booker for 3. pic.twitter.com/gknhSEIWlz
— Steve Jones (@stevejones20) November 7, 2025
This followed Green himself getting set up by Booker for a 3 of his own earlier in the game.
More of that to connection to come?
“A lot more, a lot more for sure,” Green said.
That 40-23 Suns third quarter concluded with the best possession of the night. With Booker on the floor, Green was double-teamed off the ball at the right wing in an end-of-clock situation. He made the smart, simple play, passing to Royce O’Neale at the top of the key to allow his teammates to play 4-on-3.
O’Neale skipped it to Booker, who instantly attacked a closeout to create a Grayson Allen 3 in the corner right next to him.
“It’s night and day,” Booker said of having Green out there as an extra threat. “It’s a game-changer for sure. And then also the minutes I’m off the court he’s out there holding it down being super aggressive too. His dynamic helps our team in many ways.”
In his return to Phoenix, Bradley Beal reached the 20-minute threshold (where his night has ended in each game so far) in the mid-third quarter, while Chris Paul played 10 great minutes in the first half and did not return. Los Angeles got the deficit down from 20 to 12 at one point in the late third quarter, so an opening was there, but at a certain point it was too undermanned.
And for the Clippers, it was probably best that Beal was done there anyway.
Maybe you soured too much on Beal throughout his time as a Sun to even remotely see it this way, but it was just sad to watch him playing at such a low level. He’s still quite gifted as a scorer with the shots he was creating for himself. His usually phenomenal touch, though, was elsewhere. He was 2-for-14, including a couple of attempts early that were way off, all through two separate stints of boos pregame and constant ones whenever he got the ball.
He spoke on those boos and more postgame with the usual class we came to expect from our time speaking to him in Phoenix.
Allen contributed 18 points and O’Neale added 17 to combine for nine of the Suns’ 19 3s in a new starting lineup.
With the insertion of Green and the remaining absence of Brooks (core muscle strain), the starting lineup still included those two. That meant, much to the chagrin of this basketball blog boy, Ryan Dunn was moved to the bench.
The Suns’ balance between developing a program and young talent will teeter and totter throughout the year. If Dunn presumably stays on the bench when Brooks comes back, this is the second major teeter toward the program, with the first being no rotation minutes for rookies Khaman Maluach and Rasheer Fleming, even with the injuries and ineffectiveness of other reserves. While Dunn still found his way to 25 minutes, keep an eye on that total once this group is fully healthy.
Dunn, by the way, was awesome again at home. He ended up with 10 points, five rebounds, three assists, a steal and a block. He has to keep getting 25-plus minutes.