There are too many Jalens in the NBA. So I banished them all.

A thought experiment on a Ja(y)lenless NBA

You likely did not expect that headline dropping into your inbox today, did you?

There are many problems with the NBA today, like any sports league. Defense continues to be penalized, offensive talents often make use of ticky-tacky foul rules, and the Clippers seem to have committed fraud. And yet, none of those are the biggest problems the NBA faces today.

That honor goes to the Jalens. Actually, the Jalens, Jaylens, and Jaylins.

There are simply too many Jalens in the NBA. Just a year ago, they made up 3% of the entire league, a staggering number that potentially poses a threat to every other name in the NBA.

So how about we just wipe them off the face of the Earth entirely?

I kid, but I recently thought about the notoriously widespread Jalen/Jaylen epidemic in the league, and I began to imagine what would happen if you simply, well, eliminated them. No Jalen Williams, no Jalen Brunson, no Jalen Green. And, because I am not one to be bound by the laws of phonetics, Jaylin Williams is gone too, as is Jaylen Brown.

To determine what would have happened in a Jalen-less NBA this past season, I’ve come up with two different methods, one being highly simplistic and the other being less so. Let’s start with the former.

The Simple PPG Method

The easiest way to do this is to simply take into account every Jalen’s points in a game, and subtract them from their team’s total. To do this, I’ve pulled every single box score from the 2024-25 season, and rebalanced every single matchup in the league without any Jalens or their phonetically-similar cousins. This is on a per-game basis, so it’s not taking season averages; if your Jalen scores 30 points but you won by 50 points, you’d still win the game without him when using this method.

This is very, very simplistic and doesn’t take into account defense or anything, so it’s particularly punishing to a few teams. Here’s a look at the win/loss records before and after the Jalenpocalyse (you may have to scroll left and right to view everything):

As you can see, a couple of teams are heavily punished for their Jalenism. The Rockets lose Jalen Green, who, despite terrible defense, put up tons of points, and when you remove those, you lose a lot more games than you’d expect to otherwise. Houston gets wrecked, losing 35 more games than they would with Jalen on the court, making them a worse team than the Utah Jazz.

Then there’s OKC and Boston, who both lose a lot of games because they are now without Jalen Williams and Jaylen Brown, respectively. As a testament to how good the team was otherwise, the Thunder are almost a .500 squad without Williams, while the Clippers are quite a bit worse despite losing fewer games than OKC. The Knicks can be thrown in a similar boat — having a superstar Jalen is unacceptable in this league, and you shall be punished accordingly if you have one.

So who benefits the most from the Thanos-snapping of every Jalen? Strangely, the Miami Heat, who suddenly become a top-5 team in the East. Why is that? Well, if you dig into the data as to which games flipped, it becomes pretty obvious. Here are two examples:

October 24, 2024 (Heat vs. Knicks)

• Previous Score: NYK 116 - MIA 107

• Jalenless Score: NYK 94 - MIA 107

December 2, 2024 (Celtics vs. Knicks)

• Previous Score: BOS 108, MIA 89

• Jalenless Score: BOS 79, MIA 89

Because the Heat have zero Jalens, they lose nothing, and that’s why they end up winning a lot more games here. It’s similar stories for the Pelicans and Raptors. The former has one Jaylen who barely plays anyway (Jaylen Nowell), and the latter has zero Jalens in the first place. Another winner is the Cavs, who, by way of other teams not having Jalens, become a 71-win squad, which would make them the 3rd-most-winningest team in a season ever, ahead of the 1996-97 Bulls.

But this method is far too simple, I feel. If removing Jalen Green were so detrimental to the Rockets, for example, then the trade they made for KD would feel worthless. Yet, if you actually watch Green play, you know that his being on the court can actually be detrimental to the team, despite his PPG numbers that may fool you on occasion.

Hence, we need a more complex method.

The Complex On/Off + Plus-Minus Method

This new method is a lot more intensive and, while still too simplistic to be deemed a full simulation, far better than the previous method. In short, the following data takes into account:

• A player’s on/off stats (how the team plays with them off the court, statistically, and when each player subbed in and out of a game)

• The player’s plus-minus for each individual game (which can be misleading, but is the best we have to work with from public, easily-accessible data)

Those two things, when combined together, present a far more balanced look at what happens when we exile every single Jalen from this wonderful city we call the NBA.

Now, this method is far more measured, though the biggest loser immediately becomes OKC. Because of Jalen Williams’ impact on the floor, the team literally cannot be the same without him, as we saw in the playoffs when he truly took over. Still, they’re able to win 60% of their games, and that’s still good for 4th in the Western Conference.

Boston loses 13 extra games here, too, which isn’t as many as you’d think, and that’s because Jaylen Brown’s on/off metrics aren’t nearly as good as his popularity would lead you to believe. Analytics tend to dislike the guy for various reasons, hence why the team only drops to #3 in the East.

Oh, and speaking of Jalen Green, the Rockets are virtually unchanged, losing just three extra games when you remove Green from the equation. Would they drop to #3 in the West? Yes, but once again, this is removing a player entirely and putting in zero replacement players (like KD) — Green just isn’t a player who can consistently elevate his team to wins.

As for the winners of this Jalenless NBA, Brooklyn and Phoenix both add 8 and 7 wins to their total, respectively, and the latter is actually 8th in the West, which is a 3-spot jump from their 11th ranking last season.

A couple of other interesting insights from this model, which I prefer more (and not just because Houston can actually compete):

• Even a Jalenless NBA can’t save the Utah Jazz, who are still dead-last in win percentage

• Golden State suffers quite a bit here, losing 6 extra games. How is that possible when they have no Jalens? Well, take a look at this game, for example:

  • Before Jalenpocalypse: GSW 127 - HOU 121

  • After Jalenpocalypse: GSW 127 - HOU 141

• On the above: Quite a few teams had their Jalens play poorly against Golden State, which means removing them actually boosted their play, and two of those games were against Houston. Such is the power of Jalen Green.

• Cleveland ends up being the exact same here. That’s both due to the lack of close games they played (they were too good by very wide margins in a lot of cases) and because the games they did end up losing in the Jalenless NBA were balanced out by ones they ended up winning.

• Orlando, similarly, has no change, which is somewhat shocking given Jalen Suggs’ normal impact. This ends up being because of his injury in January, which kept him out for half of the season, and, like Cleveland, having some games balanced out by other wins/losses.

And, thus, there you have it. After eliminating every single Jalen and his phonetically similar cousins from the league, you get quite a different NBA. The Jalen takeover will likely continue, though I don’t know of many prospects for this upcoming draft who would fall under the iron fist of the Jalenpocalypse.

This is probably the silliest thought experiment I’ve gone through this year, but I may have sillier ones to come.

Is that a threat?

That may depend on whether your name is Jalen or not.