[USA Today] Three key stats on the defensive turnaround by the Rockets

No, you can thank the quality of competition.

 

The latter, no way I’m buying into it that we’ve made some miraculous turn around defensively after beating the Grizz, GS (with no real players to speak of), and a Bulls team that was like 3/300 on 3s (sarcasm), let’s see what they do against the Clippers, Mavs, Heat, Pacers, Nugs, Blazers, and Spurs, if they start winning those games with better D then I’ll gladly drink the Kool Aid

 

They only looked wide open. Our guys yelled “miss it” really loudly. D’Antoni suggestion. Already working.

 

NNNNNNNNUNAN!

 

I mean..no offence but this article is extremely superficial and simplistic.
Especially the second point the author makes :

"22.2% versus 43.3%

That’s the three-point shooting by opponents in Houston’s last three games (3-0), as compared to its first six games (3-3)."

Without deeper analysis that number means absolutely nothing and shows no real improvement.
What was the difference between the wide open 3s in the first 3 vs the last 3 games? The number of corner 3s?

 

Right, and it's entirely possible that it mostly has to do with the schedule, as I acknowledged. The Grizzlies, Warriors, and Bulls suck.

With that said, the Wizards had exceeded 100 once in three games before putting up 158 on the Rockets two weeks ago. So at the very least, I think what we're seeing is the bad shooting luck to start the year evening out, which should indicate that the absurd three-point rate that other teams had against Houston through six games isn't sustainable.

Hopefully it's a combination of that and actual defensive improvements (I do think more Capela and less Gordon helps), but we'll see starting tonight. The Pelicans aren't good, but they can definitely score. And then the Clippers are the Clippers.

 

One of the main points of the article, which you'd probably understand if you actually read it with an open mind instead of wanting to b**** and insult, was to point out that we don't know yet if there is real improvement. I literally said that multiple times in the article, which again, you'd know if you actually read it. It's a tiny sample against three bad teams.

What it shows, at a bare minimum, is that the opposing three-point percentages from the first six games probably aren't sustainable. Given the incredible amount of panic one week ago, I figured that was useful context.

Now, is there deeper analysis you can get to, in terms of how many wide-open threes, corner 3s, etc.? Sure, but given how small the sample is and that to this point it's all been against awful teams, not sure what the point would be to do a data dive that deep when we're about to get much more thorough evidence against more competent teams.

The point of the article was that the results have clearly improved over the past week, and here are some things statistically that have changed. If you don't like it, that's your prerogative and you don't have to read, but you don't have to be an ******* about it.

 

But I read the article.
In fact if you weren't a member of this forum, and it came from another writer I would have been much more scathing in my critisism and dismissive, if anything I was trying to be supportive and biased in favour of it. I was trying to be as positive as possible and offer a constructive comment with honesty and sincerity.

To each their own. I obviously am not the target audience of this article.

Yes it is the start of the season, and any analysis deep or epidermic holds little water with such few games played.
However no matter what if we are to try to make any conclusions on how the situation is turning, raw numbers on 3s always mean nothing.
What's the point in mentioning them in the first place?

We as a basketball community have moved long past the point where these raw numbers of 3pnt% should hold any importance.

And I didn't think it would have been so difficult to spend a little more time in digging in how the 3s were contested or not. But I may be wrong because it's not my job.
Anyway I hope you don't think my comment came with any bad intentions, it was my honest opinion and I stand by it as a reader who hopes for more. Thank you.

 

Then why were people having total panic attacks last weekend over the three-point percentages allowed? Answer: Because a lot of fans care about it. (FWIW, they have cut down their volume of wide-open 3s allowed by two per game from the first six to the last three, which is a decent amount.)

On the rest of it: I understand your point, I just don't know why you have to say anything at all in those situations. Obviously we aren't in China, so you can say whatever you like. But the reality from my perspective is that I'm not just writing for diehards at ClutchFans who already know the basics and want to keep drilling down deeper. I'm also writing for a mass audience of people who aren't as comfortable getting that far into the weeds, especially when the schedule has been so weak that the deeper analysis can easily be refuted with "small sample" and "awful opponents." I'm trying to blend everything for all audiences as best I can, though I'll note that there are probably more localized/targeted hoops publications than USAT for the "diehard" type of coverage.

The bottom line is your interests are a lot more in-depth than most readers. Which is totally fine, I feel the same way at times about various articles as it pertains to my interests. But calling something "extremely superficial and simplistic" (and apparently you'd have been even more harsh, if you didn't know the author) is quite an insult to a writer who spent several hours putting that piece together. And you're still doing it with this:

"And I didn't think it would have been so difficult to spend a little more time..."

Which basically insinuates that the author was lazy. You have no idea how much time it took to put that together. It's just a matter of different target audiences. Feedback is fine, but there's a way to do it without insulting the person's work and while acknowledging their intentions.

 

For those who are interested....

All numbers pulled from nba.com/stats

First 6 games 3 pointers allowed by the 4 defenders distances they list(per game)

Very Tight coverage : 0/0
Tight coverage : 1.8/6.8 for 28%
Open : 6.8/16.2 for 42.3%
Wide open : 8.7/17.0 for 51.0%

Last 3 games

Very tight coverage: 0/0
Tight coverage : 0.3/3.3 for 10%
Open : 1.7/11.3 for 14.7%
Wide open : 4.7/15.3 for 30.4%

I can’t figure out how to get the entire league averages but I will list the low and high end of the league for each per game

Very tight coverage : most 0.7 least 0.0 ranging from 0 to 100%
Tight coverage : most 5.9 least 1.7 ranging from 17.1 to 40.5%
Open : most 16.2 least 8.8 ranging from 24.2 to 44.1%
Wide open : most 19.9 least 12.1 from 29.0 to 44.6%

So looking at it the first 6 games we were allowing near the most open and wide open 3s and teams were nailing them at a very high clip. The last 3 games the open and wide open attempts have come down quite a bit and the percentage made against us has dropped to the low end.

So early on when everyone was saying that the percentage shot against us was unsustainable appears to be right, but at the same time we probably can’t expect the poor shooting from the last 3 to continue either.

All this is way too early analysis and all these numbers are raw totals so a team who gives up the most wide open 3s might also play the fastest pace so the actual percentage of wide open 3s isn’t the worst.

 

Mister Cat, I didn't insinuate you were lazy.

My opinion is that raw numbers like this, shoudn't be put as any kind of evidence any more because it misleads and misinforms the more casual fans.
I believe that we have reached the point that the nba fan has the knowledge that what matters is the number of wide open 3s and the corner 3s and not just raw numbers,and if not, the role of nba writers should be to educate and give the right perspective in the matter.

However I understand that you and me come from different perspectives because your job is also to appeal to maybe readers who are very casual and if they saw many stats they would stop reading anymore.

I of course cannot appreciate how much hard work is put in the articles I am reading, because I don't have to go through the effort and work myself.
I am just a reader.

But it's the same with every consuming of goods and services.
When we see a product like a tv or a videogame, read a book or watch a tv series or visit a restaurant we make a review and critisism without really understanding the effort and hard work, right? Or we dont really care that much. Same when we offer services to others, people take it for granted and don't really understand the work.

So I can't understand it because it is not my job. It is harsh to say but it is as it is. I can only hope you can also understand that my intentions aren't bad.
I also make harsh critisisms and trash when I read even some books that are deemed literature masterpieces like Dickens and Zola's which have taken years to be written.

I mean it is my honest opinions.
I hope you aren't discouraged or angry by my post.
I apologise if I insulted you.

Maybe if I had better command of the english language I could make a negative critisism without insulting the author. So I am sorry.

 

As someone that interacts with NBA readers across a ton of different platforms, I think your bolded statement is way too aggressive. And as far as the role of NBA writers, I think it has to be a blend over time if you're going to truly convert people. It's not practical on a number of levels to just flip the switch with regards to the use (or lack thereof) of more traditional metrics. For some specialized websites, maybe, but USAT is about broader appeal.

Anyway, as far as the rest, I understand what you're trying to say. All I ask is that in the future, try avoid the broad labels ("extremely superficial and simplistic" was one of the first things you said) and instead just go right into the subjects where you either disagree or think more context is needed. And FWIW, the reason I assumed you didn't fully read the article is because I explicitly stated on multiple occasions that it's too soon to tell whether there's any real improvement or if there's a lot of statistical noise to this. At a bare minimum, though, I figured it was useful context given the total panic from one week ago over raw percentages.

 

Quality of wins on the scrubby teams

Before was a near victory of a low tiered team like the Wizards (gave up 150+ pts), to beating CHI and a star-less GSW by a good margin.

Clippers on Wed.