I was taking a look at some of the 4 Factors team stats on basketball-reference.com just now. For those that aren't familiar with it, "4 Factors" is just a way to break down offensive (or defense) into components that determine how good you are on that end. Read more about it here. I was interested in how the Rockets stacked up relative to other teams in terms of these factors. I standardized the stats so that greater than 0 is good, less than 0 is bad, and close to 0 is about average. Below is a color-coded table of all the teams in the league, where green means its a strength, red means its a weakness, and yellow means its neither. Its kind of a big table, so click on the spoiler button below to see it. Spoiler The final columns show which factor (offense and defense differential) is the team's greatest strength and which factor is the team's greatest weakness. The notable thing here is that the Rockets don't have one area in which they are really strong or really weak, as reflected by the very last column. Most teams either have a clear edge in one factor, have a clear disadvantage in one factor, or both. We're just sort of ... well, in the middle. Same old story. Later on, I might post a similar table based on team Synergy stats which break things down by play type (ISO, pick-and-roll, transition, spot-up, etc.). I think that could be interesting. Update: Synergy Team Stats Because there are a lot of factors here, I am breaking up the table into offense, defense, and net points. For each play type on offense and defense, I show % of total plays that were of that type and the points-per-play scored. The color coding is as before (green is good, red is bad, yellow is neutral). The final "net points" table shows the net points scored relative to opponent for each play type, per 100 total plays. Synergy Offense Spoiler Synergy Defense Spoiler Synergy Net Points Spoiler
True. And maybe that explains it. The team is so inconsistent, that you can't really predict where they'll get an advantage. Though breaking down their offense/defense into a different set of factors would show some clear strengths and weaknesses, so maybe this isn't the best way to judge the team. For example, points on post ups or on ISO type plays, would I think be a real weakness for us. That's why a similar breakdown with the Synergy data would probably be more interesting.
Well, they are currently the 2nd worst team in LEAGUE HISTORY in terms of the "SRS" power ranking at b-r.com. http://www.basketball-reference.com...&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=srs&order_by_asc=Y Look at how huge the gap is between their SRS and the next worst from this season. http://www.basketball-reference.com...&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=srs&order_by_asc=Y They are comically bad.
Steve francis .................................................................kyle lowry Cuttino mobley..............................................................kevin martin Shandon anderson/glen rice.........................................parsons/courtney Maurice taylor ...............................................................scola Kelvin cato...................................................................... Dalembert Wow! History repeats itself.
LOL wtf? Those players have nothing in common except the position they play in. Scola and Taylor aren't even the same race. Also Cato was given an outrageous contract for multiple years and we'll only be paying 2M to Dalembert next season. This is like saying JVG...RA...Mchale WOw! History repeats itself.
-This really is eerie similar with the exception of maybe the Rice/CLee comparison. -Franchise could do a little bit of everything like Lowry. Both really good rebounding points. -Kmart is a better offensive player than Cat but Cat had better D. -Cato and "the bear"(still hate this wanna b nickname) are both defensive centers. -Mo Taylor and Luis are the best comparison because both are talented with offense but absolutely NO DEFENSE.
Bump: added table for synergy team stats comparisons to original post, which provides a more defined picture of the team's strengths and weaknesses relative to other teams. On offense their strengths are spot-up shooting, points off offensive rebounds. They are above average efficiency-wise scoring out of isolation and off picks in pick and roll plays (which suggests pretty good individual guard play, mainly I think Lowry and Dragic). The weaknesses are post up offense and anything going towards the basket (rolling off a pick and roll, scoring off basket cuts). On defense, we do a pretty good job guarding against isolation and contesting spot up shooters. Even though we are an offensive rebounding team, we also do a decent job in defending against transition scores relative to the rest of the league. Our weaknesses on defense look to be defending against the roll man on pick and rolls, contesting shots off ball screens or hand offs, and also prevent scores off offensive rebounds. Basically, we need to be tougher inside and battling around screens. The net points table shows which areas we have the biggest edge and biggets disadvantage. Huge edge in points of spot up perimeter and mid-range shooting, and also an edge (surprisingly) scoring on isolation plays. Biggest disadvantage is post-ups and scoring off screens.
i wonder if there is a way to correlate some of these statistics by player measurements. the rockets have looked and played really small in the last few games. i just keep thinking... if we were just a little taller, longer reach... each player at every position was above avg for things like height, wingspan, etc... where's kevin durant when you need him.
I applaud all the effort, but if our greatest strength is rebound % - something is wrong with this chart... cause nobdy will put a body on someone and box out...
We're above league average in both offensive and defensive rebound% over the entire season. However, during the past 3 weeks our rebounding has really gone south, as you can see (chart shows 10-game moving average of our rebound rating, lg avg is 50%):
That's about the same time Bud stopped getting decent minutes. More Kmart and Lee in place of Bud = less rebounding?
Maybe. Dalembert and Lowry are also rebounding less. Plus, Jordan Hill rebounded pretty well in his limited minutes.
Sad to say, it still says we're at the mediocre level with the current squad. The average of all the inconsistencies puts us at the near 0 point. We neither excel nor truly suck. "Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."
