No, what you're completely misinterpreting is causation and correlation there chief. We have a ton of blow out wins, and few blow out losses (3 losses by 20+ this year). This leads to a huge margin, and if you just extrapolate numbers off of margin (without looking at the cause) you'd think we would have more wins. It has NOTHING to do with what you proposed, and is actually the exact ****ing opposite. It's that we are so competitive in virtually every game besides our blow out wins that we actually project better than we are. ****ing people need to stop reading in to numbers if you don't know what the Hell to do with them.
As I've always said, based on all advanced metrics we're the most underperforming team in the league. It helps that Asik and Lin regularly sit out in clutch time.
How can we make the playoffs? Well another thing that needs to stop is all this *expletive* spamming to our players and Rockets staff on twitter and such. I'm so fricken tired of reading that crap, I can't imagine how the players feel. I'm sure they deal with hate from other teams fans but they need Rockets fans support not BS. Why does anyone need to spam Parsons, for example, because you hate McHale? Do you think he needs to deal with your problems when they are trying to push for the playoffs? I need my team to focus right now. If we don't make the playoffs, I blame the whiners most of all for distracting my team.
Probably true. Either better coaching or luck would have propel the Rockets to at least 5 more wins by now. This team has talents.
One of the best guard duos. This team sure can get really exciting My favorite quote was the last paragraph on the 5 on 5 pages that stated we were one team that no top seed wants to face.
Your argument is believable if lopsided victories are exclusive to Rocket games. They aren't. Every team has a number of blow outs and bad losses. Good teams have more of the former and fewer of the latter. Look at the margin relative to some other teams with a better win percentage, it's hard not to conclude that this team is underperforming.
Indeed. The Lakers are leading the league in Free Throw differential... they're getting the most attempts in the league, and tied for second in least attempts against them. I hate to be conspiracy minded, but I think the Lakers are making the playoffs if Stern has to have Asik deported to Turkey and Harden disqualified by new facial hair rules to do it. So it's much, much better to be sitting safely ensconced at the sixth seed, or at worst pushed down to the 7th. The Rockets should NOT let it come down to them or the Lakers.
We will actually have to try to out tank the Jazz. That said can the Lakers overtake us for 7th seed? Sure they can, easily I might add with this inconsistent team.
So why is margin not a 100% accurate indicator of a team's record? Oh yeah, because of the causation and correlation thing I pointed out and somehow you ignored that entirely and just redundantly stated that it is perfectly accurate and that somehow we're underachieving (probably fits your narrative for the team)... Why are we artificially high on Hollinger's rankings? Because he weighs margin so heavily... Does anyone think we are actually the 4-7th best team in the league based on where we float in those rankings? Margin is an indicator of team success, but not the only one (it's called weighing variables)...
I just checked Hollinger power rankings one more time to see where we are at and I think we are where we belong. Talent wise we are almost even with Denver yet they have a better coach. Hence the place in standings.
I ignored your causation statement because it's flawed. Margin alone won't predict a team's record, but when evaluated RELATIVE to other teams it works pretty well? Why? Because there is a finite number of nba teams, with finite number of points scored per season. Average margin is how those points are distributed among the teams.
It works pretty well but it's not a one to one relationship. That guy is right, you have to look at the causation. The less reliable the data from margins becomes(blowsout wins/losses, close wins/losses) the less it'll mean. This is why the Lakers have a better differential than ATL, UTA, GSW, BK, but a worse record. This is why OKC has a better differential than Spurs and a much better differential than Heat but has a worse record than both. For example, HOU is +207 points differential, but we've had 3 individual games where we were +31, +33, +45, on the other hand, we only have one game -30. This sways our differential heavily but for our record it doesn't matter if we win by 1 point or 45. Miami Heat have the best record in the league but are only 3rd in differential, they only have one game +30. It's no coincidence OKC has the highest point differential with +594 but only have the 3rd best record. They have +30, +30, +31, +45 diffs and no losses with a deficit above 20.
Sure, there are individual outlying games, but my assumption is that every team has a handful of outliers that net out...though this may not be the case. Margin is an indicator of performance relative to the teams you have played. So is the record. While not a perfect correlation, it is a pretty good indicator.
