[Lowe Post] Howard Beck "leaning hard" Giannis, Lowe at a standstill

Personal turnovers mean literally nothing.

It’s all about team turnovers. Rockets are consistently fantastic at taking care of the ball, largely because of James Harden and the system his greatness has created.

 

What would happen if you swapped Harden for Giannis?

Would Giannis save the Rockets from their terrible start????

Would the bucks be chasing the best record of all time with Harden? Yes


We know who the real MVP is.

 

Not so clear because you have to fill the Bucks' PF position as well. They dun play the same positions.

Harden and Faried or Tucker for Giannis/Brogdon?

 

I watched Giannis play & he's not worth the hype. He looks like a freakishly athletic raw player, superb defender, but MANY holes on offense. The Buck's are great because they have a fantastic coach. No NBA team has a whole defensive scheme to stop Giannis. He can't shoot. How can we sit here and give the MVP to a player with no jumpshot? The media has been brainwashing ppl into believing Harden can't defend.

 

Listened to this today and Zach Lowe pissed me off.

Before he said anything good about James he had to continue the narrative that he's a bad defender.

Something along the lines of "He's really not a good defender, the rockets have to switch because he's not willing to do the work".

He did credit James' post D, but didn't acknowledge that being top in deflections and 2nd in steals is putting in work. Yeah, James can't move sideways and anyone can blow by him, but he has worked his ass off defensively this year.

Lowe is meant to watch the games and be well prepared and objective. He's better than just lazily peddling old narratives that James doesn't try defensively.

 

Harden being slow on the perimeter and struggling to contain the dribble isn't outdated. I see every game how Harden doesn't move well on defense in space, signaling to others to pick up other players whizzing by him as he looks for a stationary player to pick up. This is a limitation that affects our team defense. It is especially noticeable on nights when the defense does a poor job.

Now, you want to say that Harden being part of the team defense and therefore sharing responsibility for it when the defense struggles is a tautology. I'm not going to dispute that -- it does seem a rather obvious point to me. So why are we arguing over whether the Rockets being horrible at defense to start the season should negatively impact Harden's case? Of course it should, at least by a little bit.

It is hiding what would be a shortcoming (Harden on the perimeter), and putting Harden in a position to maximize his strengths (stationary, in the post, where he can use his lower body strength and quick hands to be disruptive).

If we can get the opposing player to try to postup Harden with a mediocre or inexperienced post player, that's a plus for us. I don't deny that.

OK, please do.

Sure, go ahead.

I don't agree with this analysis. First of all, how often is Harden even guarding an offensive threat to start the possession? Second, most teams do not get into their action with isolation from the perimeter (the Rockets are a major outlier in this regard). They start with some sort of dribble hand off or ball screen. This gives Harden the opportunity to switch off the ball-handler. And ending up with Harden as the designated rebounder going after a contested board against opposing bigs is a bad scenario for us. It is not a strength. And this also answers the question as to why teams would prefer to ISO against Capela versus Harden. You suggest the motivation would be to remove Capela's rim protection. I think it has at least as much to do with compromising our ability to rebound off a miss.

Harden moves the least on defense on our team. In fact, league wide, no player moves less on defense than Harden who has played at least 250 total minutes -- except for Dirk Nowitzki. The three players who move the least on our team (in order, Harden, Paul, and Gordon) are also the three players we rely on most to drive our offense. I do not think it is coincidence that the highest usage player in the league (Harden) also is asked to move less than anyone else in the league on defense outside a 40 year old man who can barely run. Harden was second to Nowitzki last year too, and he moved the least of all eligible players the year before that.

Sure, I'm interested.

 

No, I do not. Your second sentence is incorrect. Those range of games Harden was also below average, not just by this season's standard, but by the prior two seasons standards. Just not as bad as the first 10 games.

We disagree on what Beck meant. And the numbers I cited, which cover mainly just the offense and does not say much about credit/blame on defense, can't be used to negate Beck's statement.

You are apparently confused on what I am referring to when I say ORtg. NBA.com does not provide that statistic, to my knowledge. What they call offensive rating is just the team offensive efficiency when the player is on the floor. I'm referring to ORtg statistic that bbref provides, invented by Dean Oliver and described in more detail in Basketball on Paper.

Where would you say Harden should have ranked in the MVP ladder when we were 11-14? Near the top? Based on your arguments so far (Harden can't be held responsible for his team's record), I would suppose that's what you think. I'm not with you on that.

 

Harden's numbers was really bad at the start of the year (relative to his performance in recent seasons), and only on the lower end for a stretch of games after that. And you think it's somehow inappropriate for me to look at the total stretch?

But, fine, we can look at 10-game windows if you like. The caveat is that the smaller the window you look at the more randomness does actually play a role. But since you're so interested in what he did without Carmelo, let's look:



Games 11 to 22 this year contains a 10 games stretch (games 13 to 22) which is his 6th lowest rated 10 game stretch of the last 3 seasons, outside of any stretch of games he played alongside Melo. This coincides with a stretch of games (without Melo) in which the Rockets went 3-7 (our worst 10 games stretch as a team in terms of W-L record in the past 3 seasons).

 

I think he was being sarcastic.

 

Ok maybe not.

 

You just gave the MVP to Giannis by using a “losing Anderson” argument.

 

You just said James can't move sideways and anyone can blow by him, and yet you still have a problem with Lowe saying he's not a "good" defender? Hmmm.

Swiping at the ball rather than trying to stay in front of your man is not really putting in work on the defensive end, IMO. Maybe that's what Harden needs to do to not be a liability on defense and conserve energy for offense, so overall its the best thing for him (and the team) to do. That doesn't mean you ignore it and only give him credit for the things he does well. That's not how you assess the totality of what a player brings to his team.

He is willing to hold his ground against bigger players in the post and battle them for a bit before going for the swipe. That's putting in some work. Credit him for that.

 

fwiw: You know, I already know these stats...in other flavors like ORtg, etc...as the first 1-10 games was a big National Debate, and I ran these numbers a lot, and followed several analytics guys on the topic of "what's wrong with the Rockets." I was just trying to educate you As this exercise of the "Melo Effect" seems to be new to you.​

That Graph looks perfectly fine with me. 22-26 are perfectly healthy numbers for Harden, considering the sensitivity of small data sets.

You're trying way too hard. There is nothing there. It should tell you to look at the first 10 games only, when looking at offense. That's what that data is showing. Look at ORtg too.

 

You call it hiding. I also call Paul, Rivers, Green and Gordon being switched to the Post as an exploited shortcoming. We see that a lot, maybe less after Paul's injury. Our defense is equally designed to not let that happen. That's also a major reason we try to give Harden these assignments. It's smart defense, and Harden is good at it.

And yes, you can use the Tautology of saying Harden's defense shares in the woes, in the sense that he is not an impact defender like Giannis to improve it, and never will be. But that wasn't the Beck comment. You're off track. And your analysis of Harden's offensive performance vs previous years to defend Beck, is what I'm applying to Harden's defense ... has improved this year...noticeably.

Summary:

• imo, Harden is just doing playoff-level defense, with improved awareness over time of what Bzdelik wants.
• Harden defense is not cited as being poor in the playoffs.
• It don't recall people show poor performance videos of his playoffs.
• So, imo, it's simply that defense Fockass appears to be one of his improvement areas...simply get conditioned well enough where he can do it all year. That simple.

Hey, I can't get bogged down describing Bzdelic's defense during the day today. Mabye Saturday.

Suffice it to say, I predict the media will start reporting Harden's defense as good. JVG already has.

Spoiler: ORtg Stat NBA v BBRef

The NBA lists it as OffRtg, and calls it Offensive Rating.

You're apparently confused how easy it is to calculate ORtg if you just count up the possessions, rather than use an estimating formula. Dean Oliver doesn't own the Stat, because it isn't really a formula. His formula is how to *estimate* it.

NBA no longer uses an estimate of possessions (per some stathead here at cfnet saying that). Estimating possessions from box is the only reason the formula is needed.

The BBref forumla is now not needed, except for historical purposes. I now use NBA for the official ORtg on all new years. I recommend you making the switch, too, unless you're doing historical analysis from boxscores.

 

This seems to me like a case of analytics not really even being needed.

Harden is bad at defense on the perimeter. He is good at defense in the post. On the whole he's now slightly above average at defense. This is because (i) the scheme minimizes him on the perimeter where possible, and (ii) he minimizes his liability by becoming excellent at deflections.

Have to give him and them credit at least.

Offensively, Harden wasn't quite as "amazing" to start the year. He wasn't bad... and any other year, those are MVP numbers on a stand alone basis.

But the Rockets sucked, and Giannis was REALLY good, too.

We all know that if the records were closer, none of this advanced analytical type research matters. Harden would win.
We all know that if this was Lebron in 3rd with these stats, or Steph scoring 36 a game while KD and Klay or Dray missed time, they'd win the MVP.

Harden is up against record, narrative and a player on the best team that is also putting up insane numbers.

 

Three points about his write-up that tip me off Lowe might want to tone down his ego, implying he is a student of Bzydelic's defense:

1. Lowe says we switch everything. That's not true. We are a Catch team. We don't switch perimeter flairs away from ball, for instance. We don't switch when it isn't needed, either. We have situational calls too, between the players. We can also Tag.
   
   
2. We switch in order to flatten the Warriors, by using aggressive Catch to stop cuts/slip. No cuts and slips, and the Worriers are flattened. Even great teams with great defenders can't chase the Warriors. Bzdelik would design this defense with Harden or not.
   
   
3. It's not clear what all the situations Lowe is talking about wrt boxing out. We had a systemic rebounding problem that was exploited. It wasn't just Harden. And a primary cause of it was our reliance on Trapping the Box help defense. I agree there are times Harden can box out better, but also say Lowe is probably mixing up the times Harden's assignment is to leave his rebounding position ... and that was the exploit (by pulling out Capela first), and it was more than one player ... it was a systemic issue, that Rogers tried to fix, and Bzdelik later.

But as usual for Lowe, the entirety of the comments are solid, except I'd add one more thing...Harden defensive Fockass is at playoff levels all year. Harden defense goes up with effort and Fockass. I don't think Lowe has noticed that. He is not getting exploited on perimeter anymore than in Playoffs, which traditionally is OK.

We saw him turn away Kawhi, and that's just one memorable anecdote. imo, he came into the year devoted to improving conditioning so he could put out playoff effort on defense all year, at it shows.

 

I see you want to completely erase the bad start of the season from Harden's record, attributing all the blame to Carmelo and anyone else except for him. I don't think Harden is blameless for the first 10 games, just because Carmelo was on the team.

And you think the subsequent 15 games where we still couldn't quite turn things around also don't count because Harden was "perfectly fine" while averaging 6 turnovers a game (and the Rockets were 5th worst in the league in that stretch in protecting the ball)? Hmmm. Of course you can try to slice up the numbers and then bring up "sensitivity of small data sets" and try to dismiss the original point that way.

Harden is the clear-cut MVP if you only look at games since mid December, in my view. But the start of the season dampens his case, to where Giannis's candidacy has to be looked at very closely. Harden was not an MVP-worthy player for the first two months of the season based on the 11-14 start. I think this is essentially what Beck was saying, and I see nothing wrong in it. Meanwhile, Giannis has been atop of near the top of the MVP leader board throughout the season. That can't just be discounted in the final analysis.

 

Nope. This is how NBA.com defines OffRtg:

"Measures a team's points scored per 100 possessions. On a player level this statistic is team points scored per 100 possessions while he is on court"

I'm not referring to team points scored per 100 possession while a player is on the court. That's a team statistic. The stat I'm referring to is an individual player efficiency stat. More explanation of it is here:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ratings.html

ORtg and USG are complementary stats for individual players. USG estimates the percentage of possession a player is responsible for, and ORtg tells you how many points that player is responsible for producing divided by the total possessions that player is responsible for using. Great offensive players, therefore, are able to have high ORtg as well as high USG.

 

Laugh all you want but do the thought scenario- "how many GM's would pick Harden over Giannis?" I don't think a lot of them would.
I'd still give the MVP to Harden. But, he's a lot smaller and a lot less athletic than Giannis. That's kind of a big deal. Same reason I'd take Durant over Curry to compare a few, and I think most GM's would, and you've heard Kerr say as much (Durant's a better player- Curry is heart and soul of team and more important to winning for them). It's a different argument. I just don't ever have a problem when someone says I'm voting for who I think the best player is. In my world I'm fine with Mike Trout having 2 MVP's and I'd be fine with him having 6 MVP's to cross sports.
Final thought- you say it's not even close, Harden wins. The voting will turn out differently (Giannis will win- I'm pretty certain). You can choose to react to this disconnect by saying- "I think they got it wrong and Harden was more valuable" or you can say "All these people are idiots that know nothing about basketball and they are wrong, stupid or out to get my choice." I prefer option 1 to option 2 personally. Like I said- Harden would get my MVP vote but Giannis is a special, special player that I think is the best player in the league (or maybe behind AD).