Where were the Rockets going to be next season before they signed Dwight? Analytics that I have read indicate that they would win 50+ games next season. Heck, advanced stat analysis last season said that they should win 50 games last season based on personnel. I guess that turning the entire roster on its head 48 hours before the seasons first game will take a toll. How much will the Rockets young player development affect their performance? I would not be surprised next season to see Lin being more effective, Harden improving his defense, Parson making a small stride forward, the PF spot stabilizing and Asik being marginally better. Good golly miss Molly! I would put the Rockets in the 54 win range next season. Without considering Howard. Howard changes everything. Given time to heal I expect him to approach his performance from the 2011-2012 season. It is difficult to get a handle on how much the addition of Howard will improve the Rockets. I do expect the Rockets to have 2 of the top 8 players in the NBA starting next year. And the best center and shooting guard in the NBA. Also they might have one of the top 5 benches in the NBA with Bev and Asik. Those are two solid NBA starters on most other teams. So I am going to look at another source for an estimate of how many wins the Rockets will have next season. Where do I always start when evaluating a team's prospects? I start with Wins Produced (WP) from wagesofwins.com. They use a reasonable although complex formula to estimate wins produced, incorporating basically everything other models use plus injury history, age, defense, etc. An explanation of their methodology can be found at http://wagesofwins.com/how-to-calculate-wins-produced/. Their methodology produces at times strange results. For instance next season they predict the LAL as one of the worst teams in the NBA. But given their current injury woes, the age of their roster, and their lack of any decent player beyond their top three is that such a strange prediction? They also predict that the Jazz will win 48 games next season. Why? The altitude factor. Their model is head and shoulders above most other models in the number of inputs used and their precise weighting. So according to WP where do the Rockets stand next season? Player 2013-14 Wins James Anderson 1 Terrence Jones 2.4 Patrick Beverley 8.7 Omri Casspi 3.1 Omer Asik 7.6 Donatas Motiejunas -0.5 Greg Smith 5.3 Jeremy Lin 3 James Harden 12.6 Chandler Parsons 8.1 Dwight Howard 13.1 Francisco Garcia 1.6 Tyler Honeycutt 0.1 Tim Ohlbrecht -3 While the roster may not reflect Morey's latest wheeling and dealings, it is representative. How many wins are there? 63. Who is above them in the WP rankings? Only OKC. Does OKC's position pass the sanity check? Sure. Durant, Westbrook, Stef, Ibaka, Perkins. I might not agree with it, but it sounds reasonable. Sixty three wins next season. Holy frickin mackerel. OK. From an advanced metrics standpoint the Rockets will do more than well next year. How about their weaknesses as a team? A few days ago I started investigating the Rockets performance last season using teamrankings.com nbastats.com databases. What follows is a stack ordered list of my impressions of where the Rockets need to improve next season. 1: Team Turnovers - The Rockets ranked 30th in the league last season in total team turnovers and turnovers per possession. How bad is 30th? 4.4 turnovers per game worse than the number one ranked team, the Knicks. What was the cost? About 4 points per game. Fixing the turnovers to league average means the defense would give up 2 points a game less. Because Howard will have minimal ball handling duties, it is hard to imagine any great impact in this area. However some improvement can be expected by having another option on offense. After the initial frenetic fast break, next season I believe that the Rockets will slow it down. They will have a top 10 or better half court offense with Howard. Harden dribbling out the shot clock is probably a thing of the past. When their pick and roll is the most efficient offensive play in the NBA why do anything else when there are seven seconds left on the shot clock? 2: Defense - The Rockets were 29th last season in opponents PPG. Why? Houston ranked 28th last year allowing 24.6 PPG from beyond the arc. Houston was somewhat better in defensing the 2 point shot - 21st allowing 61 ppg. But that certainly is not a stellar performance. However Houston was not foul prone, ranking 10th in the NBA in % of points allowed at the free throw line. So what happens when Howard is added? Houston was a top 10 defensive team last season when Asik was on the floor. Howard towers over Asik defensively. So in my mind you are looking at a Rockets team that is top 3 with Howard and again top 10 with Asik. There is a further factor to consider. When Harden is not having to expend all his energy on the offensive side of the ball, the Rockets may see a significant increase on the defensive side from him. 3: One more viable offensive option. Harden last year finished 6 or so possessions a game banging the ball on the court. The pick and roll with Howard will often be run twice per possession instead of just once. The P&R was the most used offensive play for the Rockets last season. However it was an early possession play. With Howard it could become a late possession play. Anyway, if I can identify emerging trends and opportunities Morey will certainly be all over them in a major way. And McHale by default. Is there anything but optimism about the Rockets next season? I hope not.
And didn't I say "While the roster may not reflect Morey's latest wheeling and dealings, it is representative." ???
I have to completely disagree with that assessment. Certainly PER is inferior. APER is not much better. Sabermetrics is obviously the best choice, but not only is it inaccessible to many fans, it provides only the base level of data. Win share is the best metrics that the average rabid fan can access.
Win shares is okay...wins produced on the other hand is pretty bad. It way overvalues low-usage efficient players. Did Omer Asik really contribute only two more wins than Greg Smith? It also values 3 pointers twice as much as a normal field goal. For instance here is the wins produced of players last season http://www.thenbageek.com/players Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Chris Paul, James Harden. Looks normal so far. Tyson Chandler and Serge Ibaka? Are those really top 10 players in terms of wins produced for their team? Keep going...Jimmy Butler in like 10th place, then Thabo Sefolosha. Tim Duncan produced 0.2 more wins than Reggie Evans according to wins produced. It's a bad stat.
This is a rather poor refutation of the metric. Jimmy Butler and Tyson Chandler dont fit the standard notion of what an impactful basketball player is, so any metric that ranks them highly is therefore wrong? Wins Produced has its flaws but you haven't identified any in your critique outside of "Tyson Chandler produces lots of wins? Nah, dont think so."
Here is a question for you. Why do we need Harden or even Dwight when Beverley and Smith combined more wins (14) and for only $1M/year?
Because Beverley and Smith's productivity only occurs when they are not the focus of defensive attention. The attention Harden commanded freed them up. No Harden, life becomes very difficult offensively for either player. Just like no Parker or Duncan, Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard's effectiveness dwindles.
The stats are flawed in so many ways. If that's the case, why pay Dwight $20M when you can find another Beverley and Smith for more win production and for 1/20 of salary?? You have to remember that Smith only played 5% of team's total minutes (1,110/19,680) and he produced whopping 5.3 wins. Beveryley even less, he only played 3% and produced 8.3 wins. Does that make sense to you??
I have never liked formulas which predict a teams win as often certain players are grossly undervalued someone like Garcia at 1.6 compared people who are dam right overvalued like smith at 5.3 which would even baffle michel Jordan and the rest of the bobcats front office.. Anyways good read after you got over the wins prediction, and I hope our turnover problems can be minimalised due to maturity and growth in our core leaders
Because models currently never take into consideration consideration who you are playing against. If you want food for thought check out http://www.82games.com/1213/1213HOU2.HTM
