Wayne Winston: Rockets won't be among most improved teams

that's nice... but he's not at MIT.

 

What's with all the hate?

 

TLDR;

-He names bad teams
-Asik's motivation to play up for question after trade rumors
-Howard wasn't that great a player last season
-Howard has some defensive problems
-Howard is now more injury prone
-Jeremy Lin sucked last season - bad 3 pt shooter, bad defense
-Whether Rockets win West or not rests on whether Jeremy Lin can recreate Linsanity

I give him a 2/10. 2 for trying.

 

Yeah sure...

 

He certainly didn't blow me away with his analysis of any of the teams.

 

"Dwight Howard was not that great a player last year" Dwight averaged 17pts 12 rebs 2 blks in a down year when he was injured.. what is he talking about!?

"Jeremy Lin was a Defensive Liability." Jeremy was a TO over machine not a defensive liability.

It's like this guy was just talking to talk.

I wonder what the Rockets did to garner such disrespect. can't wait.

 

-Forgot who JJ Redick was.
-Forgot that the NBA record was 72 wins.
-Forgot the other famous person from Livingston, NJ.

Sounds like early signs of senility and dementia setting in.

 

Guy downplays both Dwight and Jlin but doesn't note they were making their way back from injuries and their second half splits were much better.

 

Hopefully he's smart enough to realise that.

 

I hope other teams underestimate us the same way.

 

Jack makes Clev 10 games better LOL after hearing that dude lost me with that nonsense. No need to hear anymore. bwhahahahaahah

 

He is a attention seeking joker. Dude doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.

 

"They overachieved last year."

That's nice, but our scoring margin (the best indicator of how good a team really is) had us as a 49-50 win team. We underachieved.

He doesn't mention Howard playing much better in the second half. He underrates Howard's defense. He underrates Jeremy Lin (at worst he was an average player last year) And he hardly even mentions the fact that we'll have 48 minutes of elite defense from the center position, even though he recognizes that we were a really good team with Asik on the floor, and terrible without.

None of his "analysis" was remotely insightful. But hey, he said "regression to the mean" so he must be smart.

 

Yep. Blame it on the Asian guy. If we didn't make it, of course it's JLin's fault.

 

Whoa. Imma take that sports analytics class he's gonna do at UH just so I can "actually" learn from Morey

 

Teaching at UH (at least one semester) teaching sports analytics, which some Rockets may come to. Daryl's expressed some interest.

Best offseason?

Defined as "Which team do I think will improve their win total the most over last season?"

The team I think will improve the most is the Cleveland Cavaliers and the reason for that is Jarrett Jack, who I have as a very good player. Kyrie Irving always gets hurt but I think he'll miss less games this year than last year. Varejao hardly played last year. He's a good player. I don't know if they'll get anything out of Bynum. I would say, they won 24 games. They should win at least 10 more than that.

I like the Pelicans a lot. Eric Gordon is like Kyrie Irving - always hurt. He's a great player if he can stay healthy. Jrue Holiday is an all-star. That's a dynamite backcourt if it's healthy and Tyreke Evans on the bench. Not a bad player as a sub and Ryan Anderson if he can get over the horrible suicide of his GF. He had an off-year last year but the year before he was fantastic. Their front court is suspicious and they do play in the West. They'll be a vastly improved team.

Clippers?

I think they'll be a better team but they won 56 games. If you want to predict they'll win 10 more games or more like the Pelicans or Cavs, you'd have to predict they win 66 games, which is what Miami would win next year. I doubt that. They can spread the floor and have Doc Rivers and it's hard to evaluate coaches. I'm not sure he's a great coach. Maybe he is. They have as good a chance as any to win the West next year with Westbrook a question mark, the Spurs will always be there. We've written off the Spurs for years.

Who else will be vastly improved?

I feel bad picking all these bad teams because it's easier but I think the Wizards will be really quite good. A healthy John Wall, if you believe he'll be healthy, add Otto Porter who is supposed to be a fairly decent player, I think they'll improve by 10 wins.

Detroit, they lost Will Bynum, that's addition by subtraction. I don't think he's that good of player for them. They have a really good frontcourt. My only recommendation is don't play Brandon Jennings that much because he's a really bad defender.

Rockets?

Vegas thinks they'll improve by 8-9 wins. We had Asik as a great player last year. Now Asik, will he be traded? He wants to be traded, they don't want to trade him. I don't know if him and Howard can play together. We didn't have Dwight as a great player last year. Assuming that's true, why wasn't he great? A., he might have been hurt. Is he physically healthy now? Big men, when they break down don't have a history of doing that great.

(Henry Abbott) Last years Rockets team without Asik on the floor, which is how they will play with Dwight presumably, was a horribly defensively team. For Dwight to be on the floor with a good defensive team, he has to play as well as one of the best defensive players in the league or else they're starting out behind, if you see what I mean.

I agree. I had Asik as one of the best defensive players in the league in the minutes he played. They were a terrible team with him off the floor. So I guess they'll be much better with Asik as the backup than they were with whoever backed up Asik last year. Then Jeremy Lin, I think this is the key factor, he was really good with the Knicks as we know but he played poorly with Houston last year. He was a defensive liability. He couldn't hit the threes. Will he work PnR well with Dwight and can Dwight make up for his defensive shortcomings that maybe Asik couldn't? If Jeremy Lin can be as good as he was during Linsanity, look out for Houston. Them and the Clippers would be the best in the West. I think 20 games in we'll know, you can come back and ask me, is Lin playing at a higher level due to Howard getting the minutes instead of Asik? Vegas has them at 54 wins, that's a lot. They overachieved last year in all likelihood. They're a smart team. They take the most threes and layups of any team which is what you should be doing.

Miami?

Pretty neutral. They lost Mike Miller. They won 66 games. Anyone who says they'll improve, that means they'll be the best team in NBA history because the Bulls won 72 games right? They key I guess is Greg Oden. He won't improve the regular season win total but if he can help them win one or two playoff games...their improvement will show up in the postseason like the Clippers more than the regular season.

Why don't you like the Heat?

I don't like the way the team was formed by the players basically picking the team and LeBron divorced his wife on national TV. That's what he did to Cleveland. Interesting point on Cleveland, if they can win 41 games this year without LeBron, he's worth at least 20 wins, would he think about going back if he knew he had a good core? If Anthony Bennett, who I didn't mention, is anything like a number one pick, Cleveland could win 40 games if they stay healthy, squeeze in the playoffs, and add LeBron to that mix, that's a team that can win a championship. Winning a championship in Cleveland and Miami would be something that no one has ever done, let's put it that way.

 

I bet he's from LA.

 

My god JR how do you do that so fast?