interesting stat. Houston's .344 is equivalent to shooting two point shots at a .516 clip. unfortunately, Houston is currently shooting .534 from two point range making it more efficient if they just take more two point shots...
Yes. This! And moreover - before 7 games losing streak and... after 5 games winning streak... It's most misleading choise of comparison point which can be done. If Rockets will finish with current winning perecentage it will be 51 - 31 at the end of the season, it was only 45 - 37 last year
Last year the Rockets had a 5 game winning streak leading to their 21-14 record (and 10-2 for twelve games, their hottest streak), and followed that with a 7 game losing streak to end 21-21. After the 21-14 start, Rockets finished 24-23. You think OP chose his 35 game mark at 21-14 for his comparison merely by chance? Maybe he did. But now us followers of his awesome stat thread request that he give us a comparison 7 games from now. Or make it an even 6 and call it the Half Way Point comparison at 41 games. no?
What a masterwork of planning out the thread, huh? Started with an innocent-looking post of player stats for the new year. Then a sprinkling of stat posts here and there to hide his intentions until he was ready to pounce with his agenda-filled post right before the 7 losing streak. The guy must of been planning this for weeks! Soon Clutchfans will be convinced that Lin has to start in a PG centered offense and McHale will have no choice but kowtow to the overwhelming sentiment of this messageboard. He is diabolical genius!! This man must be stopped!!!
How is it misleading? Where do you think I want to lead you guys to? And I don't get your logic, if you spend time to pull out public available data, and list the stats, and you don't use that to make a point, what are you doing? Don't get why you are so sensitive, like everybody have a hidden agenda, what are you afraid of? Plus, if you discredit my intention, would that be able to discredit my analysis?
Injury is a factor, but I think the bigger one is we are changing our team playing style. The team is trying to implement Dwight into a up-tempo team, or fit the team with a slower Dwight. I don't think we reach the middle ground yet. TT experiment took some time and failed, though we didn't really had the PG starter experiment, but the injury pretty much forced that too. In the defensive end, at the beginning of the season, guards were trying to go over the screens and select to trust our centers to protect the rim, it did not work well, then they switch a lot, still a mess, and I think recently, they are trying to mix up things, and even add a little bit zone. Before the training camp, our coaches were saying they want to get the ball out of James Harden's hand, but they end up put the ball into James Harden's hand by move Jeremy to bench. My feeling is that our coaches has not finalized how they want the team to play yet, or they had a wish, but the team could not execute the way coaches wanted. Injury of course does not help, but I'm not sure if we do not have injury, we are a contending team yet.
I don't know what heypartner will say, but I agree with him that it's very misleading. I would say that spoting (by chance or by purpose - no matter) peak, the best point of last season and comparing it to some arbitary point on platau of this season is completely meaningless...
Oh, nothing more boring than a statistician getting defensive when someone points out an alternative conclusion. You need to learn to expect it and treat it as constructive criticism like scientist do with the scientific method. It will improve you. No? Don't Fret. Hollinger's Power Ranking of the Rockets was Widely Questioned Last Year At this point last year, Hollinger's stats had us as 4th best team in the league. That was clearly "misleading" to how good we truly were. There surely is no ulterior motives to Hollinger's power rankings nor active attempt to lead Rockets fans to false conclusions. But, that 4th ranking did misinform based on Hollinger's reputation, regardless of motives. How useful is it to pay much heed to a team on a 5-game winning streak and 10-2 over twelve getting rankeed 4th based on stats, when Hollinger and Morey both laughed that the formula was over-ranking the Rockets at the time. And many of us (pretty much all of us) new the stats did not really mean we were the 4th best team. Peak Last Year vs Random Point This Year All I'm saying is it is not very useful when you try to give power to your comparison in stats last year by showing comparable W/L records when we were at our absolute peak in winning % last year, without at least mentioning that. I didn't even have to look it up. I remembered the losing streak and Hollinger's power ranking prior to it. That is your opening sentence in your post. I'm not getting what you mean by "what a surprise," unless you mean "what a surprise" that we won 10 of 12 games last year to get us to 21-14. This is your second sentence. This statement is more accurate "35 games into the season, we are 22-13, compare to last season at the same time, we were 21-14. Looks the same. At this time last year, we were jizzing our pants with euphoric vigor only to be smacked into reality with an impending 7-game losing streak. But at least we witnessed the potential of the offense. This year we seem to be underachieving, so a more believable 22-13 team. Let's compare the stats." Doesn't sound so sexy when I put it in a more historically accurate tone like that. Your conclusion that we are not showing any improvement would probably not make sense, had you opened your post like that. See?
I feel you jumped up after read my first couple of sentences, without really read through my post. I was not really thought about compare to last season's number till I saw in tweeter people are indicate this comparable result at this stage. So when I look into the numbers, I noticed the main difference are more related to our playing style changes, and realized how much changes of identity of this team for this year vs. last year. And at the end, I said this, and that's my main point of this section: "Overall, the Dwight impact! We are chaning styles of playing, unfortunately, at this stage, we are caught in the middle of this change. I think the team identity is still not clear yet, and some player's role is not well defined yet, hopefully the team will turn the corner in January and become more fun to watch when we hit all star weekend. " You can not deny we are feeling more frustration at this stage than the same time of last season. One of the main reason is that the expectation is totally different. Last year even with James Harden, people rank us as a 35 win team, and we are way beyond expectation. But this year, we were expected to be contenders. By comparing to last season's data, it is clearly that integrating Dwight is not an easy job, it is not just plug in and use. That's why I'm saying I hope we turn the corner before all star weekend. I don't see why I could not state my frustration with the team at this stage, and stating that our team is in the middle of change, thus is not a final product yet is discredit to whatever they have achieved, and what would you think I would have agendas other than trying to understand where we are at? I think you are over sensitive, and being over defensive for the team. And assume people have too many agendas even they are discussing about the team, they might not be "pure" rockets fan.
Agreed. I will point out though that you didn't just point out an alternative conclusion, which I agree with you on. You also accused the statistician of deliberate bias, in which case the criticism is no longer constructive. I guess that is what makes clutchfans clutchfans. People can't just settle for constructive criticism. People really like to go for that knockout punch. Of course, back to your critique, which is valid. It's inaccurate to make a statement like "Wow, last year's team is as good as this year's team." Although TTNN didn't draw this direct conclusion, other posters did. The conclusion you can make is that "Up to this point, the performances from the two teams have been similar." Now, what's not likely to happen is for us to go on a 7 game losing streak for the next few games, but there is still a chance. Either way, I agree we should revisit after 7 or 8 more games.
You might be reading too much into my comments. Yes, I did feel compelled to defend the Rockets (even against their former selves of last year) when you made the W/L comparison and said "what a surprise." "What a surprise" is a statement of contempt for this current Rockets. So expect someone like me to challenge that. But please know, I love your stats and your effort to contribute. I'm not the type of poster who will engage in the battles over sensitivity between life long rockets fans and new ones. You calling the "sensitive" card before me, reeks of a person who thinks that way. I'm not. I find I see more fresh takes (opinions) from new posters than old. I'm a big advocate of new posters. Many people here can confirm that as well as Clutch himself. Cheers. Your phrase "what a surprise" just triggered me to deconstruct your stats to be useless. Sorry I did that. I did the same thing to Hollinger last year when his formula said we were 4th best. But I'm right. This is not defensive...this is about being factual. I'm right. You are wrong. Just like Hollinger's stats were last year. And the next 7 games will prove it. You still haven't said your stats should be measured based on the Rockets Peak of last year. In fact, you said this again. Yes I can. This is completely not true prior to the 10-2 run last year, and after the 7 game losing streak of last year. You are just taking a pulse of fans from their highest of highs last year. Or you are just stating your opinion. At best you are saying we didn't have any high expectations last year, so 45 wins was fine, but this year we are underachieving. Yes, I agree with that.
It's also important to note that last year's Rockets did not suffer injuries to the extent that this year's Rocket has. If this team was completely healthy or at least mostly healthy, I'm sure we could have won at least 2-3 more games. This team lost Lin and Beverley for quite a number of games, and occasionally lost Harden and Parsons. Asik has been gone for a while now and he would have helped this team tremendously off the bench. We were able to get an idea of the potential of last year's Rockets, but we have yet to see how good this team could be when fully healthy.
Okay, I get it now, you disagree that I feel "surprised and frustrated" with our team's current record, and you think that's "misleading". I'd appreciate your caring about my feeling (not sure whether I used the correct font), and I'd be more appreciated if you leave out all the intention, hidden agenda, motivation, etc. personal accuse out of it. Thank you
Okay, I did a little bit more digging into the numbers, and trying to relate them. I tried to make sense of them. However, I could not leave all my feelings out of this. So, please focus on the numbers, and if you don't like my point of view, just skip or ignore my rant part. In addition, when I do data digging, I do have a mind set before I go into it, that's the starting point, and explains how I decide what info I need and how I want to look at it, but my mind set is not always right at the beginning, and lots of times, the numbers would surprise me, and convince me think the other way. It is just my personal style that I still like to state how I think when I start my data digging, but I'd appreciate people would be patient enough to wait to see my summary out of it, rather than jump on my first sentence. end rant.
TTNN, I'd recommending trying to identify the trolls sooner and not bothering to respond to them. 99.99999% of what you posted had nothing to do with W-L record. Missing-the-Point Anal Troll clearly just wanted to harp on something to make himself feel better.
I think it was Aldrich for a few games before going with Smith. We have Asik as our backup center. He's just injured (or don't want to play). Whatever the case, when and if he comes back and play back C, we are a much better team. Barring more injuries, things are looking MUCH better for this team going into the 2nd half of the season than it was compared to last year...
Offensive share distribution Sorry about my terrible title, I don't really have a good one for this section. But this the starting point I'm looking into this set of data. Again, numbers are from NBA.com NBA.com give some detailed usage for each player when they are on the court, and give out what percentage of shots they are taking when they are on court, so here the number is the percent of each player take against their team when they are on court, but not the total percentage occupied as that would need to factor in their play time. I think this number gives a good indication what share they are allowed to occupy in the team offensive side, also a good indication about how much they are involved in the team offense when they are on the floor, how much they demand the ball. As we have 5 player on the floor all the time, the base line is 20% if the ball is distributed evenly. I listed this season's number side by side with last season's number. Here for 2012-2013, I took the full season's number instead of the first 34 games. And for 2013-2014, the numbers are from the first 34 games, that's before 2014.1.1. Did not include recent two games. I listed only FGA, FTA, and TOs, as these three numbers directly involved in offensive possession one player had. One thing I was initially surprised at, is that when you look at James Harden, Chandler Parsons, and Jeremy Lin, their share of offense when they are on court pretty much stayed exactly the same as last season. If we look at FGA, Chandler Parson, Jeremy Lin and T Jones are all roughly stay at where they are at, around 20%. James was our first option of the offense last season, he took 26% of the FGA when he is on court, and with addition of Dwight, he did not unload much of the offensive load, but kept the same percentage of offense. Dwight obvious demand the ball a lot more than Asik, last season Asik took only 15% of FGA, but Dwight got 20%, plus a lot more FTA, thus we could tell he is the second offensive option there. So just look at this, we immediately could tell it is not working, we could not keep everyone at around 20% of offensive share and yet give more than a quarter to James Harden. I do think that's one of the major reason Jeremy was moved out of starters. Since either James Harden or the team do not want to take the ball out of James's hand or change the current offensive distribution. The only way is stagger Jeremy and James' time, so that Jeremy could keep his 20% of offensive share on the floor. On the other hand, Beverley really stands out with his low FGA, he took much less of offensive possessions when he is on the floor, he took only 15% last season as a PG back up, he took still 15% as a starting PG, and also in a three guard rotation. I put Tony Douglas and Aron Brooks' number there as a reference. We could see how unique Beverley is, he don't demand the ball. That makes him a much better fit with James has Beverley helped to put ball in James' hand, and his style of play don't ask for ball in his hand. Now let's talk about Jeremy. He got 20% of his share last season, remember he was not staggering time too much with James Harden, so he demand that 20% of offense when he share the court with James. And this season, he pretty much staggered the time with James whenever there is possibility, yet in total, he did not get more chances than last season. That pretty much telling that when sharing the court with James, Jeremy is playing an even smaller role than he did in last season. And yet, overall, he was remaining the same share when he was on the floor, thus we did not see him dominant the ball that much even when James is off the court. (Well, he did get more than when he share the court with James.) I do think that's one of the expectation difference of most Lin fan had compare to reality. When we talking about Jeremy off the bench because he would have more ball in his hand, I think a lot of Lin fans took that as he would have more ball in his hand compare to last season. But that's not the case, it is pretty much that if Jeremy play too long with starters, his share of offense would be even less. That's why we are seeing now when Beverley is injured, and we don't see much increased production when Jeremy is a starter, as that role is defined, and basically limited him that he could not contribute too much more either, unless James release some of the opportunity to Jeremy, and obviously that's not the team's intention. What we really see Jeremy goes off, is when James is not playing, that's when the opportunities really got opened up for Jeremy. Like it or not, that's the reality. Jeremy took it with a great professionness . It might not be the best situation for him, he might not agree or feel happy with this situation, but that's the team's decision, and he did not throw an Asik move to hurt the team, on the contrary, he is trying hard within his limited space given. And then, A.Brooks. Some people (ABJs??) would say, oh, Beverley is hurt, we should keep Jeremy at bench, and start Brooks. Just looking at the numbers so far, I don't see a reason of doing that, as that would defeat the purpose of starting Beverley. So , I would be really surprised if A.Brooks got to start.
NBAWowy.com stats say differently. When they shared the court last year, Lin's usage rating 20.3. This year, its 20.7. Virtually identical. When Lin plays without Harden this year, his usage is 25.0. Last year, 24.7. Again, practically the same.
Moving Jeremy to the bench makes a lot of sense, since with the addition of Dwight Howard, the starting lineup FGA distribution is off balanced, meaning Dwight needs to be incorporated as an offensive option, and we don't have enough of that for Jeremy. Your data indicates a good justification of why is Lin coming off the bench. Having Patrick Beverley, who don't need the ball in his hand, plays solid d, and have better ball handling skills in the starting lineup is a really good fit not just to compensate the lack of perimeter defense, or in case lack of defensive effort from James Harden, but also balanced out the shot distribution so that Lin's offensive talent is still fully utilized throughout the game. However, I would like to see more stats regarding how well Dwight is doing offensively. If Dwight can become more reliable offensively, it will reduce the burden on James Harden to carry the offensive load, which will help conserve his energy on the defensive side. TTNN, thank you for putting time and effort on these analysis. I do believe that the stats are there but the conclusion drawn are merely opinion. Hence I can only say your analysis is interesting and make sense but I will not treat them as facts. Could you put in more analysis on this team's defensive ends? I am really interested to see more of Patrick Beverley's impact defensively on this team
