Rocket player STATs Review upto 1.1.2014

Time per touch

SportsVU track the number of times a player touches and possesses the ball, where those touches occur on the court, how long the player possessed the ball and the number of points, assists and turnovers that occur with the ball in his possession.

So take the possession time/touches per game, we could get the estimate of time per touch, and for the sake of meaning, I convert the number into seconds instead of minutes.

I know people have been taken the possession time directly from NBA.com and claim James Harden is a ball hog, but he actually has lots of touches per game, thus I'm wondering what does it looks like if we normalize the ball holding time with number of touches.



Okay, sorry that I forgot to include the league average again here. League average of time/touch is 2.37 sec, around where Parsons is.

However, for PGs, they walk the ball up to the front court every possession, thus it is rightfully they will have much longer time holding on the ball. Also for player need to create for themselves, and/or create for other people, (most PGs), they will hold on the ball a bit longer while probing, and of course, ball hog will hold on the ball too. It is a bit hard to distinguish between ballhog vs. PG play though.

However, within Rockets, PG role is really faded, and James Harden though not walk up the ball all the time, but he does gets the ball and initiate the offense, thus that time got split between PGs and James Harden, thus we could see that all our three PGs and James Harden are above average in terms of time/touch. And look at the numbers, looks to me A.Brooks is a little ball hogger, more so than James Harden even.

Not sure whether it is me only or not, I do feel that when A. Brooks was playing together with James Harden, he is defer less to James compare to Jeremy or Patrick, he would hold on the ball and look for his own shots. When he is on the floor, he took a bit more share of FGA too. So for those ABJ (anyone but Jeremy) wondering whether A. Brooks would start over Jeremy while PB is hurt, I guess that would not happen. (On the other hand, A. Brooks could organize offense much better than Beverley, so there is no need for Jeremy to lead the second unit there either.)

On the other hand, player who do not create for themselves tend to pass out the ball or shoot it pretty quickly, thus would spend less time hold the possession. eg. Casspi/TJones/Garcia. Parsons start to do more play making this season, thus we see him somehow stay in between our guards and bigs.



While we were complaining about James Harden ball hog, Jeremy ball sticking, lets put them into the league environment. James Harden had average time/touch of 4.10 sec, Jeremy had 3.79 sec and AB had 4.36 sec. In this graph, I highlighted players hold on the ball for average more than 4.5 sec per touch, and we got a full lists of PGs here. And as a reference, we could see where Jeremy sit at, and Beverley spend even less time with the ball than Jeremy. Obviously in this team, PG's role is weakened, and I guess any other PG come to this team, and their normal play would be considered too sticky then.

Sorry that I will take this opportunity to rant a little bit here. When TJ was encouraged to bring the ball up and initiate a fast break, I got really confused on our team's philosophy. Based on their speed and ball handling, they are pretty lucky if they could hold on the ball and look for their own shot before defense is set, no one would anticipate they could create for others or deliver a good pass with that speed. Don't we worry about opportunity cost here? I really hate to see Casspi, TJ grab a board, and look off our guards, bring the ball up awkwardly, face a defender, prob a little bit and try to get their own and figure out they has no chance, pass the ball to our guards, and we pretty much have to face a set defense there. Somehow that just looked so selfish, and I'm not sure with a young team, how can they be disciplined if they are allowed to branch out in so many ways. end rant, sorry.

 

Offensive Play involved per min

I consider offensive play include two aspects, 1) your own shots, 2) your creating for assists. Now player tracking data provide a lot more info regarding pass and assists, that make it is more reliable to do the calculation.

So for one's own shots, I take FGA+0.44*FTA+TOV. (don't ask me why 0.44 as weighting factor, I guess that's a way of roughly estimate how many possessions was used to generate that much FTA.) These number were from their general stats.

For one's assist attempts, I take assist opportunity per game + secondary assist per game. (this way, even their assist attempt is not successful, it is still count as their offensive effort there).

Then I add these two components up and divided by the player's playing time, and derived the number of offensive play involved per min. I think this number pretty much indicate how active one player is involved in the team offense, successful or not. It also give a good indication on how much usage this player is utilized by the team in offense. I feel this number is a better estimate than traditional USG% number.



As we all know, our offense run through James Harden, so he has the highest involvement/min in the team of 0.93 play/min. Jeremy and AB at 0.75 and 0.76 are the next. Somehow I feel we should let the play run through DH a bit more.

DH's involvement in offense is pretty good in terms of looking for his own shots, he averaged about 18.26 plays/game (FGA+0.44FTA+TOV), which is the second in the team behind James Harden, who is involved in 24.06 plays. Followed by Parsons of 18 and Jeremy about 16. This is pretty balanced.

However, in terms of assist opportunity, (assist opportunity + secondary assist), he is involved in only 4 plays/game, compare to James Harden's 12, Jeremy's 8.3, Parsons 7.7 and Beverley's 6.6. DH is actually pretty good in terms of assist success rate, yet he is ranked 6th in the team in assist opportunity. Looks like our team is not really fully utilize the inside out capability here. However, that is easy said than done, since we are currently having problem to even deliver the ball in, it is hard to anticipate for DH to do more assist by kick the ball out. Looks like at this moment, the team's most efficient way to deliver ball inside is by personal drive in.




Again, let's take a look of the rest of the league. Highlighting all the guys who are actively involved in offense with greater than 1 play/min, again we got a whole bunch of PGs, and I feel sorry for our PGs in the team. They are obviously less relied on. But as long as the team is winning, that's okay, but if the team is losing, that would be harder to take.

I really don't know what happened to Beverley, looks like he is hiding from our team's offense activity.

 

Assist Efficiency

Player tracking system track assist opportunities, which is a pass to a teammate who made a shot attempt, so that could be a potential assist if the teammate made the shot. They also track the points created by assists. Thus a simple calculation of points generated through assist/assist opportunity would result the assist efficiency, which I think is a indication on the quality of assist attempt, and how efficient a play maker is capable to utilize the possession to generate assisted points.



Here on top of 15 min play time filter, I applied another filter with >3 assist opportunity, which end up with 179 qualified player.

I know Jeremy is good in assist, but don't know he is this good, with 1.35 points/assist opportunity, he ranked 12th out of 179 in the league. Top 7%.

Did I rant about DH should have more assist opportunity? Since his assist is pretty high efficiency, second in the team, and way above average in the league.

I am shocked with James Harden, I always thought he is a good play maker, and his assist number goes up this season too, but I did not realize that he rack those numbers with a lower than league average efficiency.

At first I was joking to myself maybe James Harden's pass with 2 seconds left in the shot clock would help his FG% (which is not that great this season anyway), but by doing that it might hurt his assist efficiency there, as that pass has to end up with a shot, and those are low percentage shot. But give it a second thought, meh, that last second bomb pass is really too small sample size to affect the assist efficiency.

I guess we don't need to argue James and Jeremy who is a better playmaker anymore? I'm kidding......

But it is kind of sad that the team original two starting guards has lowest assist efficiency in the team, and are both below league average.

Oh, now I understand why Parsons always paired with Beverley when Beverley is trying to run the team during James/Jeremy are sit, and we see what happened when both Jeremy and Parsons are out during injury. It is weird to think about this, regardless how much hyped up Parsons is, he is still underrated in so many ways.........

And Beverley............... I know play making is not his strength, but I don't know it is really really not his strength though, ugg.....



Now look at the scatter of assist efficiency vs. assist opportunity. Sure enough, James as our first option of ball handler, have the highest assist attempts. Parsons look for playmaking more than Beverley, which agrees with my eye test too. And Dwight, I think I ranted before that I was hoping he got more assist opportunities, so I will stop there. And Beverley, I think he is okay to hide from our offensive activity there.



I'm curious to see who they are on the right hand side of the scatter plot with all the high assist opportunities, and sure enough, we see a group of league's elite point guards. Surprisingly, all those big names don't really have higher assist efficiency than Jeremy, some of them are in the same level as James Harden, and yet racking up more assists just because, they would initiate offense.

A lot of people said Jeremy is not elite point guard, he is not in the group of CP3, Tony Parker etc. I kind of agree, since whether he is capable or not, I don't know yet, but at least I know for now, the opportunity is not there for sure.

 

I should add here that when the assist attempt doubled or tripled, the efficiency will drop for sure, thus no, I'm not saying Jeremy with the opportunity, he will for sure be an elite point guard. However, without the opportunity, he for sure will not be an elite point guard. Just to clarify that to avoid future arguments.