This game, I happened to have the time to watch the game and record the defensive mistakes/positives of the game. To establish credibility, I am a currently a D1 player, considered a 3 and D, high basketball IQ player. No, I will not tell you what school I go to. For the defence, I split the data into five categories: good on-ball and rotations, bad on ball and rotations, and meh. The first four are easy to understand: meh is everything that just doesn't fit under a "good" or "bad" lable. <table border="1" style="width:1000"><tr><td>Player</td><td>Good OB</td> <td>Good R</td><td>Meh</td><td>Bad OB</td><td>Bad R</td></tr><tr><td>Bev</td><td>7</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>3</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Harden</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>5</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Parsons</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Jones</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Howard</td><td>4</td><td>13</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Lin</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>3</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Asik</td><td>2</td><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Dmo</td><td>5</td><td>4</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Hamilton</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Garcia</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Casspi</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Canaan</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr></table> Some notes: When compiling the data, I could only count the plays that affected the shot attempt. Sorry Bev, but your full court pressure is not shown. It would be too difficult to try to find every single positive or negative play; too many. It should be noted that there can be more than one person getting a good or bad mark on one play. It can still be good defence on a made shot. Data is skewed for big men: this is why defensive big men are so important. In the data, one should notice Beverley got "tested" more than the others. This is because he hounds the ball so much, that offensive sets fall apart and ends up with a pick and roll against Bev. I did not count rebounding; maybe for next time. Harden is lazy: stop switching onto Joakim, please. It should be noted that Rockets often switch guard to guard screens. This has both pros and cons. However, that does not include power forwards, Harden. We know your post D is good, but we also noticed when you stopped switching at the end of the second quarter because you were getting worked. I hope that yall noticed the Rockets tried running a zone - it was terribly executed. There is a reason zones are rarely utilized in the NBA. On the flip side, the Bulls have excellent D. Ugh (kind of summarizes the game, honestly). Parsons might have had the worst game in his career. I have a little time to do a couple more of these. Would it be more useful if I tried to find every little detail or this method (only shots)? Should I incorporate who gives up the offensive rebounds/good box-outs? If you have any questions on whose fault it would be on a certain play, just ask me below. tl;dr - look at the chart, Rockets defence against the Bulls. OB = on ball; R = rotations; meh is in-between. Edit: space is gone now
Wow, looks like a lot of hard work. Thanks. My question is: why did we give them so many open shots at the 3pt line? The Rockets in the 3rd qtr were often caught out of position on their men--everyone of them. Were the Bulls doing anything special on their game plan? I also notice the Rockets often over-help in the paint. Is that something they're coached to do? Even when we have Howard and TJones in there, the perimeter guys are so far from their men. What could the Rockets do to improve their defense on the perimeter?
You would think since we understand the value of the three point shot (the open corner 3 in particular) that we would try our best to avoid giving them up. Unreal how many open corner threes we allowed Chicago to attempt. Just goes to show you how little McHale prioritizes defense and discipline. That $hit won't fly with a good defensive coach, and that's why we need one.
Just close watching during the game, and diligence. The Rockets tried zone, and it didn't work. The starters (Harden and Parsons) had lazy closeouts. Credit to the Bulls for hitting their shots though, but I didn't see anything "special" so to say. It is not "overhelping" but just being out of position. Sometimes, they do overhelp. To improve the defence, hate to sound cliche, but just try harder. I am sure there are communication issues, and somebody needs to whip Harden and Parsons to try more. Lin gives effort, but just doesn't get the job. He is pretty mediocre on defence, as it showed.
Part of it was desperation zone, part of it was just lazyness. This was one of the worst games in recent defensive memory this season for the Rockets, so I see it as an abberation, rather than the norm. Most of the corner threes were because of the zone failure.
Our defense is once the ball is inside the 3pt arc, the guards collapse and help D. Sometimes it works, but today it didn't because they just kept on making their 3s.
Your data seems to show, aside from the big men, basically everyone else sucks. Basically our perimeter players' rotation seems to be a huge issue. Any chance someone did this for the bulls as a comparison?
It is not really "data", as I did no calculations, just watched the tape like I was analyzing the opponent I was about to play. Yes, you are right; I did not do it for the Bulls, that would be very hard. I like to watch the Rockets too Not particularly. Every defence "collapses", but not to the extent I think you are assuming. Like I said earlier, most of the 3's were off lazyness on the weakside, poorly fighting through screens, and the zone. This is not "scheme", so to say.
I know what you are saying, of course they were even worse today because the rotation guy didn't go after that open man at the 3 line due to lack of effort, but the general game plan is like that though.
The best perimeter defender I saw among the Rockets was Hamilton. His man still made some shots when he couldn't fight through the screens but at least the effort was there. Parsons, Harden, Beverley, TJones--they were like 5 feet away. I think we lose all sense of discipline when we start getting desperate and demoralized. We didn't defend this way vs MIA nor IND nor POR in the 4th qtr and OT. Question is: who really are the Rockets? the tough-defending team or this lazy confused one which truth to say, we've seen more often this year. Will we get back our def intensity when we battle the elite teams?
What were you watching? Hamilton was garbage on his rotations, and fighting through screens, as you said. Those are two key elements of defence.
I am following you, I think; just was very vague. I think you are referencing to the second/third rotation, which has been a culprit for the Rockets, and many teams in the league. However, this game did not feature that many mistakes of this nature. I have seen the Rockets fail at this in other games though.
I only watched the 2nd half, and as far as I saw, Hamilton was giving more effort than the other players. If it's a team-wide problem, then that means the team did not have a clue how to defend the Bulls. That's on the scouting and coaching.
I don't know which part of the game particularly. They went to zone for a while and that was really bad as well. Could be that part. Point is the starters were lazier today and not closing out on the 3s and Bulls started making them (which they normally don't). And that's that.
When I do the next Rockets game, how should I try to record who did what? Should I try to record every good/bad thing, or just on shots? Let me know yall think are the most useful. Both have its pros and cons. Also, if yall are asking how I would decide who did well or messed up, try to specify a situation, or give an example. I am open to answering anything. While he was giving on-ball effort, his overall defensive results were still not good. Like I said, one of the flaws was that I couldn't reward Beverley-style defence for 10 seconds of the shot clock if a shot was not put up. I recorded my decisions for every shot. However, lets not praise Hamilton. While his on-ball defence got some good reviews (especially for minutes played, making him the second best perimeter on-ball defender this game), he had some terrible, and I mean terrible, rotations and a lot of "meh" plays where he could have fought over screens more. Yes, on-ball, he did a decent job, but his mental effort was just bad. There is a reason why, other than shooting, Garcia was put back in the rotation. It matters the situations: transition is tricky, but in general, you stop the ball first. If it was a bad turnover that led to a 3 on 1, I cannot give anybody a "bad" rotation because it was not possible to get back in time. The 1 defender does not get penalized either because it is just not fair to expect defenders, usually guards, to defend a lob. However, if it is a 3 on 3, and Bev rightly stops ball, and Hamilton runs to the paint and does not recognize that he needs to pick up a wide open Hinrich, that is on Hamilton, although it was techincally Bev's man. For transition, you would have to point out a specific play. Yea, it was arguably the worst game this season. It was the zone that gave up all those open corner threes. It is hard to zone against a passing big man like Noah. Joakim Noah effect, ladies and gentleman. Yes, it was horrible, but at that point, the Rockets needed to try something different.
