2012-2013 Regular season Rockets team and player stats

Well, get really bored without Rocket game, so I tried to download some of the stats and try to understand what all those number means. And sometimes it was interesting to notice that some of my impression was actually not correct. Most of time, it is just some interesting facts that I did not realize or not really appreciate before.

All the data are from basketball_reference.com, and gifs are from internet.

Okay, here it comes.



Team Stats





What I found interesting are following:

1. I thought rockets was the youngest team in the league, however, thanks to Francisco Garcia, we are the 5th youngest team behind Hornets, Cavaliers, Bobcats, and Trail Blazers, we are average 0.4 yr older than the youngest team in the league.

2. we are the second in points behind Denver. :grin:

3. We are the second in 3P made as well as attempt behind NY knicks. Though our 3P% is only 8th in the league.







4. We are the highest turnover team in the league.

5. We are the fastest paced team in the league. :grin:



6. Though the absolute number of defensive rebound only ranked 7, we are actually number 2 in DRB%, thanks to our dear Omar "the vacuum" Asik.



7. Well, our defense let our opponent team to be the 3rd to have Field goal attempt, 3P made, and total points.

8. Our FTA ranked #4 and FT made ranked #3. Harden is amazing. :grin:

 

Okay, now for the 82 games, let's look at the team points, opponent team points and point differential.

For these graphs, winning games were labeled red, and losing games were labeled blue. Solid line is the average, with dashed line as +/- standard deviation.



After a splendid starting two games of the season, Rocket took a Z turn with three losses where we just could not score. Gosh, that was frustrating. Then we gradually gain the offense, and did you noticed that from Dec 12th to Jan 8th, for one month, rocket went a 12-3 winning stretch. And right before that was the almost win Dec 10th against Spurs, when Jeremy got his 38 pts, 7 ast game.

For 23 games we scored more than 115 points, we were 20-3.

For 19 games we scored less than 95 points, we were 3-16.



At early stage of the season, Rockets while gaining momentum in offense, they are actually dropping off in defense. However, towards the end of the season, starting from March 1 till the end of the regular season, other than the two Denver and Phoenix lose, Rockets were improving defensively, and from March 20th on, rockets were letting less than their season average points to their opponents.

When Rockets holds opponent team with less than 100 points, for 34 games, it went 26-8.



Looking at point differential, I noticed rockets got way more blow out win than blow out lose. 16 games with more than 15 points win, and only 5 games with more than 15 points lose. That's why, the rockets Pythagorean win, which was estimated based on points scored and allowed was estimated as 50, much better than we actually are, which is 45.

However, I really like the team fight till the last second and never give up, show a lot of heart. Just love that.

 

Total team assist in each game. Rockets ranked number 6 in the league in assist, thanks to our passing back court. Ball movement is the key to the team.

For 33 games the team have more than 25 assists, we went 25-8.

Don't you love this?





Rockets lead the league in turnovers. Well, it is hard not to with the very first in league of turnovers --- James Harden, the number 10 in the league of Jeremy Lin, the number 38 Omer Asik and #58 of Chandler Parsons.

For 22 games that we have less than 13 team turnover, we went 18-4.

Oh, BTW, the lowest turnover game this season have only 5 turnover for the whole team, and that was the very 45 point win against Utah on Jan-28th. :grin:

 

Player Stats Monthly Split

I only take 6 main players, Jeremy, James, Carlos, Chandler, Omar and Patrick Beverley.







First of all, Oct had only one game, thus very easy to have a strange number.

Jeremy have steady improvement in pts. But notice Parsons's progress.

Jeremy, Parsons and Asik all have improved offensive over the season. Impressive.

Parson's April stats is very impressive, though he played only 4 games in April.

 

Jrue Holiday

Actually that was based on total TOV number, if you go with per game, then James Harden is ranked #2, after Rajon Rondo.

Then per game, Jeremy Lin ranked #19, and would be #10 in PG, after Rando, Holiday, Westbrook, Irving, Vasquez, John Wall, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, and Ricky Rubio. Jeremy sure benefit from playing all 82 games.

 

3P shooting



Jeremy improved 3P shooting as season progressed, his 3PA was pretty steady since December, but really bump it up in April. Very good improvement in 3P made and with a jump in April.



J.Harden have steady increase in 3PA, but last three month have sharp drop in 3P%. Still good number of 3P made per game in the last three month though. Did not realized the very first Oct game, Harden have tried 10 3-pt shots.



It is interesting that CP has an equally bad 3P% at the start as Jeremy, and aside from Nov. he has a steady improvement trend in 3P% as Jeremy. However, none of these trend was as noticeable as Jeremy. People might have some faint impression that Parsons was in a shooting slump sometime during the season, but would not say CP was inconsistent in shoot, neither would say him improved a lot during the season.

Anyway, all three of them bumped up their three pointers during the last three month in the season, be it with increased 3PA or 3P%, not sure whether that would relate to the trade after ASG, and we lost our PF in PP and MM, thus those three need to pick up the 3pt shooting a bit more or not.

 

Jeremy's FGA is pretty steady other than a bump in April, which is pretty consistent with his 3PA. And though people always say he struggles with shooting, but that was mostly his 3P, his FG% was okay most of the month, other than Nov. His overall FG% is comparable to J. Harden.



J. Harden's FGA is the highest in the team, almost 50% more than that of Jeremy, which should be by design. His FGA was pretty steady, Even though he took much more 3s in the last three months, but that did not shift his total FGA. His shooting FG% roughly stay arround 40%, he got very nice Feb whereas his FG% was more than 50%.



Parsons have gradually increased his FGA, and just have a very steady and nice FG%, and he is out of his mind in April with > 60%, though he played only 4 games in April, still, that's crazy. Interesting that we consider Delfino as a shooter, but CP shoots better than Delfino. Oh, BTW, Jeremy's sudden bump in 3P shooting in April might due to CP and J. Harden not on court.







Delfino is Delfino, Asik had a nice Feb, and Beverley after the trade, start to have steady playing time, thus was pretty steady in terms of FGA, and FG%.

 

I have not get into the turn over numbers yet, but since you raised it, it does not hurt to talk about it a little bit now.

Yes, just look at the Per Game TOV does not reflect the playing time, nor does it reflect the usage. Thus turnover rate is commonly used trying to adjust/normalize that.

The turnover rate concept is good, "Turnover percentage is an estimate of turnovers per 100 plays." However, how do you define "100 plays" ? How accurate that definition is would directly affect how useable TOV% is.

Current formula for TOV% calculation is :

TOV% = 100 * TOV / (FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV).

So, basically it define the possession number through a play by their field goal attempts, free throw attempts, and turnover.

How about assist? How about blown assist or assist that results in team mate's free throw? How about hockey assist? These are all not counted as player's possessions, thus caused error in estimate TOV%.

Say you have two players that play the same time per game, generate the same number of TOV per game, and have the same number of possessions per game. Theoretically they should have the same TOV%, right?

WRONG. If one player is shoot first person, he shoot 60% and pass 40% of the ball, would have apparently lower TOV% compare to a player who is pass first guy, if he pass 60% and shoot 40% when he got the ball. For player A, it would calculated the same TOV through 60 possessions, and for player B, it would calculated as if he generated the same TOV through only 40 possessions, thus would have much higher TOV%.

Therefore, TOV% is not a complete data to compare two player with different play style. Compare Jeremy Lin with James Harden might be too sensitive, let's use a passing first guard Rondo compare to a shoot first guard Westbrook.

With TOV/game of 3.9 and 3.3 respectively for Rondo and Westbrook, their TOV% are 22.7% vs. 13.2%. Does Rondo's ball handling that much worse than Westbrook? I don't think so. He might not be better than Westbrook, but definitely not that much worse.

Same apply to Jeremy and James's TOV%. Jeremy's turn over is a problem, but it might not be as bad as you thought.

 

It is kind of boring to just talk about numbers, so let's focus on one point at a time instead of one type of data.

So today, I'd like to focus on Parson's improvement in this season.

Multiple places are giving out player's report card, and for Parsons, usually he is getting A grade. And the consensuses conclusion is that he has improved his overall game, so exactly where did he improved?

Let's take a look of these two season's stats:



So CP25 had improved 3% of his FG% and 5% of his 3P%, and a 17% in FT%, basically all his shooting percentage increased. And he got a huge 6 PTS/game increase, which really get him into a star level production.

Interestingly, even he did not improve his shooting, use his last season's shooting percentage, he would still get a 14.0 PTS/game, still a very nice stats, but that really saying is that, though increased shooting is obviously nice, Parsons benefit the most from increased touch in the games, which is reflected by the jump of Field goal attempt from 8.7 to 12.4.

The number might not means too much, but it becomes very obvious if you look at the ranking of the FGA within Rockets in these two seasons. Parsons was featured as the second option in the Rocket this season, whereas he was only the 6th option in the team in the last season. Thus the volume increase contribute the most to his increased production.



With overall increased shot by Parsons, his shot type did not change too much.


Parsons still take ~ 60% jump shot, ~ 30% lay up, and the rest of them were dunk or tip ins.



However, it is noticeable that there is a significant increase in shots that are assisted in both dunk and lay-ups in this season than the previous one. With almost 50% of increased shooting volume, that elevation of percent of assist is critical, as that mean Parsons not only take more shots, but he is also taking more easy shots. He has got Jeremy Lin and James Harden frequently set up the table for him.

That could be seen with the distribution of Parsons shot. Almost 75% of his shot were assisted, and Jeremy and James collectively assist half of his field goals.



In 2012 season, parsons not only took less shots, but he has to create almost 40% of his own shots, and that number dropped to almost 25% in season 2013, even he is taking a lot more shots.

In last season, roughly 10% of Lowry's assist and 10% of Dragic's assist goes to Parsons, and he was the 4th and 5th assist option by Lowry and Dragic, respectively. However, this year, 27% of Jeremy's assist and 22% of James's assist goes to Parsons, and he is the most assisted person on both Jeremy and James' assist-to list.

The other noticeable change Parsons did is that he greatly increased his 3P shots this season.



There is significant increase of 3P shots, and dropped the mid range shots and long twos to less than 25%, and the rest of the shots were either high percentage shots (at rim) or high efficiency shots (3-Pt).



As shown in this table, for shots at rim, he also got significant higher percentage of them were assisted compare to last season. And for the 3 pt shots, he already got pretty high assisted rate.

And there is no surprise that in these two categories, Parsons again, got most of those shots fed by Jeremy or James.



As much as Parsons improved his game, he benefited the most from the Rockets system, and on court together with both James and Jeremy, who are really great play makers and nice passers. Both of James and Jeremy like to penetrate, kick out or pass at the rim. With Rockets relatively weak at the 4 position, with Parsons being a nice slasher, he was assisted at the rim a lot. And with a slow start and relatively weak 3pt shooting in Jeremy, Parsons become the third 3pt shooting option in Rocket behind Harden and Delfino. And with the offensive power of James and Jeremy, Parsons got plenty of open looks.

So, I'd like to conclude that the greatest improvement of Parsons this season is the situation improvement, he fits in the system very well, he was featured in the system, and benefit with playing together with both James Harden and Jeremy Lin. His production relied pretty heavily on other people create for him, and without James or Jeremy, I don't see him carry the team by himself. Thus I still don't see him as a star yet, and he fit the most and benefit the most by playing in Rockets, and if he goes to another system, another team, play along with player less willing to pass, his production would be affected.

However, ranked in the Rocket team #2 in PTS/game, #2 in FGA and FG made, #2 in 3P%, #2 in minutes played, #2 in total rebound per game, and #3 in assist per game, Parsons plays an important role in the team. He totally deserves an A this season.