Our offensive tactics： 1.Harden＆CC pick and roll 2.Harden 1v1 （forced a three-point shot、 forced a smash） 3.CP3 1v1 （forced a perimeter shot、forced a three-point shot） 4.Anyone can project three points anytime, anywhere. Seriously, I'm tired of seeing Harden and CP3 dribble slowly for eight seconds in each attack round.Before that, there were reports that D'Antoni had not deployed an offensive tactic in a game. Don't you think we have a big offensive problem?
D'Antoni said before last year he wanted to add more wrinkles to the offense. I think Harden is comfortable walking the ball up, doing his thing, a standing near the half court when offball.
A great offense needs good offensive players. Right now, we have one elite offensive player and everyone else either can't hit shots or just flat out sucks.
Gonna disagree here. Our offense is 7th best in the league. Prior to our 3 game losing streak we were top 5, I think we were 4th at our peak. When I look at a team that is ~5th best on offense and 26th on defense, I don't really think offense is the problem. That doesn't mean we can't improve, but I think the focus should be on fixing the defense.
The offensive rating might be good but the basic stats aren't: We're at or near Bottom 10 in a lot of areas like FG%, Assists, FT%, offensive rebounding, points per game, etc.
We're also 2nd to last in pace (ahead of only Memphis' plodding offense), which indicates a lot of 'walking it up before ISO mode'. Given we're also the OLDEST team in the league and have no depth, I'm not sure fast pace would help us... We're in a box. We have an old, short and not particularly athletic roster. We have no bench depth. We have no high upside younger players. And we have a very high payroll. Something has to give...
Yes, people have become so obsessed with efficiency stats lately, they've forgotten the obvious. The point is to score a lot of points, not just do so efficiently. The Rockets are 21st in points per game .... .... because Yep... I don't know if increased PACE would help or not. I feel like it would, but as others have pointed out, once PJ became entrenched at starting PF last year, the Rockets were similarly last in pace, yet had an amazing record and almost took down the behemoth. In either case though, their efficiency is still solid, but with the slow pace, they just don't score enough points in today's NBA. Bear in mind their current PPG would rank 10th last year... Got to adjust.
Please explain to me why Team Points per Possession is not a basic stat. It really isn't rocket science. I'm not defending our offense here, but ORtg is a very basic (and easy) measure. I mean its Points / Possessions. How is that different than FGM / FGA in its basic-ness. Here's a test: Tell me a better way in Baseball for measuring team offense than Points per Inning. Basketball Team PPP (ORtg) is the same thing.
Per game, both teams have the same Pace. It makes zero sense in a Who-Scores-The-Most-Points-Wins world to say efficiency as measured by PPP is different than the final score. For every* single game, the team with the best ORtg wins... Spoiler: * * we can construct very rare situations where a 1 or 2 pt win was accomplished by a team who had 1 or 2 more possessions (due to who had ball last) and thus a very slightly lower PPP. but for all intents, teams have exactly the same number of possessions per game.
I guess to answer your question I have to ask my own question: If our offensive rating is top 10 this season and things like FG%, 3pt%, offensive rebounds, assists are in the bottom 10...does that mean we're not bad, offensively, and that the rest of league has caught and passed us by....or do we really have offensive issues but are just doing things efficiently but at a lower level/degree?
In every game, the team with the best ORtg (for that game) wins*. And your DRtg equals your opponents' ORtg for that game. The stat is tied directly to the score, unlike any of your basic stats. * (See my rarity disclaimer in the spoiler above.)
Of course, if an offense just hands the ball to the opponents for a layup (to replace all their missed FGs) then that's the same ORtg, yet it sucks. Here's something I'm interested in doing. Find all our points off of turnovers last year and this year. Give me that, then we can readjust our expected wins to actually discuss how much turnover points are theoretically contributing to losses v last year. @aelliott or @Deuce or anyone. can you provide difference in pts off of turnovers from last year and this year, then subtract the difference from our defense and run Morey's expected wins formula.
Sorry but this really just doesn't make any sense. Points per game is meaningless to rank offenses and is only a function of pace. If team A scores 120 ppg on 120 possessions per game that team has a bad offense. If team B scores 110 ppg on 90 possessions per game, that team has an outstanding offense. When two teams play each other they each have the same number of possessions so when you compare how much a team can score you have to look at offensive rating and not points per game. It has nothing to do with being "obsessed with efficiency stats". To show with an example, if these two teams played each (assume both teams have equally average defenses, allow the other team to score their season averages), team B would blow out team A. If the game had 100 possessions, they would win 122-100. If the game had 120 possessions, they would win 146-120. If the game only had 90 possessions they would win 110-90.
Maybe this will help? https://stats.nba.com/teams/misc/?sort=PTS_OFF_TOV&dir=-1 This year we're 18th in scoring points off of TOs (16.4 ppg) Last year we were 6th in scoring points off of TOs (17.4 ppg) On the other side, Opponents are scoring 17.8 ppg off of our TOs (21st in the league) Last year, 15.8 ppg (13th)
cool...been wanting to plug in Opp Pt differences to Morey's Expected Wins formula. Can't do it now, but will later. If anyone else wants to do it, that 2pt difference likely has a profound effect on our Expected Wins. Ignore our Pt off TOs difference from last year for the calculation. Then we'd plug those in for a separate result. Interesting we are scoring 1pt more ourselves.
An aside, bur regarding the random # of possessions difference, I'd be curious to see on a game by game basis, cause it is interesting... even just one, and definitely two different possessions can make a difference... also, I still have to think through # of possessions every time, as it still confuses me that an offensive rebound doesn't count as an extra possession except for in that it might increase ORtg if it results in points.... to me that's not the right way to measure it, as logically an offensive rebound is giving you another possession, not just extending the current one (I understand the clapback, which is that the ball hasn't switched hands and its as much an extension of the current possession, and by treating it as another possession it does impact some of the maths behind how you think about Ortg, pace, etc... but just to me its not super logical... i don't think a team that scores more because of offensive putbacks as a better offensive team, but rather as a team better at getting more shots by virtue of something like pace... anyway, neither here nor there...) ... anyway, ignoring that, I do see your point.... however would note, from an overall how good is this team and record, it's not a per game world. It's an overall world. And the stats overall are interesting Per teamrankings: 21st in points per game 12th in points allowed per game But because of their slow pace I guess... per bball reference 9th in Ortg 25th in Drtg Broken down per single games, the implication then is clear, isn't it?? Teams come in, play the Rockets, and adjust to the Rockets slow pace. And in doing so, more often than not, those teams play at even better offensive efficiency than the Rockets at that slow pace. Right? If we are saying the same # of possession per team, and the Rockets are losing more games than winning, then on a game by game basis, their offense is worse (by efficiency) than their opponents. That may be MOSTLY because the Rockets defense is horrible... so on an apples to apples basis, against the same quality defense, at the same PACE, the Rockets offense is still "good"... but it's hard to tell. In other words, I don't know what every team's efficiency would be if they always played the Rockets PACE, and always against the same quality of defense. I do know when they play against the Rockets, at the Rockets PACE, their offensive efficiency is better than the Rockets. I guess one could look at each teams Ortg and PACE and see if there is a correlation looking across each of their games (eg. x/y chart for every team for their games played thus far). Interestingly, across teams, there's basically no correlation between pace and ORtg if you look at it so far this year. I think it's harder to figure out if a team is a good offensive team by just looking at efficiency, or pace (or combined). The Bucks have a high ORtg. And a very high pace. If they had slower pace, I suspect they'd have worse Ortg. The Bulls or Suns have slow pace and bat ORtg. Would their ORtg improve if they upped the pace as much as they could? But again, there's no correlation across all teams so far. It is interesting that all 8 teams with better ORtg than the Rockets so far also have higher pace. And the group of 10 or so teams right behind the Rockets On the whole, I'm DEFINITELY NOT trying to proclaim the Rockets offense is their problem. If they want to continue having the 29th PACE and by virtue of having a great defense as well be a great team, more power to them.
I mean, no other basic stat (or combined stats, even) comes close to 99% accuracy...and I'm finding it's actually 100% accurate in practice. I just ran the stats on BB-Ref looking for a negative Net ORtg that still produced a win, and it's never happened in the history of the game....lulz. (seems weird, but OK). The team with the highest ORtg *always* wins....despite there being a mathematical possibility to the contrary. BB-Ref query here: http://bkref.com/tiny/TmrJ9 Each game can *only* have a 2 possession difference, at most -- not counting OT. Plus, I'm talking about a situation where it brought your PPP down, yet you still won. The accuracy is beyond reproach. Spoiler: see my last post wrt an analysis of TOs The only way this isn't exactly like Points per Inning for Baseball is because turnovers can increase the efficiency of the opponents ORtg in the game. See my last posts, wrt comparing our 65-Win team pts-off-turnovers to this year, and then taking the difference and plugging into Morey's Expected Wins formula. But even those difference in Wins could just be due to the difference in overall ORtg from 1st to 10th. We'd have to play with those difference a bit, to determine. And keep in mind, the Pts-off-of-TO analysis from last yr can't be the only contributor to Expected Wins....as the defense is clearly huge problem via eye test and stats.
