Just because the numbers currently show us as better on offense with Capela than Howard, doesn't mean that it's his fault it's so. The inability or avoidance of giving the ball to him when he's in position to score will affect the entire offense as he isn't out providing as the pick and roll man when he's in the paint fighting for position.
The numbers speak for themselves, you can say sample size, you can say it's not his fault but again, the numbers speak for themselves, you just choose to ignore them. He's allowing like 60% at the rim, Capela is allowing like 45% when he starts. Again, choose to ignore the stats. 50-60% at the rim just isn't good defense. You can name 10 centers in the NBA who do better. Dwight sets bad screens, you cannot deny this either. Dwight is bad at contested rebounds, you cannot deny this. He's getting praise off his reputation, but the truth is he's been on a steady decline for about 6-7 years now. His Defensive plus minus has been getting lower every single year since 2008. Choose to ignore it all you want.
what a ridiculous post. the same capella that can't even stay on the court for more than 20 mins even when he does start. Of the 4 games capella started, Got completely blown out by denver, miami, and dallas without dirk/parsons/matthews. what great rim protection there People that merely use numbers to define a story without looking at other factors have no idea what they're talking about. Many of us are fans of Capella including myself and love his progress so far but damn let the man grow on his own. he still has a ton of work to do and is still very much raw but somehow people here wanna claim the Rockets are better with him in the middle that DH. that's 100% false.
Capella has a high contest percentage but has one of the lowest deterrence index. Which is equally important. It can improve with experience but he has a longway to go.
I want you to explain to me why this is. Why does Howard allow better FG% than what the player he is defending usually gets? Compare him to say Rudy Gobert and you will see a HUGE difference. Or you can compare him to Anthony Davis, who plays on one of the worst defenses in the NBA... but here it's not his fault. You can measure defense in different ways, but forcing the person you're defending to shoot a lower % than he usually does, I would say is one of the best ways to determine it. The stats line up, people who are considered the best defenders in the NBA al limit their opponents to FG%'s lower than their norm. Quit burying your head in the sand, if the coaches are happy with his defense, they aren't holding him accountable. Dwight Howard Clint Capela Rudy Gobert Anthony Davis
I don't want to say we are better with Capela, that is not my point. My point is, Dwight isn't playing as well as he can or should be playing, or playing as well as some of the top defensive centers in the league. If I were a coach on the Rockets, I'd show Dwight these numbers and be like why do we think this is? Why are these numbers career lows, even worse than 2 years ago when our defense sucked as well? Are you over helping? Reacting late? Is it the guards fault? Are you avoiding contact? But sitting there and being happy with this type of production is not the way to a championhip.
It's not about challenging shots at the rim but also deterring players from even going to the rim. And yes it's only team defence, it's center defence. It's why Bogut is one of the best defensive centers and why Duncan even if he has low rim protection is also. And Dwight is very good at that. But has he fallen in compared to other years? YES. Does he fall is connected directly to the godawful perimeter defence? Yes. Among other things. You compare him to Rudy Gobert but Utah has very good wing defence.
Look here is dwight from 2013, that year we had a pretty middling defense overall. Yes, sample size, but the initial trends this year are at least a little disconcerting. Another thing I don't think gets enough airplay is DMO was a huge reason we were a good defense last year (aside from Harden.) The main reason we didn't really miss a beat when Dwight was out. 2013 2014 DMO 2014
This. It is like comparing a three point shooter taking 8 threes a game and hitting 36% to someone taking 1 a game and making 38%.... Who is the better shooter? "The numbers don't lie" Well they don't tell the full story.
I agree, Deterrence is a thing that is hard to quantify with these numbers. My first instinct is to look at the attempts, but I don't think you can draw any type of conclusions from that. I'm sure Morey has a stat about it. Here is TD since you mentioned it. This isn't just Rim protection, its FG% of the player you're actively defending vs his normal %. But TD has been a really good defensive center for years now. Duncan 2015 Duncan 2014
Hey digital you don't have to do the metanalysis yourself. We are blessed to at least for rim protection have available plenty of public stats. Go to nyloncalculus and look at their data in the category rim protection.
Did not know of this website, I'm looking now, looks really promising. NBA.com player tracking is the best thing to happen to basketball in awhile though. The interface is a little bad, but the numbers it spits out are awesome.
I wonder how they come up with their "deterrence index" BTW that stat they have also really confirms what I've been seeing anyway. Gobert is on an entirely different planet for "points saved" and Tjones has been much better defensively than advertised. Thank you so much again.
They insert the data from nba.com and sportvu player tracking with some software called Python and what else I dont' really understand and don't really want to know. But the basis is all public data that the nba.com publishes. THey just meta analyse them after. Read also this if you are interested in rim protection : http://nyloncalculus.com/2015/09/16/deep-dives-rim-protection-metrics-revisited/ It's the most important article I have ever read in regards to rim protection that explains everything to casual fans. That rim protection is different based on positions and that deterrence is equally important and shows what center is good at which thing. Basically Seth Partnow who is also an amazing twitter follow, is one of the best public stats guy we have available.
I read this claim in multiple threads already, but I think you're misreading the stats. Your claim is based on the NBA's "Rebounding Dashboard", isn't it? And you think that Dwight is bad at these rebounds because there is a number that says 37.4% as contested rebounding percentage, right? If yes, look again. The formula is "Contested Rebounds / Total Rebounds". The stat is not saying that he gives up over 60% of rebounds at which he is contested. It just tells us that 37.4% of his rebounds are contested and 62.6% are not. If we look at which percentage of rebounding opportunities the Rockets get when Dwight is around, it looks pretty good.
You sir are right, I was reading the stat wrong. I did find something on Nylon Calculus that explains I think what I've been trying to find to explain what I'm seeing. Chase % is the frequency a player has to actively go for the rebound Win % is how often a player wins the rebound battle. I think two things pop out right away. Howard has a high Offensive Rebound chase %, which means he's making attempts to go after Offensive Boards, which explains why we're one of the better teams in getting OREBs. This is great except... how low his DEF REB Win % is, compared to other guys of his stature. Maybe his personal win% might be low, but our team win % is low as well. But we know this, we were one of the worst defensive rebounding teams last year, Dwight helped, but overall still bad. So basically we're getting a lot of OREBs, but giving them up at the same rate or worse. 1. This can be explained many ways, he's contesting shots, thus out of position so even though he's still going for them at a high rate, he's losing out simply by being more out of position than he would like. 2. No one else is helping him get the defensive rebound, either by boxing out, etc. But thanks for pointing that out. Makes that stat on nba.com not very useful.
