ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Blazers 11/16/2012

Coaches might have a case, I guess. In the early stage of building a team of young players, they try to expose individual players' weaknesses by playing these weaknesses, let them make mistake and learn from it. Beginning of the season is the best time to play this out. As the season progress, coaches will decide base on the players development, team's standing, what strategies to carry out next. If you think coaches are dumb not seeing what Lin are good at, what Harden are best at, then you are too emotional. Be cool, enjoy the games.
Go Rockets!

 

okie dokie.

 

If Jeremy's usage rate goes up and he still sucks, I will be the first to admit JLin is a failure. But honestly, it's hard to judge what kind of pg right now.

 

IMHO, it all depends on the FO. If they do not concern about wins and losses and/or the chance to make the playoffs, yes. Buy with the signing of Harden, Im not sure what is the FO plan.

 

i think he'll be alright, even if he has another bad outing. i predict knicks stay undefeated til then - rockets hand knicks first loss, and lin hits the winning 3 - that would be awesome.

 

Must WIn! LOL

 

This isn't how usage works at all, and I think you might be getting hung up on what ESPN is telling you with regards to this stat, while ignoring what goes into the actual stats.

Using the traditional formula, Jeremy Lin's usage rate is way higher, at 66.41, than Toney Douglas' rate of 51.47.

ESPN goes on to weight these numbers by minutes played and team shots taken, but what this ignores is that both of these players are playing within their respective roles.

It is Toney Douglas' job to come off the bench and just start cranking shots. So his "usage rate" is higher because FGAs are not adjusted at the 0.33 percent rate the way assists are. They're just added. So Douglas' 33 shot attempts this season count for more in the formula than Jeremy Lin's way more valuable in real life 49 assists.

And what is Jeremy Lin's job? To distribute the basketball. So here his "usage rate" takes a hit because he is not the one cranking up shots. Would you rather their roles were reversed? Douglas handling the ball and Lin taking those shots instead? I know I wouldn't.

You may be interested to know as well that the fewer turnovers Jeremy Lin commits, the lower his "usage" according to the formula. It's true, man.

If Jeremy Lin committed 10 turnovers a game, his usage would be off the charts. Does it paint an accurate picture of how he's being used within the offense no? Do you even want him committing 10 turnovers a game? Of course not. What about jacking up contested shots early in the shot clock? That would raise his "usage" a lot too. Would that be desirable too? Do you see what I'm getting at?

I think this boils down to your complaining that Jeremy Lin is not getting "enough" shots, and you're trying to use "usage" estimates from ESPN to justify that. Even though he's been deferring to his teammates and not turning the ball over as much, which are huge positives, those things also lower his usage in the formula.

It's a pretty dumb and misleading stat, to be honest. One of the dumber advanced stats, since "high usage" isn't exactly a good thing. It's best not to get caught up in it.

 

This is all very interesting, Torocan, what you got to say about all this?

I like the eye test myself, with a sprinkle of stats (only the non misleading ones, ofcourse).

 

Gee, Thanks! I don't know this much. :grin:
It's not a dumb stat after all. As long as you know how to apply it. And that's how the "dumb" starts.

 

OT: Does anyone know if twitter is down? There doesn't seem to be any updates from Jonathan_Feigen and RocketsJCF - nonexistent.

Thanks.

 

I was wondering the same thing since yesterday.

 

Usage rate is a very imprecise stat. You have to be careful in terms of what exactly you're trying to measure.

There are numerous ways of attempting to calculate it, the one people most often quote are the ones from primary stat sites like Basketball Reference and Hoopdata. They use the formula that ESPN uses and as argued before, is has its pros and cons when looking at pure scorers vs facilitators.

As far as there being a "standard" formula, I don't actually think there is one per se. People tweak the formula and add in adjusted assists, or they don't depending on what they're trying to reveal, or mix in random stuff.

Remember, analytics is an evolving thing as people try to take data and extract more meaningful information at both a more granular and a more derivative level.

However, even if you are trying to capture the impact a player has on the offensive game for passing, Adjusted Assist is in itself an imperfect statistic. Assists don't capture "empty assists", or passes that result in dropped passes/missed shots, nor do they capture "hockey assists", or passes that result in passes to open shooters.

If you're really trying to get a better feel for how involved in an offense a player is, you're much better off looking at a site like Synergy Sports and looking at raw play data, IE, how many plays of each type are being initiated, then comparing it to the total number of Offensive plays that are being initiated and completed, then attempt to extract some derivative data and adjust it for the actual minutes played.

So, for example if we were to look at the per Offensive play data between Harden, Lin and Douglas, this is what we would see for the actual Offensive play data

Harden
Total : 218
Isolation : 53
P&R Handler : 73
Post-up : 3
Spot Up : 19
Off Screen : 8
Cut : 6
Offensive Rebound : 4
Transition : 39
All other plays : 8

Total Minutes : 318
Offensive Plays per 10 mins : 6.85
P&R plays per 10 mins : 2.29

Lin
Total : 112
Isolation : 14
P&R Ball Handler : 34
Post up : 1
Spot up : 36
Off screen : 1
Hand off : 1
Cut : 2
Offensive Rebound : 2
Transition : 14
All other plays : 7

Total Minutes : 276
Offensive Plays per 10 minutes : 4.05
P&R Plays per 10 minutes : 1.23

Douglas
Overall : 46
Isolation : 3
P&R Ball Handler : 7
Spot up : 20
Off Screen : 1
Hand off : 6
Cut : 1
Transition : 6
All other plays : 2

Total Minutes : 104
Offensive Plays per 10 minutes : 4.42
P&R Plays per 10 mins : 0.67

This is the sort of extraction that I would find more useful.

Now, this is just a basic extraction using actual measured plays. This is using data from Synergy Sports, who also include assists, TO's and failed plays into their raw play data (eliminating the need for such unwieldy stats like adjusted assists).

If I wanted to extract more information like how often P&R's were being called, I would look specifically at that data. Or I could add in Screening, cut and handoff data into the mix if I wanted to look at team involvement in creating his plays.

What I would gather from just a cursory look is that James Harden is initiating ALOT more plays than Lin (more than 50% more). That is not necessarily a bad thing as he's our primary scorer... however, looking specifically at P&R Data, he's also intiating almost double the number of P&R's that Lin has been initiating.

This falls in line with our observations that the Coaches are introducing more P&R plays for Harden than they are for Lin.

Notice however that Douglas is initiating only 10% more offensive plays, but almost half the number of P&R plays. In other words he's slightly more involved in the offense, but this is to be expected as TD is also considered a spot up shooter. This is confirmed when we notice that he is initiating so few P&R plays.

Anyway, this is just off the top of my head kind of stuff. What I can probably say from this data and a basic extraction is that...

1) Harden is the primary ball handler.
2) Harden is executing more P&R's than Lin, most likely due to either coach instruction or a lack of sets in place for Lin
3) Lin is being used significantly as a spot up shooter (20% less minutes, and almost double the spot up shots)
4) TD has even FEWER P&R's being worked for him and he is being used for the most part as a spot up shooter (almost half his total plays).

Anyway, no idea if that was helpful or not. Enjoy! :grin:

 

OH, and if you want to get really wonky you can start trying to mix in TO's, either in raw form, or you can try to tease out passing TO's from the general TO numbers, add in ball handling TO's, etc, etc.

 

Jonathan hasn't tweeted since the last game and Jason changed his twitter name, it's now

https://twitter.com/JasonCFriedman

 

To get away from the Lin vs Harden talks
Can anybody tell why Patterson is such a bad RBer , was He this bad Last year with Scola

 

He isn't a bad rebounder, he's just lazy and doesn't fight for it since he has little presence for post up. Because he's a spot up shooter, his presence are usually away from the boards. With that sad, he has improved since last few games so just wait and see.

 

Thanks bro, apprec it. Have you seen the espn blog regarding lin iso stats in houston vs ny? Its in another lin thread.

 

Lots of reasons. He is sharing most of his court time with Asik. The Rockets spread offense has him a long way from the basket. He is collapsing for the rebound after the defense has collapsed on dribble drives, therefore his rebounds tend to be long rebounds. He has played against 3 rebound machine power forwards (another one tonight). He is not the ideal height for a power forward. His wingspan is only average.

 

rockets win by 7 james harden tears acl jeremy lin gets his shooting touch back future looks bright