I think we would need to go 19-5 to get there (which is steep). Worth noting that if we simply reverse our series against the GSW the standings would be: Houston 44-14 Golden State 41-15 Memphis 41-16 We are far better than most emotionally stunted fans on this bbs would have you believe! Ariza has had his customary Dec/Jan slump and is in his customary hot post all-star form. Nobody scores in the paint against Dwight, Smith and Brewer are spark plugs amd Jones looks to be back. If Dwight gets back soon this year could be anything
Grizzlies barely beat LA, lost to NOP like I predicted and we are on schedule with 3-2 over last 5. We would already be 2nd if it wasn't for that non-call, so still doubting it can happen?
By Riley Stat (Road Wins v Home Losses) they have a bigger lead on us than the skewed rankings of Wins v Losses. They are 20-7 We are 19-9 That's a +13 versus a +10 = a three game lead on us (not the 1 1/2 that the standings show) If that difference holds, they will beat us by a 3 game margin at the end of the season. And that shows how much Memrefis benefitted from the bad call in Toyota Center It should be Memrefis 19-7 Houston 19-8 Road wins is what is the hardest to achieve. That's why Riley always measured his teams based on RWs v HLs rather than current standings.
That is quite the theoretical metric. Rockets have played exceptionally well on the road so far this year
Every year I watch the Rockets on RWs v HLs and post our standings versus the skewed Ws/Ls standings. And every year someone like you says this is too analytical or theoretical. It always happens because I'm providing bad news. But when the RWs/HLs tells us we are better than the W/L standings show us, ppl cheer. This is not a metric (much less "theoretical"); this is as much pure and simple math as Wins/Losses are. Look up every standings in the history of the NBA. At the end of the season, RWs v HLs is identical to the Games Behind (GB) results. It converges with exact results. Exactly. because they are one and the same at the end of the year. It is a better ranking than mid-season GB because schedules among teams vary too much.
I responded from a club so maybe I didn't grasp the concept well enough to comment Of course the results converge to be the exactly the same at the end of the year as any other result would be illogical. I'm not discrediting your method but in days like today with weird basketball games (pelicans beating memphis, 6ers beating hawks) it deters me from using analyics to determine potential in standings
True story. i saw we were doing well by that metric this year and so posted it (to geat applause).Then heyp in the same season suggests memphis is better, and he gets piled on!
Rockets meed to focus on Portland and stopping Aldridge. I'm hoping Smith or McDaniels can help Jones slow him down.
On Fridays, I text from "clubs", too (actually my local Irish pub). It's tough to read and post as you want. I get it. I appreciate your candor. The sad thing about these new analytics is everything we say nowadays is measured by whether it's an advanced analytic or not, and whether it has value (see the thread about ref analytics). It makes me sigh, sometimes. But we don't need adv analytics to tell us that the refs majorly screwed us in the memrefis home loss. It really hurt us. The Riley stat shows how much it hurt us. Yes, you are right that we have a good road record. But we were 15-5 at one point on the road, which is NBA legendary status. But now we are 19-11 and MEM overtook us at 20-11, because of the memrefis call. They have only 7 home losses and we have 9. NOLA beat MEM at home. That Road Loss by MEM looks great on current standings, but has little affect on our RW/HL position. We need to stop losing at home as much as MEM, and they need to lose at home more. That's the only way we actually overtake them, as I'm not so sure anymore that we will be able to overtake them by winning more road games than them.
What's with all the other stats, at the end we just need to end up with more wins than them, pure and simple. This is where I agree with Barkley..
And at the end, that means we will also have at greater RW/HL differential than them, too. Pure and simple. It's one and the same. Your Games Behind standings will exactly equal your RW/HL difference vs another team at the end of the season. Weird how people rely on fantastical stats with formulas that have invented coefficients (yes the analytics websites actually decide on these coefficients and recalculate each year), such that the very, very simple math of RW/HLs gets lost in the noise of too much data used to further someone's statistical career.
Every team plays 41 home and 41 away. Road wins minus home losses therefore matches final standings.... it just isnt married up all season long.
I predict in the future Advanced Analytics will "advance" so much that it will analyize itself. It will say, "You know what, we were wrong." And some coach will say, "I'm glad adv analytics has now 'proved' why I didn't use adv analytics before." In academia, this is what is called a "Deconstruction Period." Every mature and advanced science and literary discipline has gone through a Deconstruction Period. So will sports analytics. I will bet my Rice CompSci and Anthropology Degree on that happening. just watch. Although the companies and media making money off of new trends will fight this historical maturation of knowledge process tooth and nail. It always happens...like clockwork. Because deconstructing previous "theories" will get you a PhD.
OK...we are 1 1/2 games behind MEM I don't think we can overtake them because we have lost 9 home games and they have lost only 7 homes games. On top of that, they have one more road win than we do how's that.
