From 5 to 13: Redefining the Positions in Basketball (and the current rockets makeup)

A Stanford guy claims that there are 13, not 5, positions in basketball. With all the hysteria about our 93 undersized PFs, I thought it would be interesting to look at our current roster accepting this "13 positions" premise.

I'll start with his definitions for the 13 positions. Then look at how our team fills out those positions. And then discuss what it might mean.


Taken from http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=5431

For the Rockets:

Offensive Ball-Handler - Goran Dragic
Defensive Ball-Handler - Kyle Lowry, Chandler Parsons, Courtney Lee
Combo Ball-Handler - Royce White*
Shooting Ball-Handler - Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb*
Role-Playing Ball Handler - Marcus Morris
3-Point Rebounder - Jon Leuer* (Chase Budinger)
Scoring Rebounder - Luis Scola, Donatas Motiejunas*
Paint Protector - Marcus Camby (Samuel Dalembert)
Role Player - Patrick Patterson, Terrence Jones*
Scoring Paint Protector - N/A
NBA 1st-Team - N/A
NBA 2nd-Team - N/A
One-of-a-Kind - N/A


To me this address more of the roles players have. The other issue is who they will be matched up against on defense.

1 - Courtney Lee, Kyle Lowry, Goran Dragic
2 - Courney Lee, Chandler Parsons, Goran Dragic, Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin
3 (quick) - Chandler Parsons, Courney Lee, Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin
3 (big) - Chandler Parsons, Royce White, Terrence Jones, Patrick Patterson, Marcus Morris
4 - Chandler Parsons, Royce White, Terrence Jones, Patrick Patterson, Jon Leuer, Donatas Motiejunas, Luis Scola, Marcus Morris
5 - Marcus Camby


Disregarding the (very real) possibility that any of our new players were drafted to be traded, it appears that they have made Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, and Patrick Patterson expendable. Assuming Goran and Courtney Lee are resigned Kyle Lowry will be expendable. And assuming Jon Leuer continues to develop his 3 point shot, Chase Budinger's role has been replaced as well.

Replacing Samuel Dalembert with another Paint Protector will be a priority. But as we all know, a "star" is what we lack.

 

Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose were examples, not the whole category. I'm sure Lebron is the same "One-of-a-Kind" category.

The point wasn't to put people in categories based on his personal judgements, but to let players' production define the categories.

Exactly.

And it's poor categorizing that leads people to thinking things like:

"OMG we have 93 PFs!! FAIL!"

We didn't simply add 4 PF's, we added:

one "Combo Ball-Handler" (White)
one "Shooting Ball-Handler" (Lamb)
one "3-Point Rebounder" (Leuer)
one "Scoring Rebounder" (Donuts)
one "Role Player" (Jones)

2 of which can guard 4s and smaller 5s (Leuer & Donuts)
2 others that can guard 4s and bigger 3s (White & Jones)
1 that can guard 2s and smaller 3s (Lamb)

That's an important distinction because you could have 4 of those players on the court at one time and match up with positions (2-5) without any redundancy on their "roles."

 

Whether you want to argue that they're "positions" or "roles" that's just semantics to me.

(If you think there's no point in understanding the differences in roles that's another issue all together and you should probably skip this thread as you have nothing to add to it.)

The point of this thread was to highlight the DIFFERENCES of our new players. To see what gaps in our roster need to be filled. And to see who is being made more dispensible by acquiring someone new to take their place.

Bud leaving created a gap for a scoring rebounder.. that's been filled by Jon Leuer.
Sammy D leaving created a gap for a paint protector.. that's hopefully being filled by Dwight Howard.

It's well known that we're trying to trade KMart, Scola and Lowry, and I think it's even more telling that we're bringing in people to fill the same roles they occupy.

(I also think all of this is the back up plan to remaining competitive if we can't get that superstar via trade.. Like it or not, the goal before Morey is to be competitive while building towards contending for a championship)