The effort on this post is fantastic! Fantastic!! not a thread I read regularly, but I may start now.
Assist to Bad Pass Ratio for Assist Leaders: Code: Rk Player AST AST/BadPass 1 James Harden 11.3 3.8 2 John Wall 10.8 5.4 3 Russell Westbrook 10.1 3.5 4 Chris Paul 9.5 10.9 5 LeBron James 8.9 4.9 6 Ricky Rubio 8.7 5.8 7 Jeff Teague 8.1 5.5 8 Draymond Green 7.3 5.3 9 Jrue Holiday 7.3 5.2 10 Kyle Lowry 6.9 5.9
Chris Paul is unbelievable man... I know it's crazy to suggest this to assist leaders, but Harden & Westbrook's decision making needs to improve.
I see. Something is amiss there. The Bad Pass counts on their site are very low for all players this year, compared to past years.
The score-keepers note "bad pass turnovers" in their official "game books"/reports. You can see a sample from this game book today. http://www.nba.com/data/html/nbacom/2016/gameinfo/20170305/0021600927_Book.pdf We could do a quick check of a few Harden games from the NBA game book and see if he indeed is doing 3 per game, and compare to bbref's pbp to see what they say.... they list bad passes too. While that is somewhat subjective wrt the score-keepers being consistent, I don't know what other source you'd use. Is there a site like that NFL stat site which scores players for each play and then does peer review? Anyhoot, the question would be which one (82games or bbref) is using the NBA official game book and which isn't, and why not. The subjectivity of score-keepers across the league shouldn't really matter in comparisons like this. We are tracking NBA records or anything. I assume BBRef has always scraped from the Official game book.
Did you notice that the bad pass count for Harden is very low this year compared to the past? I noticed the same thing for other players. Clearly its being tracked in a different way compared to past years. nbawowy also reports that Harden has 57 bad passes this year, so it must be using the same PBP source as basketball-reference.com. 82games.com apparently has a different source. I guess that they're using different labels for bad passes this year compared to past years, perhaps defining it in a more narrow way.
It would be fairly easy to rule out the official score-keeper game book as the PBP source. Just compare to bref's pbp for a few games. They'd have to state their reason for not using the game book, though. If people are doing independent review (like that NFL site), with peer review, then I'd like to know. That would be pretty cool. I could see the score-keeper being trained to score any pass that results in a direct steal or out-of-bounds to be "bad pass", which would be rather conservative, but would achieve better consistency across score-keepers. I could see a more in-depth review to include a less-friendly definition of "uncatchable", but you'd need a consistent vid review and peer-review of that, like the NFL site.
Well, out of 5.8 turnovers, I suspect he creates around 2-3 assists for the opponent. Assists aren't points though. My question to you is how many points have our opponents scored on the extra possessions they received at the hands off Hardens turnovers? How many for the season? And how many for the game? Oh really now. Ummmnm, no, that's what's you want to think I do. But it isn't what I do. After you answer the first two questions above then answer this, how many points do the top ten teams score on Hardens turnovers. Then figure this out. How many more points do we score as a team with Harden than we would if we replaced with a league average player? And give me that number against the top ten teams too, since those are the guys we're actually going to be playing against in the playoffs. You actually think I'm so shallow that I don't consider Hardens effect on our offense? LOL foolish. If you only saw my data spread......LOL [/QUOTE]The Memphis game Rox spanked Gruzz ass with Harden getting 5 tos. How did that happen if Harden's TOs are so game breaking? Oh yeah because Harden has 11 assists to show for his TOs. Thats a/to of more than 2 in terms of value. And these assists are 3 pters so its more than 6 pts of value for every to Harden makes.[/QUOTE] 1. It was one game. You don't extrapolate conclusions with one games data. That's stupid. In the playoffs we have to beat four different very good to great teams four times before they beat us four times. That's a while nother animal than one game of 11/5 in March. 2. To your point about threes, yes we are trying to offset Hardens turnovers with threes. Um, I stated that clearly myself several days ago. But let me remind you, for the last four seasons before this one we've tried to offset Hardens turnovers by a combination of steals and threes (instead of using another playmaker). Didn't work. Now we're all in on the threes game. Like I previously said, I hope it works. But if it does work it will be a historical outlier. The reason no player has ever won a championship averaging over 4.1 turnovers a game is because all championship teams, up until this juncture, had at least one and usually two to three other guys who could create shots and get buckets if the primary playmaker was defended to the point where he was being turned over. The offenses had other plays. They had a guy on the other side who could execute a play or a guy on the interior that could create. I'm not dragging this team anywhere. Harden is the one pulling and driving this team to its destiny. MJ won nothing.....nothing until Pippen showed up and became the primary distributor. And MJ actually played great defense. So he cited be a plus when he www missing shots. We need a primary distributor that will give us 12+ assists against 3 turnovers a game, which will allow Harden to settle into a role as the secondary distributor but the even bigger primary scorer. Because Harden is much, much more efficient at scoring the ball than he is at distributing the ball.
Wrong. Assists are literally points, points that happened because Harden made it happen. That's what an assist is. Turnovers on the other hand are not points. In fact a turnover is better than a missed shot because a turnover stops the clock and allows your team to set the defense up. 2-3 assists on 5.8 turnovers? Really? Are you saying the Rockets are so bad on defense other teams score 50% of the time even when their defense is set? Last I checked opponents don't score 50% FG for the entire game, otherwise Rox wouldn't be top 3 they would be one of the worst teams in the league. Why do I need to answer your questions when your assumptions and analytical skills are all wack? I don't think you're shallow, on the contrary I think you're a pretty smart guy. However you think the rest of the people on planet Earth are dumb, that's why you have this arrogant attitude that you're right all the time. Do you think you're smarter than Morey, the Rockets Fo, the coaching staff and even Harden all combined? Have you ever seen Morey's data spread? LOL foolish, that you think you know better than people who do this **** for a living? The Rockets have been playing Harden off the ball since they got him, now that half the season is done they have all the data they need to see whether Harden is better as the primary facilitator or an off the ball guy. How come they haven't made changes if it was really better when Harden was the off the ball guy? They didn't even trade for a facilitator during the deadline, they got another deadly 3 pt shooter and scorer, that goes to show you how much trust they have in Harden as the primary facilitator. Have you ever heard of Hypothesis testing? If you're going against the norm, you should be the one doing all the effort and producing all the data to prove the conventional thinking wrong. Rox off to the best start since Hakeem and Harden being the strongest MVP candidate now you say it's better with him off the ball? WTF LOL it's not just one game, Harden is averaging 5.8 turnovers a game. Rockets are 44-19. This means they've been winning 70% of their games with Harden getting 5.8 turnovers every night, which in you own words is 40% higher than any other championship player. One of the basic things you do in analyzing data is look for trends, and as we can see the trend is that Harden's tos have very little impact on the team's wins and losses. I remember you complaining about Harden getting 11 tos and that was a 30 pt blowout too. What does creating shots and making plays have to do with turnovers? When you create a shot and it fails, it's gonna be a missed shot and not a turnover. Turnovers account for very little, they are only 10% of a team's total FGs so you can win the turnover battle but it doesn't mean jack squat if all your shots are missing and the opponent is dunking all over your head. The Memphis-Rockets game Memphis had 13 tos to Rockets 14 tos. What the hell happened? I thought Conley was the better playmaker? How come Rox just 1 more to then? And even then it has no impact, 1 more turnover but the score is 15 pts apart? I keep telling you the main reason Harden has a lot of tos is because the tos of the rest of the team is frontloaded to him. Having another playmaker will lower Harden's individual tos but will not have any effect on the teams TO count and will actually lower the production of pts per to. Harden's TOs don't matter if the Rockets tos are the same as the opponent. If you're gonna say Harden has the highest to out of any championship player, then the rest of the team has the lowest to out of any championship roster because all they do is stand in the corner and shoot 3s. If the at the end of the day Grizzlies get 13 tos and Rox get 14 tos where is the turnover loss there exactly?
"A turnover is better than a missed shot because a turnover stops the clock and allows you to set the defense up"? So every turnover stops the clock? Maybe you might want to start watching more basketball, and once you do you'll see how off base this comment is. A lot of TO lead to fast breaks where in fact you can't "set the defense up". So NO way in hell is a TO "better" than a missed shot. A TO means no attempt to score on that possession = ZERO pts. Can a missed shot lead to a fast break? Yes. However you can't score without shooting, and a TO guarantees the opportunity is taken away to score. You're not going to miss every shot (even if a team only shoots 10% from the field in a game it sure beats 0% because no shots were taken because you turned the ball over every possession).
It's really funny that you tell me to watch more basketball because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about here. 1. A lot of TOs lead to fast breaks? Really? An NBA team will average 7 steals but have 14 Tos in a single game, this means at least half of the turnovers are resulting in a stopped clock and gives the team time to set up the defense. On the other hand a missed shot increases the chance of a made shot on the other end, the opponent will make a bucket from 35% of the time all the way to 58% of the time depending on where the shot is attempted due to a fast break: http://nyloncalculus.com/2015/08/04/threes-and-transition-defense-a-follow-up/ 2. Maybe you forgot the "missed" in the term missed shot. What do you mean 10% chance? If the guy made the shot then it would be called a made shot, not a missed shot no matter how much the success rate is LOL. Math question: you took 100 missed shots with 99.999999% success rate. How many did you make? I was comparing two negative stats here missed shots vs turnovers, if you're talking about field goals being better than turnovers well yeah, duh. Rebounds, assists and steals are all better than turnovers too, doesn't have anything to do with the discussion at hand. You can have field goal attempts with no missed shots you know missed shots and FGA don't come hand in hand. It's better for Harden to have 20 turnovers over 20 missed shots, not just because half of the turnovers allows the Rox to set up the defense but also because the Rox take 50% of their shots as 3s, that means their shots are inherently more valuable than the opponent since the Rox take the most % of their shots as 3s. Thus, if the Rox exchange 1 turnover for 1 made shot on their end the Rockets will come out on top every time. Conversely, you would rather have Harden make all his shots rather than have no turnovers per game, because Harden takes like 30 attempts a game but will only have around 5.8 turnovers a night. That's why the biggest factor in Rockets success will always be FG and specifically 3 pt % and why Holic is wrong when he obsesses over Harden's turnovers like it's the winning formula for a dynasty. Rox can lose out on every other stat but if they score 3s and FG% way above their average they will knock other teams out. OTH, they can be the lowest turnover team in the league but if they are hitting 3s at 22% they will get blown out of the building by the opponent. Nobody here is saying turnovers aren't important, in the playoffs every pt will matter. However Harden and the Rox have limited time and energy to improve their play they're better off working on ways to increase their 3 pt accuracy, defense, rebounding and assists then have Harden go off the ball to limit his TOs, which of course has no guarantee of limiting the Rockets turnovers as a whole.
The trend is in 37 years of NBA championship basketball no player has ever averaged over 4.1 turnovers a game and won a championship. Most of the rest of your post is just personal attack, all the "you think...." garbage. Not worth comment.
This isn't that hard. A turnover means you pissed away an opportunity to score on that possession. So no a TO isn't better than a missed shot, because when you don't turn the ball over you get opportunity to score by putting up a shot. You also have the opportunity to get an offensive rebound to attempt another shot. A TO guarantees that you don't score every single time. You're not going to turn the ball over every possession, and thus the comment even if you only make 10% of your shots that is certainly better than making ZERO of your shots because you turned the ball over. You either get this or you don't and it's quite obvious you don't. So now you're saying that "half of the turnovers allows the Rox to set up the defense"? You previously stated that "TO's stop the clock and allow you to set up the defense up".
#1: Whats the evidence of turnovers of the franchise player being the key to winning a ring? You can't even make a good correlation between Harden's TOs and the Rox win-lose column so how can that predict a championship? Harden has 5.8 turnovers a game but the ROCKETS as a whole have almost even turnovers with the opposing team. That "as a whole" means including Harden's turnovers. You yourself said that basketball is a team game, how does Harden turnovers prevent the TEAM from winning a ring when the TEAM has almost the same turnovers as the opponent? The even funnier thing is the team with the least turnovers per game is the mavericks, you can't even draw a correlation between turnovers team success and their turnover rates. None of the teams in the top 5 least turnovers are considered contenders in fact 3 of them are lottery teams: https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/turnovers-per-game #2: If you can't even establish #1 why does your trend or stat mean anything? In the 37 years of NBA championship championship basketball no player has ever had a beard as long as Harden and won a championship. That has as much to do with winning a basketball championship as your statement about Harden's turnovers. #3: Since when was a historical trend a guarantee of future events? Ever traded in stocks? Past performance is not an indicator of future performance, especially when you are tracking HISTORICAL data since the start of the NBA and comparing it to the present Houston team. Before last year no team has ever gone back and won a series after being down 3-1. That stat has jacksquat to do with last year's Cavs team since they aren't fighting against the history of the NBA, they were just battling last year's GSW team. Houston has a low chance of winning a ring this year, but it's not because of Harden's turnovers it due to the relative lack of talent on the Rockets compared to other super teams in the league. They may flame out in the playoffs, but again that has nothing to do with Harden's turnovers and everything to do with their 3 pt%. You say you have data sheets, just make a correlation graph between Harden and Rox schedule results. If you can make an actual trend between Harden's tos lessening and the Rox wins and pts won by are increasing and vice versa I'll admit I'm wrong.
There is no one key, only keys. When studying the data from championship teams entire data set is taken into account including the 4 factors both offensively and defensively. So its not one stat that says a team is a championship quality team. It's a whole set of parameters which are interrelated. Take free throw shooting for example. No teams have win a championship while shooting below 69% from the free throw line...except teams Shaw was on. Those teams were exceptions to the 70% rule. But they really weren't exceptions when you take in the totality of the other parameters. Turnovers, both individual turnovers, and team turnovers, are another such factor. Yes, a ten could win a championship with one of their primary rotation players averaging 5-6 turnovers in the regular season. But it's gotta be one of those type teams that totally warps the game, like the Shaq Laker teams. Is this team warping the game time that degree? No, we're not. We simply do not have enough defense (defined by data) nor enough three point makes at the proper efficiency to fall into the championship team data set. Even though this is what w are attempting to duo. We'll still have to warp even more to get there to the tune of increasing three point makes to around 24-25 a game on average while bumping down our defensive field goal percentage. Yes, I'm talking about regular season data....combed to remove a lot of static from games where we are playing non-competitive lottery teams and other games where injuries/sickness are the primary win/loss factor. Then you have to consider the playoffs as a different animal, because they are. When looking at tan and individual turnovers you have to look at that data round by round historically. Because as teams advance in round their funnel of criteria to win gets smaller/tighter. One of those criteria that funnels down by round is turnovers, individual turnovers. So when you blow off that Hardens turnovers don't make a difference, you are arguing AGAINST 37 years of history. You're not arguing against me. You're arguing against a data set collected and analyzed grim the last 37 seasons. In light of that 37 years of data, our team has a problem, because we have a player that is averaging substantially over 4 turnovers a game, which means we lack multiple playmakers that can distribute the ball efficiently without turning it over too much, and we are dependent on one player way too much. Duo much so that he takes unnecessary risks and directed the play to get all the work done. And we don't have the defensive counterbalance not enough three point shooting to offset the solo playmaking problem we have that has historically over the last 37 years doomed every other team to also-ran status. You want a very basic, simple correlation? Look no further than our playoff win/loss record when Harden's turnovers rise since he's been here the previous 4 seasons. Basketball is a team game. Historically, over the last 37 seasons, all championship teams have had at least two or more playmakers who share possessions in a significant split. This is a huge reason why they keep individual turnover count down to 4 or less a game. Go look up championship teams and see how many of them have less than THREE players averaging over 3 assists per game. There are a few. Now look at their defensive ranking and how their assists (and turnovers) split out among their top two playmakers. Hardens turnovers will hinder us from winning a championship because they are a product of one player forcing too many plays and not allowing the team to have a multi-dimensional attack. Bri, when we get in the playoffs all the best defenses in the Association are lining up to water down our efficiency. They don't have to worry about another playmaker taking the ball to the other side of the floor and snapping off plays. All they gotta worry about is Harden. Take away the three point shooters, fade off him into the paint and Jerry gin fire all the silly pull ups he wants or force the ball through a keyhole to a covered shooter, or force it to the rim against a big and his primary defender who are already sitting in the paint waiting for him. What I'm saying here isn't Rocket science. Everybody with half a brain knows this is who we are and where we are headed. The data set simply backs up what we can obviously see going on out there. Sure it looks great in the regular session. But anybody with any real sense knows we are headed to even more forced action by Harden and....more turnovers. Basketball is a team game. You guys have multiple playmakers that can, will, and do go make plays so when your great superstar is dogged by defenses designed specifically to shut him off, He can become the Ryan Anderson on the floor angle another great playmaker runs up the score. Basketball is a team game. You can draw plenty of correlations between a players turnover count and his teams odds of winning a championship. You may not be able to correlate low turnovers with losing in the regular season. Because there are a host of other criteria. The Mavs have been bad at a number of things. So even though their turnover count is exaggerated good because they play slower than everybody else in the league, they still have virtually no chance to win a title because they aren't nearly good enough in a number of key areas. They've got multiple playmakers, unlike us. So they don't share our problem. But they've got their own cracks which will prevent them from winning a championship this season. And I have no idea what you hoped to prove by bringing them up. Smart alec nonsense. Not worthy of any further reply.
