Just to take your minds away from all the trade talk and some of the negativity. I complied the Differentials of major statistical categories of the ranking of our beloved Rockets in the last 10 games as we started to get healtier. Remember this ranking is for the differential which means the Rockets minus their opponents. The Rockets went 6-4 Pts: 6th (This is really good) FG%: 8th (This more to do with our defense than offense) 3pt FG%: 22nd (T-Mac & Head are misfiring from downtown) FT%: 26th (T-Mac is struggling from the line) Assist: 4th (We started sharing the ball) Rebound: 16th (Where is Chuck Hayes and Deke) Block: 24th (Deke , Yao and Swift need to step up) Steal: 1st (surprise, Rafer is the man, also we have been protecting the ball) Forcing T/O: 1st (surprise again) Fouls: 24th (I guess because we are more agressive on defense) Overall I am statisfied with these results but there still some areas we need to work on.
FG% this is US shooting right? so how can it have more to do with our defense?? I don't understand YOUR comment. But 8th is still good. Rebounding - where is Hayes? Van Gundy is the coach - I guess he is responsible for this one - no-one else's fault but his - no-one to blame but VanGundy with his personnel decisions. Get the point? Fouls: 24th. We get called for more ticky tacky's than others and Yao and McGrady still are taking hammerings and forearms that do not get called. I call this the Jeff I guess I pissed off a lot of refs over the years Van Gundy effect. I don't see any reason the refs dislike Yao or TMac or most of the rest of our team - no really big @$$ES on the floor so all I can figure is JVG coached teams will never get the benefit of the doubt. There seem to be more than usual forearms hitting Tmac in the face since the nose blow, and some are not called at all and none are being called flagrants.....and you wanna know why Mac is not driving the lane? One of the best reasons to bring in a Flip Saunders type replacement. Ah but I can only dream.
I believe FG% has to do with defense because we've been holding a lot of opponents under 42% shooting ... the worst victim being Philadelphia at around 36% or somethign ridiculous like that.
Thank you very much for doing that its a worthwhile post unlike the constant trade bs. These numbers are impressive cept for rebounds, blocksand makes me wonder about the rebounding why hayes isnt playing.
I hope you got your anwser from "12stonestool" above. If not, remember I stressed that in all these rankings I used the differential which means us agains our opponents. For example: If we are 8th in FG% differential, while you do not know if it is because of offense or defense, you know that we outshot the oppenents. Same for scoring it means we out scored the opponents. By the same token we were outrebounded and outblocked. The amazing stats here is steal/To ratio. We are the best in the last 10 games. This is the first Rocket team that I can remember protecting the ball and forcing Turnovers. It means we have more positions than our opponents. Also,we are not defending the 3ptr as we should. With all this, it is only 10 games and is small sample but this is the healthiest we have been and let us see if T-Mac go back into his grove and get his shot back and Hayes and Deke get to play again. I would say tonight's game against the Jazz is huge. It is a must win. We must find a way to win.
Interesting stats. I'm new here, so perhaps this is already well known, but for any one who wants to view league wide raw statistics for the last 10 games of every team, you can go to: http://www.dougstats.com/05-06LF.html The raw text data is Excel friendly, so you can derive all sorts of useful stats from them and see how the Rockets are faring relative to the rest of the league. I did this real quick, and I found differentials for 4 particularly useful team stats which I'll call: shooting% diff, turnovers diff, off reb% diff, and ftm/fga diff. This is based on the "Four Factors" for basketball success, as described by stats guru Dean Oliver here. - Shooting% diff measures how much better a team is at shooting efficiently from the field compared to the opponent. - Turnovers diff measures hw much better a team is at limiting turnovers, compared to the opponent. - Off reb% diff measures how much better a team is at offensive rebounding the ball compared to the the opponent (thus, also taking into account team's defensive rebounding ability). - Ftm/fga diff measures how much a better a team is at getting to the free throw line (and making them). Anyways, here are how the Rockets rank over their last 10 games in each of these areas, by my calculations: shooting% diff: 10/30 top five were: Clippers, Spurs, Suns, Mavs, Heat bottom five were: Lakers, Jazz, Bobcats, Raptors, Nuggets turnovers diff: 2/30 top five were: Pistons, Rockets, Grizzlies, Nuggets, Bobcats bottom five were: Cavs, Clippers, Knicks, T-wolves, Magic off reb% diff: 9/30 top five were: Bulls, Celtics, Warriors, Cavs, 76ers bottom five were: Kings, T-wolves, Grizzlies, Suns, Nuggets ftm/fga diff: 30/30 top five were: Kings, Nuggets, Cavs, Heat, Jazz bottom five were: Bobcats, Bulls, Pacers, Warriors, Rockets As these factors are in order of importance (getting to the free throw line and making them turns out not to be nearly as important as the others), the Rockets did pretty well. This is reflected in our rank in "efficiency differential," which measures how much more we scored, per 100 possessions, than our opponents. It's a good indicator of who the best and worst teams have been: eff diff: 6/30 top five were: Spurs, Clippers, Mavs, Suns, Pistons bottom five were: Nuggets, Bobcats, T-wolves, Blazers, Knicks If you want to see the rankings of the teams according to these factors over the course of the whole season, you can always check out Knickerblogger's Stat Page. He has four factors stats for each team, separated into offense and defense (sortable). Also, click on a particular team to view current advanced stats for each player developed by John Hollinger (author of NBA Basketball Forecast books and current ESPN contributor), or view per-40 minute stats.
Thanks durvasa for the info and the links. Nice first post and welcome aboard. I did my first post very early in the morning. Now I am including the data behind the rankings. I updated the ranking to include yesterday's games. Rockets No./Opponents No. (Diff) Pts Diff: 6th 90.70/86.10 (+4.60) FG% Diff: 8th 0.428/0.412 (+0.016) 3pt FG% Diff: 22nd 0.320/0.353 (-0.033) FT% Diff: 26th 0.697/0.733 (-0.036) Assist Diff: 5th 21.20/17.80 (+3.40) Rebound Diff: 17th 42.90/42.40 (+0.50) Block Diff: 24th 3.50/4.70 (-1.20) Steal Diff: 1st 8.60/5.50 (+3.10) Forcing T/O Diff: 2nd 16.00/12.00 (+4.00) Fouls Diff: 25th 21.40/19.20 (+2.20)
i think the addition of bogans will help keep us on top in steals and forced TO's. tmac and luther's shots will come back and that will bring our FG% up some, as well as our assists (which we are#1 in the last 10 games anyway), and overall points. believe it or not, we actually have a very good team. the shot blocking and rebounding #'s are shocking to me. yao has been very good, but hayes isn't getting any minutes. stro really needs to step it up.
