You keep trying to make it about me. Not interested in making it personal. TOV% is not misleading. It's an estimate of plays, not possessions, and it shows the exact same increase as TO Ratio on NBA.com. I've posted it several times. Harden has declined in ORTG, DRTG, all types of plus/minus metrics, drive frequency, and yes by turnover ratios. You can keep arguing "it's not that much of a decline" by looking percentages of traditional and volume stats. but it's obviously having a big impact on plus/minus and team chemistry, and it's career worsts or near career worsts for him. And yes, 1% change in TO ratio is significant. If the Rockets as a team improved by that much, they'd move from near the bottom to average.
He's not worst defensively than the year before. AGAIN Harden has always been a bad defender that's no question but if we are that bad defensively that would mean that Dwight Bev and Ariza have all also regressed. Dwight came into the season barely able to play you don't think that his injuries might have hurt his ability to defend? Bev hadn't played NBA ball for a long time, maybe just maybe it effected him?
I don't like this argument. "He's always been bad at D so he can't get worse." Even if he came in out of shape? I don't agree Dwight and Bev are worse. Ariza I can agree to.
Dwight is clearly not the same player defensively. Since you are such a stats guy apparently you should have no problem finding that out for yourself. You don't like it because it doesn't jive with your everything is Harden's fault approach, lol.
I posted in another thread a response with Dwights stats. He's improved in almost every area since last year. Defensive real plus minus, defensive box plus minus, block %, steal %, rebound %. Only one that is down is drtg
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1073968482661841&id=514668385258523 Sharing his defensive tendencies with others
It is about you and TOV% is misleading. It's an estimate and you already know that it's way off in this particular case. You are purposely being misleading. You originally posted that Harden's TOV% has gone up from 15% to 16% and that was "significant". Ok, so 1% is significant. Then I point out that you are using a stat that estimates the actual number of possessions. I then point you to the actual stat on the NBA site that uses the real number of possessions (SportsVU tracks them). That actual number is 12.8% turnovers per 100 possessions. You felt a 1% increase in turnovers per 100 possessions was "significant" but you don't think that there's anything wrong with continuing to quote a stat that you absolutely know is 3.2% too high? If you didn't know that's one thing but you do and you continue to do it. Knowingly using incorrect information is bush league. All that on top of the fact that you're calling half a turnover per game "significant". You're not focusing on anything tangible. Yes it's a slight percentage difference, big deal it's insignificant. Almost all of those stats are based on team performance. We've sucked on defense this season. Is there anyone on the team who's defensive numbers haven't gone down? I know, you blame everyone's problems on Harden.
You've left out the one stat that is an actual calculated stat rather than an estimate, opponents FG%. When Howard is directly defending a shot his opponents FG% is 0.6% higher than their normal percentage. I believe this is the first time in Howard's career that this stat hasn't been a negative number. He also ranks toward the bottom end of all starting centers in this stat. I know it's because of Harden.
Dwight only played 41 games last year. What about from the year before? Seems like his play has had a big drop off since then. Also Dwight's Defensive win shares are at a career low this year.
He's been worse on defense this year no question. The bad part is he has games were he tries on defenes and he's actually pretty good and it helps the whole team out because clearly the team Feeds off him. When he's playing D and passing the ball early we usually are in pretty good shape. I like the games were James has 7 points and 4 asissts after the first quarter better than when he has these 15 point first quarters. Ariza has been the biggest weak link this year on defense even more so than James. With James you some what no what your getting. Ariza was supposed to be our ace the guy who covers for all the gambling down by harden. He's been blown by so many times this year and missed on rotations. It's strange because he was a very good defender just last year and our catylist on that end.
I agree that you could focus on one side of the ball, but I disagree that a player could be out of shape and post those kind of numbers.
I don't know if you saw my reply in the thread about the ESPN article saying the Rockets should trade Harden, but it's the same stats. They look bad when you only look at Harden's. When you look at others it's not all that different. If you do the same calculations for Ariza you'll see that his numbers are worse that Hardens. Likewise, Howards are only slightly better that Hardens. What is the conclusion that people draw from this? It's Harden's fault. The fact is that we've have been horrible on defense this season. Most every stat based on team defense doesn't look good.
By your stat, Harden's TO ratio is up by 11.8% to 12.8%, easily a career high. Yes, it's significant. As a team, 1% moves us from bottom to the middle. I didn't say it's 100% because of Harden, but him playing like this versus an MVP level last year is the main reason IMO.
Fair enough, I'm perfectly open to the idea that Howard is worse. But there are several stats that show he isn't worse
Yes, I noted his DRTG is down. Rebound and steal % have improved from 2 years ago. Block % is worse, turnovers are better. His real plus minus is almost the same as 2 years ago.
Dwight's DRPM was 4.91 in the 13-14. It currently stands at 3.84. This coupled with other stats like his defensive winshares being a career low. Combined with the stats that aelliott mentioned he has clearly regressed. So no it's not just Harden and Tjones.
If a half a turnover a game moves us from the bottom to the middle on a particular stat then what does that tell you? The spread on that stat is extremely small and that stat is insignificant. Bottom line is a additional half a turnover per game doesn't really make that much difference. If it changes our rankings then so what? The whole point of having a discussion like this is to identify the causes of our problems. As far as I know we might be doing better in the TS% by left handed players with beards rankings this season but that has no real effect on the outcome of games and therefore it is insignificant. These are all team related numbers and defensively we've sucked so all of our players numbers are down. Look at DRtg, Lawson 113 Terry 112 (+6 from last year) Beverley 111 (+5 from last year) Thorton 111 Brewer 110 (+5 from last year) Jones 110 (+8 from last year) Ariza 109 (+6 from last year) Harden 108 (+5 from last year) Smith 108 (+6 from last year) Capela 105 (+8 from last year) Howard 104 (+4 from last year) Do you see a pattern there? We've sucked so all of our numbers have gone up. Did you notice that Harden is pretty much middle of the pack in those numbers? Did you notice that our two defensive specialists have worse numbers than Harden and have been even worse than him when Harden has been off the floor? No instead you pick out the fact that Harden's numbers are down. So instead of focusing on the fact that Harden has an extra half a turnover per game, maybe notice that we have multiple players in our rotation/starting lineup who are average to below average on both sides of the ball. That's a real problem.
I don't agree with your conclusion on turnovers that it's insignificant go from the bottom to average, but anyway I wasn't trying to emphasize it, just saying it's one area where we're worse. I agree our defense is the problem. The team defense is really bad. By defensive real plus minus, Harden and Ariza are the biggest decliners. There's also transition defense: "Houston's poor transition defense can also be traced to Harden's presence. Per NBA.com/Stats, the Rockets allow 14.7 fast-break points per 48 minutes with Harden on the court (a rate that would be sixth worst in the NBA) and just 11.9 with him on the bench (13th best in the league)." http://espn.go.com/nba/insider/stor...t-howard-address-houston-rockets-problems-nba
