A great take! An encapsulation of Harden's game in few words. And probably one of the more efficient games in the league for a guard.
The in-between shot is what you settle for when you are old, slow, and over the hill, i.e. Jordan run #2, Kobe today, Lazy Old Man Melo, O.J. "I was already mentally and emotionally 31 years old when I entered the league" Mayo. Oh, and tired. Don't forget tired. It's like when Harden is near death after 39 minutes of tough tough basketball, and he drives his way deep into the heart of the defense and goes "Here, my honorable opponents, take my ball." while his fresher teammates are doing pushups in the corners as instructed. He should have considered a low percentage mid range jumper then if he was allowed to take them with the game on the line instead of better shots which required more energy. Or when Deng got told to drive his way to the rim after 46 minutes of tough tough basketball while Thibodeau is on the sidelines with his signature Jack Nicholson Joker grin "If he dies, he dies."
The midrange shot is like the running game in football. It's not efficient. But you need to be able to do it well enough to keep the defense honest. If a guy can hit the stop-n-pop midrange shot consistently, he will be able to get to the rim much more easily.
This ^^^^ What some may not be taking into account is that the majority of made 3ptr's are uncontested / wide open shots. So then one might ask, how was he open? Spacing. How did you get spacing? By making opponents defend multiple areas of the court. No midrange game someone says? Me thinks not having to defend the midrange game makes defending the inside game and 3 pt game that much easier, and this would drive down the made % for 3's if they are better defended.
Ideally with spacing Asik is at the top of the key and the rest of the offensive set is at the three point line. A horns based wide spread offense. As the ball moves around the perimeter the defense has to make subtle shading adjustments. As soon as the appropriate adjustment is not made, the offensive player has an unimpeded path to the basket. Mid range shots are reserved for shot clock running out situations. With Asik pulling the center out, it becomes easy to get to the rim. In theory.
It would be interesting to investigate. Unfortunately, I'm going off of the numbers available from HoopData.com, and they don't seem to have breakdowns for playoff games. I could see how their regular season %FGA "in-between" correlates to their playoff offensive numbers, but this would be less helpful because team's play very different schedules in the playoffs compared to in the regular season. It wouldn't be "apples to apples" comparison.
Morey made an interesting comment in his interview on 790 yesterday, which made me think the Rockets are purposely stressing taking more 3-point shots and shots at the rim, and less mid-range shots. When talking about the first month of the season, he said he was happy with our offense, that we were getting very good shots but that we just need to hit more of them. Towards the end he said, "When shots are going in average, we'll be a very potent offense." In other words, because of the type of shots we're getting, he only need to convert on them at a league-average %, and our effective FG% will be amongst the league leaders. HoopData.com has a stat XeFG% which they define as: "expected effectiveness of shot distribution of the team, assuming they shoot league average percentages from every area of the floor." http://hoopdata.com/teamxefg.aspx Currently, the Rockets have the highest XeFG% in the league, not surprising considering the high percentage of shots at the rim and at the 3-point line that they take. We're 3rd in percent of shots taken at the rim, and we're 2nd in percent of shots taken at the 3-point line. If we matched the XeFG% for our team, we'd jump from ranking 15th in the league in eFG% to ranking 7th. Here's a chart showing how eFG% relates to XeFG% over the last several seasons. Again, I've highlighted the Rockets. If you're wondering who is that data point at (47.5, 55), it's the Miami Heat this season. Great talent allows them to be very efficient from the field even though they are taking a lot of mid-range jumpers.
Is there any analysis about contested-ness of shots? It's one thing to miss a wide open shot. It's another thing to miss a well-contested shot. Lumping all shots by distance may skew the picture of how good these shots are. You can shoot the 3s and the layups all day but if they are well contested, they aren't good shots. So it would be helpful if we knew WHY our shots weren't falling as expected by league average. This goes back to the point that the midrange shot might be needed to make the 3s and the at-rim shots more open.
Not in public domain, not yet. The Rockets, and many other teams, definitely have this data though. Might be able to infer something based on the percentage of jump shots that are assisted, but then the play-by-play doesn't tell us if a miss was assisted or shot off the dribble. Synergy has numbers for spot-up jumpers, which are less likely to be contested as strongly as other kind of shots I suppose.
One thing to note about the current Rockets shot distribution is how Lin may be a part of it. During the offseason, I tried to explain that in NY, Lin had a disproportionate amount of assists for 3s and dunks. These were 'good assists' so to speak. Compared to Lowry and Dragic, who had a lot of jumper assists that weren't really good shots. Of course, at that time, I was rebuffed using the "Lin had Tyson Chandler" argument. But watching the Rockets this year, I find that Lin STILL seems to make great passes either to the 3pt shooter or inside. And low and behold, number back me up. Lin's assist distribution Close shots(30%) Dunks(22%) 3 Pointers(29%) 2 point jumpshots(19%) Contrast that to, for example, Goran Dragic Close shots(21%) Dunks(7%) 3 Pointers(20%) 2 point jumpshots(47%) As you can see. Dragic gets almost half his assists on regular jumpshots. While Lin 4 out of 5 times aim to pass into the paint, or out to the 3pt line. Lin also has a ridiculous amount of dunk assists, despite having Omer 'butterfingers' Asik instead of Chandler as his big. Makes you wonder if part of the reason why the Rockets went hard for Lin is his ability to get high percentage shots for his teammates.
Wow, 11/12 was the lowest of the entire bunch for the Rockets... I don't know about ya'll but now I'm wondering if Lowry's beef with McHale was more of an extended beef with Rocket's FO demanding that they move away from plays that results in 2pt's.
100% true. Plus it is better to get your range and warm up with a few 15 footers rather than bombing a 3 pointer cold. I think this coaching directive is one of the factors hurting Lin's fg%.
Last year, Scola led the team in FGA. That probably reduced our XeFG% significantly since he took so many mid-range jumpers.
4 Dunks. 5 close range shots. 13 3s. 23 regular jumpshots. I didn't list him because he was injured so much. You can find all of these stats at 82games.com, in case you want to see how Lin stacks up against other players.
Man...im not trying to brown nose you guys here...but reading this thread is an absolute joy. This is an awesome discussion on rockets stats and analysis. Keep this going. lol
Digging up the numbers: Lowry assists 2011/2012: 3pt: 75 (~24%) Close: 87 (~28%) Dunk :16 (~5%) Jump: 132 (~42%) Total: 310 Passing Rating: 9.6 AST48: 9.9 Compared to Lin's Lin assists 2011/2012: 3pt: 50 (~23%) <—mostly Novak, JR Smith? Close: 60 (~28%) Dunk :64 (~30%) <—mostly Tyson Chandler? Jump: 41 (~19%) Total: 215 Passing Rating: 13.8 AST48: 11 Lin assists 2012/2013 so far: 3pt: 23 (~29%) <—Parsons, Morris, Harden? Actually this number might be low because the earlier games the Rocket's team had horrible 3pt %'s, despite attempting among the most the league. Close: 24 (~30%) Dunk :18 (~23%) <—I expect this to rise as Asik's handle/finishing improves Jump: 14 (~18%) <—Patterson? Total: 79 Passing Rating: 13.6 AST48: 8.7 Curiosity's sake, I pulled up Harden too: Harden assists 2011/2012: 3pt: 78 (~34%) Close: 40 (17%) Dunk: 33 (~14%) Jump: 78 (~34%) Total: 229 Passing Rating: 6.0 AST48: 5.6 Harden assists 2012/2013 so far: 3pt: 24 (~37.5%) Close: 16 (25%) Dunk: 11 (~17%) Jump: 13 (~20%) <—dramatically lower while all other's increased Total: 64 Passing Rating: 6.6 AST48: 6.2 I wonder if Harden's different assisting patterns is a direct result of Moreyball, and it's interesting to me that Lin's has always been playing it. ...And Lowry refused to play it, at least insomuch as it shows up in the numbers.
...come to think of it, also very interesting that Scola is conveniently not on the team anymore. Alongside the guy that kept feeding the team 2pt jumpers. And Morey kept Patterson (who was told by McHale to practice the 3pt) and Morris. Hmm.
This is by far the best thread in GARM right now, you guys are dropping some serious knowledge, mad props.
