I think the high school and college three point line are the same distance away from the basket. It's only the NBA line that's shorter.
Bulls isn't a top 10 team in defensive efficiency this year. I do think Houston is playing a more frantic style defense and taking teams out of their comfort zones. I also think that 31% or 38% on wide open 3's doesn't matter. What matters is how many wide open 3 are we giving up. That 7% difference means that for ever 14 wide open 3's we'll probably give up an extra one over the course of time. In other words if we are giving up 5 wide open 3's a game, it will cost us an additional point per game in margin compared to the past. In other words it won't make that much difference.
Can anyone pull up what % of these shots are corner ? At the same time, we had 2 games which drastically inflated our percentage this early, Boston (almost an nba record!) and San antonio we're giving up 28% on 3, which means contested we're giving up what? around 26% ?
25% of the season is over. Also strategy, how well a team closes, which player gets the shot and where they are shooting all are important variables. Look, I think the Rockets are coming down to earth with a THUD because of the massive injuries... but don't read too much into that stat...
I am just replying to this thread to call out bballhollic's point that everyone seems to be missing -- even the poster of the tweets himself. Carl, since this is your thread I will address you, isn't bballholic correct -- isn't this stat saying the Rockets are only allowing 31.6% of 3 point shots to be undefended and not that open shooters are only making 31.6% of their 3's? Considering the fairly significant sample size and the fact the Rockets currently have the best 3 pointer defense in the Association, this would make a lot of sense.
no, its a shooting %, or at least i think it is, does anyone know exactly where he's pulling it from?
Seth Partnow says that about 10-12% of shots given up by each team are those "open 3s." If so, we are talking about 160-200 FG attempts vs. The Rockets. The % difference would represent 10-12 fewer makes total over 20 games-- about one less make every 2 games on these shots so it isn't easy to perceive just watching games. They do, however make a bit of a difference in a team's DRtg, when you are looking at season-long stats-- about 1.5 to 2 fewer points allowed per 100 possessions. It's not a huge difference, but not negligible, either.
Oh, ok, so it seems he is indeed talking about fg % and not what percentage of shots are unguarded. The next question then becomes a comparison of that percentage of Rocket opponent's 3's are unguarded. As someone else said, I think that is a lot more of a significant stat than what percentage opponents are currently making.
In Partnow's list of players, he lists 74 shots. So the question is, did he leave out a bunch of players who took 1-2 of the other 100-120 shot, or are the Rockets giving up that many less open attempts? Did some checking, there is no way the Rocket have given up close to 160 open 3's if Parnow's list is accurate.
I wonder if it might have something to do with pace or something, too... We've been missing a lot of open 3s, too (although we've definitely improved in that regard the last few games).
And of course, the other thing (which may have been brought up, in addition to us being selective about who we leave open) is that a team's confidence may be shaken when they have an open three if they were guarded for their last three threes and missed all of them.
Strange. Our free throw shooting defense is mediocre. Maybe they should practice more on how to defend the free throw.
He says the list is a partial list-- just to show that the Rockets didn't just leave open the Josh Smith types on these attempts. He does claim that the Rockets, and most NBA teams, do give up about 160 open 3s as defined so far this season (10-12% of total FGA). I think one reason why you think this is high is the definition used on the data-- 3s with no one within 6 feet or less of the shooter. 6 feet is not very far. A number of these shots may well have looked somewhat contested on TV with a guy flying out at the shooter trying to recover but didn't get closer than 6 feet at the moment of the release of the shot--however that moment is defined. The defender may also well land pretty close to the shooter after the shot release, which makes a shot look somewhat contested. The Rockets are most likely somewhat lucky on opponent 3s, even considering the fact that they are playing good defense on those and overall. In the last 3 non-lockout seasons, the team with the lowest opponent 3pt FG% in the entire league held opponents to roughly 33% FG% from the arc and even in the lockout season the best team only held opponents to 30% from the arc. The Rockets are currently holding opponents to 27.7 FG% from the arc. The Rockets defend well, but are they substantially better than every team in recent history in this one respect? Look, this isn't to say that the Rockets' defense actually sucks-- they'd be very good even without the anomaly on the 3 pointers. I am just noting that this number does contribute to where the team stands defensively and we may well see a regression to the mean on it.
This team will be scary good if we play this "playoff style" game during the regular season. We will be able to progress naturally to the post season without making huge adjustments.
Houston is the longest team in the nba, our intended starting lineup is like a pterodactyl family (it wouldn't surprise me if we're the longest team in nba history), no 6 feet isnt far, especially with the length they have.
We are getting lucky to a degree on the shooting. But I think that is more than offset by the fact that we haven't been able to run our best personnel out there either. Maybe the shooting comes back to the mean, but our overall offense and defense will (could) be better with Dwight, Bev, and Jones in the rotation.
