Don't let it bug you. Stuff like that happens. Just laugh about it and move on. You're doing good. We have a dearth of posters who try to discuss higher level basketball, so the discussion is welcome.
Thanks a lot. The intention of creating this thread is I found the contrast between the reputation of Dantoni to play fast and the fact that we have the slowest pace in February to be funny, besides there're several clips as showed by the gifs of Paul and Harden walking in the backcourt and suddenly accelerates to avoid 8 second violation, the contrast between their slow and fast movements as well as their kind of clumsy actions is also funny to me. And I wanted to joke about these two stars turning Dantoni's fast offense into a slow one because they are "slow and clumsy". I know I didn't set the tone right, every post in this thread is very serious, explaining why Harden and Paul are slow, explaining what pace is and questioning me not understanding this simple stat, arguing that pace doesn't matter, etc. I don't know if you can understand what I am saying after all these explanation, but if I post the exact same thing on Chinese forum, everyone will immediately get my joke and my thread will be flushed with related memes. In fact we call Rockets' offense "creep and gun" , in contrast to suns "run and gun". I like Clutchfans better because overall people here are less aggressive(as compared to Chinese basketball forums), and it's biased toward the Rockets. However I am still learning to convey my idea without causing any misunderstanding.
Bridging the gap caused by language and cultural barriers is always difficult, but don't let it get you down. Just like Yao did, you will have your struggles. Either way, there are many of us (some lurking now) that love to discuss Rockets and basketball at a higher level, so definitely keep posting.
This is great news, though I think we definitely need to capitalise more on fast break opportunities. For the rest, it's great. Harden and CP3 do their best work in half-court, it's the most efficient we can be and I hate quick threes. The best part about it: playoff basketball is slow so we are PERFECTLY built for it. MDA knows his stuff, no 7 seconds or less nonsense here!
you know how the rockets fared in pace compared other teams win Harden led them last year to 55 wins and in 2015?
You are just not remembering the same guy that I saw play. In his prime, Olajuwon was a revelation who made all of the great centers of his era (including early Shack) look foolish at times. He had the quickest hands and feet for a center that I have ever seen. In a straight line race, Robinson might have had more footspeed, but I have my doubts. And if he had played with a true guard like Harden, Hakeem would be known as the greatest of all time. Even Drexler, while fantastic in his own right, wasn't a PG.
The plan, it has always been, is to generate as high of a ppp as possible. That is the reason pace and transition had become so popular and trendy because transition led to a higher ppp. SSOL pioneered that along with spacing with lots of 3s. GSW then seemingly perfected it almost. Fast forward to us this year. We have been doing one other thing at the highest rate this season or at worse top 3 all season. Defensive rebounding. Our dreb% was #1 or #2 all year with us recently struggling on that end dropping us to #3. We have also focused on reducing our turnovers and forcing turnovers. Why is this important you ask? Glad you asked let me tell you the strategy behind this. James and paul are the top 2 iso ppp players this year. (Last time I checked at least). Also, our reliance on 3 and rim has boosted our PPP. So we focus on scoring the highest possible points per possession and compound that with limiting as many opportunities as possible from the opponent. Pace only dictates possessions a game not efficiency. And while being a high variance 3pt shooting team the more possessions the better likelihood of getting hot. But it makes sense with have 2 of the best isolation players recorded we would slow down and use that. TLDR; if we play golden state and both have the same amount of possessions. As long as we score more ppp we win. If we manage to secure more shot opportunities then them we increase our chance even if we are shooting at a lower efficiency. We also go 2 for 1 everytime to create as many extra possessions as possible. If we lose the possession battle, we can still win if we have a higher ppp. Ppp is the end game. Not pace
Who cares what our pace is? We are neck and neck with the Golden State as the best offense in NBA history. I don't care if they crawl up the floor, scoreboard don't lie.
Prior to February, We would blow a lot to early big leads from playing unf a high pace and taking quick threes. It was becoming very problematic but understandable because quick shots have quick consequences
Loved the post. Slight correction on the last statement. You definitely describe why DRbd% is a key indicator; however, you can't win with a lower PPP than your opponent in a game; it's a statistical impossibility*. The statistical definition of the word "Possession" doesn't allow one team to have more possessions than another*....as the definition is: Possessions is defined by "Change of Possession". The other definition ppl use is more about how many looks you have...so offensive rebounds create an extra "possession" by that definition. But that definition isn't the Stat one for Pace and PPP. * for discussion purposes, each team has the same amount of possessions per game (thus, same Pace number). However, technically, one team can have a few more possessions due to who has the ball last at end of each quarter, since possession alternates to start each quarter, according to who won the opening tip.
No you’re absolutely right and it’s the reason I used opportunity earlier in the post rather than possession. Just got lazy at the end of the post. Thanks for pointing it it. Its edited to reflect that.
No. Both bbref and NBA.com (and ESPN tapping into their Pace stat) define Possession by "Change of Possession." Surely they both know from pbp which team has the alternating possession per quarter based upon who won the opening tip. I would hope that NBA's scorekeeper would actually use Change of Possession to count possessions vs scraping their on PBP feed later (via an algorithm), so we might assume they are correct. However, BBRef might have reasons wrt supporting historical years of PBP data, that NBA refuses to use, or calculates differently. If NBA.com doesn't actually count Change of Possession, and scrapes their own PBP feed to count possessions, then I'm going to assume NBA and BBRef have pbp scraping algorithms that simply have different ways of counting technical fouls.
I love the "creep and gun" description. It certainly describes how James and Chris frequently play, but the phrase wouldn't have occurred to me. I can see the ESPN headline in June: "Houston Rockets Creep and Gun Their Way to a Championship!"
