This is a really long article that I would encourage everyone to read (as long as you can handle a bunch of stats, insert NERDS.jpg here) that breaks down title contention using statistical modeling. Here are relevant clippings for the Rockets: (clipped for brevity and relevance, see full article) Here's the link to the full article. Warning, it's all about Boston: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-the-celtics-have-enough-star-power-to-win-a-title-not-yet/ TLR section per @Mr. Dominant request Historically a team needed a certain combination of players to win a title with only 4 exceptions since 1980 (Pistons 3 times and Spurs once.) Three tiers of players; alpha, beta and gamma. With those 4 exceptions, teams have always had some combination of those types of players (or star system ranking.) The Rockets currently sit tied with Cleveland on these rankings behind Golden State. Golden State has a star ranking of 9, Houston/Cleveland are at 5 and a handful of teams are right behind them at 4. Basically we need to either find a gamma player (Melo notably not on the list) or have perfect depth and roster fit to make up for it.
can someone just tell me who the three teams are, so I can decide whether to read the article or not. these premature articles annoy me...as if free agency is over.
The word beta has taken on a connotation that seens to mean "worst. Submissive. Bottom feeder. Terrible" When it originally means no. 2 cause its the 2nd letter. Being number 2 aint nothing to be ashamed of lol. Thats elite.
Warriors, Cavs, Rockets And except for one move (Melo) no other transactions are likely to impact these models at this point.
so Harden is an alpha, yet several members of Clutchfans wanted to trade him for Damian Lillard or Paul George who are nowhere near that alpha list or great players like D'angelo Russell/Andrew Wiggins
Yes sir! Harden is an Alpha and Paul barely misses the cutoff for Alpha. Of course the Warriors have TWO alphas a beta AND a gamma. The real thing to see there is that Melo isn't even a Gamma on the list. 538 projections are not kind to him. They use a 3 year weighted average for projections, and unfortunately Melo being such a negative last year hurts the projection. Technically by their system adding Melo wouldn't move us up any on the list. We'd need him to outperform the career arc progression system (which happens of course) by a fair bit. Right now it projects him to be a net negative on the court.
Melo is a hard one to project IMO In NY, he barely played at the 4 spot the last 3 seasons. He played there only 31%, 8%, and 21% of the time. Here, he'd be playing the PF position almost exclusively. He's just so much better as a 4. During the 15-16 season for example, his PER jumped from 20.6 to 24.2 when he was at the 4. His effiency increases, and his defense isn't as much of a liability. I don't see how he'll be a net negative as a 3rd option playing off of CP3 and Harden at the PF spot. He could become a low level gamma here, at least that's what I'd hope for.
