Points per quarter, and similarly points per game, are not good ways to judge offense. You have to account for pace, we play at one of the slowest in the league, which isn't a bad thing. Our offense is 2nd best in the league, only behind the warriors. To me that is fantastic. Our defense, however, is 27th in the league. In a 30 team league, if you have the 2nd best offense and the 27th best defense, do you really think "putting up bricks" is our problem? Do you really think the area of focus should be figuring out how to improve the offense?
Sure, defense is the bigger problem, but a slower pace in 2019 is just hurting you. Chris Paul slowed this team down as soon as he came here. That Rockets offense in 2016-17 looked so much deadlier and fun.
I mean, you can say that it looked that way to you, and was more fun to watch, but statistically it wasn't any different. 16-17 ORtg was 114.1, 17-18 ORtg was 114.0, and this year our ORtg is 113.5. It's basically been the same all three years. The only difference in these 3 years has been defense. 2 years ago our DRtg was 108.4 (18th), we were 55-27. Last year our DRtg was 105.6 (7th) and we were 65-17. This year our DRtg is 112.0 (27th) and we are track for 47-35. Our offense since Dan Tony arrived has been consistently elite all three years, but our defense has been all over the place. As long as we play with this system, we will have an elite offense, and our success is going to depend entirely on how well we can play defense.
This doesn't need to be complicated. Just focus on one thing right now that anyone on the team can do: transition defense. A.k.a. get the hell back down to the other end of the court. With a small team with a lower chance of getting offensive rebounds, there's all the more reason to get more players back faster on defense. It's annoying as hell to watch the Rockets put together these long offensive possessions, and then have the other team immediately chuck the ball down court to a guy right under the rim. Stopping just a few of those easy transition baskets would be enough to flip some losses to wins and/or negate the need for draining overtime in other games. After that's fixed, then move on to what to improve on normal defensive possessions.
I was wondering if this was a product of the offense 3s make long rebounds that has the other team already near mid court that said We should have 2 ~ 3 players back The other 2 being in the corners or under the basket Rocket River
Yeah, I've had the exact same thoughts. That's one of the reasons I'm not big on the excessive numbers of threes. Another thing I thought about last night was how they tend to set up players looking for that corner three. I mean, everyone does it, I haven't paid enough attention to see whether the Rockets frequently put players at each corner at the same time. Regardless, you literally can't be farther from the opponent's basket than you are when you take a corner three at your own basket. That seems like an inherent problem for getting back on transition. I dunno. I'd say call a timeout immediately after getting burned a second time on an easy transition bucket (as much to rest your players as to figure out how to adjust), but we know what MDA thinks of timeouts.
This is definitely true! I wish I could find the exact numbers, because I don't remember where I saw them, but someone did analysis on this and the average points per play (PPP) after a missed 3 is higher than the average PPP after a missed 2. The difference isn't huge, but there is a statistical difference there. Combine that with the fact that 3s miss more often than 2s, and there's definitely a real disadvantage here for your defense.
This still doesn't answer the question of how we had one of the best defenses in the league last year and one of the worst this year. We've always had guys in the corners and shot a load of 3s, it's kinda what we're known for. I think basketball fans (and I absolutely include myself in this) just aren't as knowledgeable about defense, we tend to watch the team with the ball in their hand and also there just isn't much written about it. I can read a dozen in-depth articles about our ISOball, the plays we run (high PnR, 2-1 series etc) but barely anything on defensive details. 90% of the stuff I read on here about our defense is actually just about our offense, which is almost exactly the same as it was last year, so that doesn't wash with me. I'm frustrated because I wish someone could explain it to me but it seems we are all equally as clueless as to what the hell is going on lol.
Damn, I feel the same way. I guess two things for sure we can say though we suck at keeping guys in front of us and we suck at rebounding. Can check the numbers on the rebounding too, 26th in rebounding percentage.
