Was my first time going to rockets game. Good to say i was there for Durant first rockets win! Was fun game to watch. Eason was hitting those 3's! Reed look really good.
The big question with Josh is, can he do what Dillon did and turn himself from a mediocre 3P shooter into a very good one. So far so good.
DRtg watch: bbref boxscore version vs nba.com pbp version bbref version has Reed better than Tari, Okogie, and Alpi While NBA’s pbp version has him dead last again with big margin vs Tari, Alpi bbref: NBA pbp version:
Really hard to put too muc weight on defensive rating stats for one game. That said, bbref is probably at least a couple of decades behind on advanced stats.
Hard to get excited about beating the worst team in the league. It was a slump buster. If we can put together a string of road wins over this next stretch that will start to mean something. Im happy to see Reed getting more comfortable every game. And anytime Amen has a perfect assist to TO ratio in a game, that’s a good sign.
I hope Reed continues to play like this until Dec 15th. Love the way Sengun played in Game 1, then he resorted to pump faking again at the 3pt line.....SHOOT IT! https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1HhryG4s2b/
I was there too in Section 102. The crowd was a lot better than in previous seasons, especially for a Monday night game. Well, at least through 3 quarters. A ton of people left early in the 4th when the Rockets were up 33. Certainly we need to see them play this well over the next couple weeks. But let's not forget that they also started last season 1-2 and those losses were at home to the Hornets and at the Spurs. That's far worse than losing at OKC in double OT by one point. And that same 24-25 Rockets team lost at home to Detroit and got embarrassed by Brooklyn.
We’ll be doing this for every game, last game showed even more wild variance between pbp and boxscore DRtg. … the point ts to show how useless bbref’s boxscore-based stats are for defense…not really to make a point about Reed. Reed is just a good example, bc he’s a darling of boxscore-based DRtg.
I wouldn't say the bbref defensive rating is completely useless. My guess, as someone that doesn't follow the bbref stat much, would be that it is only measuring disruption. Oddly, Reed has been very good at disruption, but has been so bad on-ball that the disruption doesn't matter much. I'd guess Reed will be one of the biggest outliers relative to the perception of defense by watching with bbref's defensive rating. Counterpoint, Wemby will likely be 1st, and Cam Thomas is worst. I would not put much weight on the bbref stat in looking at players except for at the very high end and very low end. The Top 10 and Bottom 9 from last year look good.
The positive was that the Rockets played loose and decimated the Nets. This is the NBA where even the 12-15 man in the roster are elite athletes. I get many people don’t want to get too excited about blowing out a team in the rough patches of a rebuild; but these puff pastry wins are how teams build momentum and get in sync. This win doesn’t make the Rockets elite, but it shows the disparity between a team vying for a title, vs a team vying for next years #1 draft pick.
Durant is an average ball handler, but he’s far from an average outside shooter. He hasn’t shot less than 40% from three since the 2021-2022 season on five or six attempts per game. He’s off to a slow start this season in that area but will likely get to his typical percentages soon. In fact, he has not shot less than 38% from three since the 2018-2019 season.
Yeah but his quality of shots are down. This rudimentary offense doesn’t make anything easy for KD. He works hard for his buckets here
They have a long way to go, the Rockets won 3 Quarters but 1 of those 3 Quarters was contested and the Rockets only won by 2 points. The Nets won the 2nd Quarter, basically the Rockets only dominated for 2 Quarters.....to put things into perspective. That is not a good habit, last year was like that.
