The best half-court offense tops out at about 1.06. The Rockets' zone basically makes the average half-court offense they've faced look like the best half-court offense in the NBA when they play zone.
I’ve grown to hate the zone. We are a team that has the talent to switch and play man. The zone takes away one of our biggest defensive advantages.
Durant, JSJ, Adams, and Sengun are best suited to play PF or C defensively. Unpopular opinion, but I do not think Durant and JSJ are a good fit defensively in man-to-man units. JSJ and Durant have worked on offense so far. The Rockets don't use it much, but Amen, Okogie, and Tari bring the Rockets' man-to-man defense when deployed together. I just don't know if Ime wants to play that much man-to-man with Durant while also depending on Durant for so much offense.
Help me out here: where do you get that number? Do you mean points per play? Do you think the left axis of that chart is points per play, or per possession?
Halfcourt number is points per play in halfcourt from cleaning the glass. As zone is played per play in which zone is played, I assume their possession on left axis is per play in which zone is played (i.e., that 1.1 is not equivalent to the 110 Defensive rating which is points per 100 possessions). After an offensive rebound, teams typically are trying frantically to just get a man on the ball such that I would not consider that defense to be zone, and as such, I doubt a PPP for zone defense counts this portion of a possession to be zone. I think their "possession" should be called "play" as I highly doubt it covers the entire possession in which at any point zone is played. If it is truly per possession, that is decently impressive.
One of the criticisms of zone is it hurts your rebounding. So, you’d think they would measure the whole possession, and just remove transition possessions. Do you know if CtG has zone data like that? If so, I might finally subscribe.
just an eye test and i aint digging up no stats... but i hate the zone... it seems to always result in their guys getting wide open looks from the perimeter... too many players can make u pay nowadays... most of our 3pt % is due to wide open looks.... I dont think 1 or 2 stars can beat us... but when most of their team is raining wide open 3s on us - it gets dicey... I'd much rather man up... and help and rotate as needed.
I checked the NBA team DefRtg which is PPP. The median is 1.14. The Rockets' is 1.12. Of course it includes fast break points so it should be somewhat higher than half court only.
Did nba provide the median. Or did you calculate it? I can’t find league-wide averages for stats at nba.com. Must be looking in the wrong place.
No, I just looked at the team DefRtg ranking. https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced?dir=A&sort=DEF_RATING The 15th and 16th are both 1.142. I compared it to the zone PPP shown on the chart which looked like it's a little below 1.1. But after seeing your exchange with Joe Joe, I realized that PPP in the chart could mean point per play, not per possession. If it's per play, then I was comparing orange with apple.
Last year we were better and didn’t play nearly as much zone. TO’s are also a problem for the defense. I’m pretty sure we were better at defensive rebounding rate last year than this year and zones are notorious for producing poor block outs. The zone is definitely a problem. Is it the only problem, no. Our offense is being re-built on the fly due to 3 new starters and a guard that has now played the position for 8 games this year and only a handful of games last year. We are best in man-to-man defense because we have the personnel to play man-to-man better than most any team in the league, at least with the starters. If Reed can play defense at least as good as he did last game, we should abandon the zone for 90% of the games.
