Rocketscast/Kevin Pelton on why the Rockets are beating expectations

Harden wasn't added. He replaced Martin. And as far as minutes allocation, I think he's saying that the main reason he got the Rockets forecast wrong was because he didn't project the minutes allocation correctly across the board. So its not just Smith&Morris, though those guys instead of the rookies is probably the biggest component. Additional minutes for Chandler, Harden, Delfino, and Asik probably also need to be accounted for.

 

Good follow-up to a good post. I'll try to match that.

That point about improving our team in the half-court can't be understated. We're currently putting too much pressure on Harden to bail us out. Just last game, he had at least 4 isolation possessions in which he had to pump fake, jab step, and then draw the foul or pull up for a contested jumper. That wears a guy out. If we were to maximize other players' contributions, we could rest Harden longer, possibly unleashing him in the 4th if need be. We all saw what a rested Harden looked like in the Minnesota game...unstoppable.

I'm looking forward to our team meshing even more since the team's chemistry still has much room to grow.

One good thing about Morris was his great habit of running the floor. IIRC, a large chunk of Lin's outlet passes were to him and Asik.

Oh, Asik and his reverse lay-ups. At least he's making them more consistently and dunking more often. I like the progress I'm seeing from him. It would be fantastic if Greg Smith could learn Asik's defensive principles and serve as a better offensive back-up while not giving up as much on the defensive end.

Finally, the coaching staff has proven themselves imo. They seem open to experimenting and figuring out what works best. We've won some games thanks to rotation patterns and called plays too.

 

I have to say I find the rationale here very spurious. Morris and Smith were nothing last year - they played like 25 games COMBINED and scored less than 50 points all season COMBINED. How does he figure that not playing these guys isn't developmental?

I don't think anyone with any model could predict us winning 45 wins. I am sure this guy is good and all, but really - how can a model judge players that have such little experience and did nothing the year before. These guys looked like scrubs.

At what point does the model account for things like coaching?

 

exactamente

 

I don't necessarily think this is true, there seems to be a common sense divide here, the idea of playing your young players relates to rollover from experienced players, the idea that the same mentality would exist for 2nd year players who barely played in their first year is somewhat ridiculous, it IS playing the young players.

 

Do these projections include coaching staff? If so, what was the effect of McHale? If not, does that mean coaches are meaningless? And also can players have a negative net game score; can someone be a cause for deducting wins? And finally, is defensive deficiencies taken into account? As an example, Kyrie is stellar offensively but completely detrimental on the defensive end. How does that weigh out? One more. How about attitude? Sometimes a cancer in the team can bring everyone's mojo down. Thanks in advance.

 

This, half the problem with our team is other than Delfino, none of the players really had a trajectory to even model, sure making educated guesses for how they will project is comparable, but doing it for an entire roster bar one guy?

 

Younger teams must have a higher standard of deviation

 

Wasn't the majority of clutchfans up in arms when McHale played Morris and Patterson over Jones? I agree that Pelton as a long time NBA analyst should have more common sense than your average NBA fan, but it's certainly not unthinkable to feel that way. Also, there may be precedence by other tanking teams in regards to player rotation. Lord knows Austin Rivers as a Rocket would be in the DLeague right now. But instead he's starting for the Hornets despite having historically bad season.

In other words, even if what McHale/Morey did makes sense, doesn't mean it's what commonly done.

Player production already reflects coaching, demeanor, and other variables. And if you look at player production on a per-36 basis at basketball-reference, you'd be surprised at how little most of them change over the years(assuming no injury issues). Through different coaches, different systems, different teams. Not saying they don't matter, but not as much as one may think.

 

Let me format it better. Here's quote from his book to help you understand what their projection system intends to be:

"How has SCHOENE performed? Honestly, not great. Of the six pure statistical projection systems tracked last year on the APBRmetrics message board, SCHOENE had the largest mean error, pegging teams wrong by an average of 5.0 wins over the 66-game schedule. However, when I studied possible adjustments over the summer, I found nothing that would have improved SCHOENE’s results over multiple previous years. So the system remains unchanged from last season, which is essentially the third incarnation of SCHOENE. (The first was used only in 2008-09. The second, rolled out for the first edition of Pro Basketball Prospectus in 2009-10, began incorporating multiple years of past player performance.) Historically, SCHOENE has proven more effective at pegging the direction teams are heading than their specific win total. So a different measure--which system was closest to each team’s final record--showed SCHOENE performing as effectively as any of the other systems. SCHOENE was closest to the pin on six teams; only a set of projections using regularized adjusted plus-minus as tracked by poster EvanZ did better, with seven. The moral of the story is to temper the most extreme projections. When SCHOENE projects that the Minnesota Timberwolves will be an elite team this year, the appropriate conclusion is that the Timberwolves are closer to contending than conventional wisdom would indicate, not that they are as good as anyone in the Western Conference"

So even if you want to judge it based on wins total, you should wait until the season ends.

On a side note, he projected our rookies to be -2 warp, and Morris/Smith to be about 0 warp in the book. Obviously the +5 warp from Morris/Smith is outperforming so far.

 

Don't disagree with the list on D-Leaguers panning out (I'm big on rookies getting time in the DLeague due to the success the Rockets have had using the RGV to develop the players... but note the list you show the players were good enough to get on the court within the first season, usually in the second half of the season.

Morris literally couldn't get any time with the Rockets in his first year, which is quite rare for a lottery pick, while Smith was an undrafted DLeaguer.

 

Dear ClutchFans.net,

I ****** ** my estimate of this years Rocket win total and wish to apologize. Knowing that words alone cannot atone for my grievous insult and irreparable harm to you, I am taking the following actions as penance.

1) I cut off my left arm
2) I made my wife shave her head
3) I will not eat chocolate for three years (with a fourth year option at CFN discretion).
4) I will personally scrub the toilet of every CFN member (who does not live with their mother)

I trust that will be sufficient, but if not please let me know as your happiness is of critical importance to me.

Sincerely
Kevin Pelton

 

Backpedaling is when you offer an unreasonable explanation as to why your initial claim was incorrect. I am not statistician so it is difficult for me to understand why Harden (a player that a lot of teams highly value prior to the trade) only gives us 5 more extra wins compared to MM and Smith who according to him, will give us the same value.

I don't know about you, but Smith going from 8:35 mins/game last year to 14:24 this year is not significantly more minutes in my opinion. He was also getting those many minutes despite having both Dalembert and Camby in the lineup so once they were gone, it is reasonable to assume that he would get more minutes this season since he is part of the rebuilding program (not just the rookies). So why was that not factored in to begin with?

Marcus Morris on the other hand is a surprise and went from 7:24 to 23:00 - significant. This added minutes gave Morris and extra (compared to last year):
- 7 pts/game
- 0.7 assists/game
- 3 rbs/game
- .3 blks/game

Let's take those extra 15.75 mins and distribute them amongst DMO and TJ. It is not a far stretch to say that between those 2, they can make up for MM's numbers. If they cant, I just can't see how that is 10 less wins.

We can't deny that all the analysts projections (including most of CF) prior to the start of the season did not see us succeeding this early and justifiably so (young team, inexperience, etc). This team has proven a lot of experts wrong and to me, Pelton does not want to admit that he was one of them.

This simplistic explanation is quite insulting to the achievements of Harden, Lin, Omer and the coaching staff who somehow will not get any credit if we accept this.

 

It's not that Harden only worth 5 wins, I think it's the difference between him and Martin+fillers.

 

My point is not really about Harden but the additional minutes for MM and Smith.

 

See my post#71. Their system is more accurate for the final record historically, and we are entering a tough schedule in January.

MM/Smith are projected to be better than our rookies this season in his book. But I think MM/Smith outperformed his projection so far. Let's see if they can keep it up for the rest of the season.

 

Just read it, thanks. One thing that stood out about what you posted was...
"SCHOENE had the largest mean error, pegging teams wrong by an average of 5.0"

Why can't he just say that I got the largest error for our team? I agree that MM and Smith has outperformed expectations. So has Harden, Lin, Omer, Chandler, Delfino, etc, and the coaches.

I did not voice out my projections in CF but I admit that our Rockets has proven me wrong. The future is bright - New age !!

 

The problems is, you equate rookie development with playing time. Morris and Smith didn't play as rookies, and they have certainly developed.

 

I predicted 43 wins at the beginning of the season and still stand by it.

Morris and Smith are clear surprises. But I think a lot of people underestimated Asik's impact. They either thought he could not play heavy minutes, or was an offensive liability, or both. It turns out that while Asik is as much a good defender and rebounder as expected, he can also score and stay out of foul troubles.