Morey: "Rockets #1 half court defense with Asik" and how it affects us going forward

So we need melo instead of lebron?

 

Rockets won't leave the fast-paced transition system. Its what Leslie Alexander likes.

 

In order for asik to progress, he needs to be the vocal leader on defense too. In the interview with morey it mentions that omer doesnt talk much which is really important on defense, ala battier. That should be the next frontier.

 

I don't think we will change our normal mode of play, but the Asik Factor bodes well for the playoffs when the games slow down.

 

It's not so much about whether we score in transition or in half court. It's about what generates easy transition offense for the opposing team.

Right now from my perspective, our TOs off iso is what is disproportionately hurting our transition defense as in our favorite iso we are parking shooters deep in each corners and having two players high on each side near the 3-point line shoulders while one player streak down the middle of the court.

Whenever we have a TO in this mid iso configuration, the entire middle of the floor is wide open and it almost always results in a dunk/layup/3-on-1 on the other end, and we turn it over from this mid iso configuration a lot. Whereas our TOs off mid PnRs tend to be much less costly on average if we want to work the middle of the court.

Even if we absolutely want to iso Harden, we need to iso him on the side, not in the middle, even if that means giving up a corner and we shoot a slightly harder 3. The trade off on the easy transition buckets for the other team is well worth it IMO. This doesn't just applies to TOs, obviously. We have the exact same problem with missed layups.

 

I wouldn't have expected the Rockets to be #1, but this isn't a huge surprise to me. The Rockets half-court defense has been quite good for most of the year.

See my post from Dec. 5 (sorry CH ):

When you look at what largely correlates with Defensive Efficiency, it's (1) Defensive Rebound Rate and (2) Opponent Effective Field Goal Percentage.

Not sure what I made this for originally, but this is from August 2011:



The Rockets currently rank #2 in DRR and #23 in OPPeFG%.
Given that OPPeFG% can be heavily negatively effected by giving up easy transition buckets, it's obvious that that's where the Rockets need to improve.

Again, quoting myself from Dec. 5:

Both McHale and Morey have been outspoken about them thinking it's beneficial to the team to crash the glass.

This might be based on some research similar to the one presented in this video:

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6yfhuODOJ7s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

So, given that Morey believes it's generally beneficial to your team to play at a high pace (which is something that obviously has been well documented) and crash the offensive glass, I would think that -- though there certainly are things that can be improved upon -- even if the Rockets were to add more capable defenders and work on some of the things that can be fixed, they'll likely continue to be a largely offensive oriented team with some deficiencies in transition defense.

It's a trade-off they obviously are comfortable with.

 

Now this is a good thread, I'm tired to see threads like getting Howard or CP3, or LOF and LOH simply trying to piss off each other.

We all know Houston has a defense problem, but where are all the holes exactly? If Dork is right(though his statement is quite supprising), then it comes to this: when Asik is off the court, we are simply bad on everything defensively. When Asik is on, we are bad at transition d.

Signing Mishap or Josh could solve problem #1, they both can be the defensive anchor when Asik sits, but they lock down our caps and leave us no amunitions in 2014 summer. How about KG or Elton, they are still solid, if not great defensive PF even at their ages. and they would command less money and leave windows for Dmo and Mr.#5 pick to grow. But are we sure we have a shot at Love in 2014?

When Asik is on the court, it's simply a trade off between crashing the offensive boards or rushing back. As of now the coach staff seems to be comfortable with former. I have no problems with that, but at some point you have to think, we are avraging 107 pts per game, how much room left to improve on that? or we can just focus on transition D instead of getting more pts.

 

Rockets rely too much on hitting 3-pointers ... a missed 3 pointer is essentially a fast break opportunity going the other way.

Another weakness is the Rockets leaving shooters wide open. Need to stop helping so much on the interior and focus on perimeter defense. Which leads us to another need: Better defense at the power forward position.

 

While it's all good, we are still a poor defensive team overall, and with Asik our transition D and offense are not very good.

It's all about tradeoff, just like you can't pick one or two stats to judge a player. Morey said how Kmartin is so efficient on offense back then, and it turns out to be just an overall ok player.

 

So on the one hand you say we need to stop shooting so many outside shots (threes).
Then you say to improve our defense we need to give up less outside shots and stop helping so much inside.
Lol

 

We are not a half-court offensive team when Asik is on the court. We still run and probably run more since Asik helps us get more stops. We don't need to slow down. What we need is Asik #2, another 7-footer with outstanding defensive footwork that can play great D and shut down the paint when Asik is on the bench. When you look at our +/- with and without Asik it is so obvious that if we had Asik #2 for this entire season we would probably be about 3rd or better in the West right now.

To move to championship level we need a better Asik, a guy that can defend on Asik's level but at the same time can run some offense for us and hold onto the ball. If we get that, look out.

 

The Rockets are hitting 37% of their 3's for the season. I think they need to keep shooting them. I'm sure Morey has the numbers figured out and the 3 gives you an advantage in today's game.

 

#1? Eh, wouldn't go that far. We are like 23rd in defensive efficiency overall, which is straight up awful.

 

I'm not really sold on consciously switching the overall pace of the team to a slower one. Sure, the defense would improve, but the offense would suffer--and probably it would suffer more than the gains we make up on the other end, making the team worse overall.

Two things. One, keep in mind that age and experience are highly correlated with defensive success. As this team gets older, it will naturally improve at playing defense. Two, one of the reasons we're running so much is that we have such a young team. Taking advantage of young legs is one of the main reasons to do it. I imagine the pace will gradually slow down as our players get older, and hopefully at the same time their improving skills in the half court will make up for it on offense.

 

The most intriguing perfect solution would be if the Lakers are looking to dump Pau Gasol . which they might really need to due to the whole new repeater lux tax thing that's going to totally killing them soon. even the Laker isn't completely without limits.

Pau give us

1. a second Anchor on D, especially one that can operate when Asik is not on the floor (since his time would probably spread between PF and C.)

2. a really really big half court post scoring option that we simply don't have at this point (though D-Mo looks promising).

3. a very versatile player in general that can do pretty much everything you think a big man can do.

4. most importantly, as he is only one the hook for next year, does absolutely nothing to hamper us in 2014 if it doesn't work out, presuming we're not giving them a D-Mo or Chandler Parson to get him. but more of a Greg Smith type.

 

Slowing down the pace some as this teams adds different pieces might very well be beneficial. Still, the Rockets by all accounts seem to believe that it is generally a good idea to play at a high pace, if the personal so allows.
Not only that, but again, they also seem to want their team to crash the offensive glass. They haven't been all that successful in doing so this year, because neither Morris nor Patterson was a particular threat on the offensive boards, but it's something they'd like to be good at, which naturally will hurt your (transition) defense some.

It's just a simple offense for defense trade-off the Rockets seem to believe is worth it and from what I can tell it very well might be.

As I wrote in my prior post, being among the league leaders in OReb% and DefEff seem to be doable if you have a good rebounding front-court, however there appear to be very few teams who have done so while playing at a high pace, though that doesn't mean it's not doable. It just might be a new/different philosophical approach.

I haven't done extensive research on this, but just glimpsing over some of the past season, last year's OKC team might have been the only team that was in the top-10 in Pace, OReb% and DefEff in recent years.
Some other teams came close, but most of them sucked on offense, whereas OKC was #2 in OffEff last year.

Granted that Thunder team was loaded, but I would expect the Rockets to try to play/build similarly (i.e. top-5 in pace & offensive efficiency, top-10 in offensive rebound rate & defensive efficiency) going forward.

 

What stat is Morey using to justify this?

 

. . . . D12?