I pulled out James Harden and Jeremy Lin's data this season, up to last Wednesday Sun's game (March 13th), and trying to look into their assists and TO numbers. Up to March 13th, James Harden have 366 assists, and Jeremy have 391. And I tried to group the type of assists by at rim, 3 pt, < 5 fit and mid range. Let's see how their assist were distributed. Both James and Jeremy have low mid range assists, and that is consistent with Morey ball theory. However, it is easily seen that James tend to give more assists to 3 point shooters and Jeremy favor more to at rim and < 5ft shots. 3 pt shots are more efficient, you just get more points, but close to rim shots are usually higher percentage shots. So I think in days like today, when shots are not falling, we should let Jeremy handle the ball more than Harden, to get the momentum going. When we further break down whom those assists goes to, as shown in the table here, both Harden and Jeremy gives ~25% of their assists to Parsons. No wonder Parsons PPG jumped 50% from last season's 9.5 to this season's 15.3. And when he is going 2-13 like today, it really hurts the team. The remaining assists were pretty evenly distributed to the starters and Delfino. They are doing a good job of getting other team member involved, and also healthy number of assists goes to their back court partner too. So we can stop talking about Jeremy's offense don't involve Harden or vise versa. Small sample size, but Jeremy and D-Mo have nice chemistry, and I hope to see more of that.
Not exactly eye-opening revelations, because the results are pretty consistent with what people have been saying all along. Having said that...very good research, and very good analysis. Repped, sir.
where did you find all these things? amazing. I get that why fans clamor saying put the ball in lin's hand. the way i see is that lin is a good play maker in open court, transition situation, but not as effective as harden in half court. Warriors did a decent job getting back tonite, so...
when we look at their FG, it is obvious that both of them like to have ball in their hands. 70% of James and 60% of Jeremy's FG are un-assisted. Basically they got assist from each other and Parsons. Lin got some feed from Delfino too. Parsons and Delfino on the other hand, got way more FG from assisted shots than try to drive by themselves. I got nervous then Delfino try to create. Asik got a little more assists from Jeremy than from James, and Delfino got a lot more assist from James than from Jeremy.
Harden has good passing skill. But I don't like him handle the ball too often. Every time Harden pads his ASTs (an indicator on who does the main ball handling), Rockets struggle to beat even the worst teams in the league.
Asik's numbers are a bit skewed, if you know what I mean.:grin:Easy 11 RPG and 16 PPG versus current 11 RPG and 10 PPG he could consistently catch and dunk them balls instead of his dance moves.
look at their turnover types. Upto March 13th, Harden had 230 TO and Lin had 185. I think offensive foul is over rated for both of them. Both of them have more than 50% of them due to lost ball or bad pass. And Jeremy likes to travel. Lin have higher percentage of bad pass, and Harden have higher percentage of lost ball. (I think Harden was like Lin in last season, still takes time to learn to protect the ball a bit better). Unfortunately, I don't have info how much point opponent gain on their TOs, that would really interesting info to have. When we go down with numbers, Lin and Harden gives pretty much the same number of bad pass, all the extra TO of James compare to Lin pretty much come from the lost ball. Though I feel Delfino tend to have lots of TO, it actually don't show that much, and he protect the ball pretty good, and most of the TO come from bad pass. I really don't like Delfino try to drive and make play to others, it is not effective anyway. Same with Parsons.
Thank you, this is a lot of work that you put into everything. Appreciate it very much. I have a stupid question: Lost Ball versus Lost Ball Out of Bounds - What's the difference?
suprised that Asik has as many bad passes as parsons and delfino. I thought most of his turn overs from getting stripped.
said many many times before. for this team to win consistently, parsons can't go cold for any night. we only have three guys scoring most night. lin, harden, and parsons if one of those guys go cold, we're in a hole and in for some fighting back
Not sure whether I'm biased or not, somehow I feel Harden's TO hurts more than Lin's. So I looked at when they tend to have TO. Both of them tend to have more TO when the point margin is less than 5, that is, when the game is on the line, both of them tend to step up, and TO is the by product of being aggressive, also under pressure. When there is > 10 point margin, both of them have much lower TO numbers. The separation is at the section of 6-10 point margin, obviously James need a better control there. Break it by quarters, James has pretty even distribution of TO, and Jeremy has a sudden drop at 4th quarter. Obviously Jeremy concentrate more in 4th quarter. (James maybe has the same concentration all 48 min. ). Oh, it could also due to Jeremy got benched more in 4th quarter :grin: When we look at the what time of the quater they have their TO, I break it into 3 sections, first half quarter, next 3 min and last 3 min of the quarter. The distribution is really different. For Jeremy, he tend to have more turnover at the first half of the quarter, and less and less when it is closing towards the end of the quarter which the intensity of the game goes up. Whereas James shown different trend, consider the first section contains 6 min, double the time length of the later sections, James don't have more turnovers there, but getting more and more towards the end of quarter, which is bad time to have TO.
Anyway, I just hope Rockets' offense could be more diversified, and let's mix up James and Jeremy in play making, especially during the 4th quarter....
