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An Analytical Approach to the Rockets 2013-2014 season

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by jtr, Sep 18, 2013.

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  1. jtr

    jtr Member

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    Ruminating today I started wondering how competitive will the Rockets be next season. So I hashed out some guidelines to arrive at a reasonable solution.

    • Only use real numbers and numbers trivially calculated.
    • Base the analysis on the statistics from last season only.
    • Remove the stats of the players who left and substitute the stats for the new players.
    • Modify the minutes given to each player in a meaningful way.
    • Calculate the effect of having either Howard or Asik on the floor at all times at the center position.

    So here are the advanced stats for next season:

    [​IMG]

    If you simply add up the components of each players Team ORtg and Team DRtg you get the teams numbers from last season as shown in the bottom right of the image. 109.5 ORtg and 104.5 DRtg. Somewhat better than last season, but I still have to factor in the effect of having Howard or Asik on the floor at all times. To do this I simply took the DRtg when Asik was not on the floor last season and adjusted it to reflect Asok on the floor at all times. The equation for this is simply:

    (Team DRtg (104.5)) - (time Asik was off court (38%)) * (Asik's effect on team defense (5.8 points)) = 102.3

    ORtg 109.12
    DRtg 102.3

    Net point differential 6.82

    And that ladies and gentlemen was slightly better than the 2012-2013 Clippers, and only trailed the Thunder and the Heat in net point differential.

    Here are the arbitrary minute adjustments I made:
    [​IMG]

    It is probably the most realistic appraisal you can find of the Rockets next season.
     
    #1 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2013
  2. Voice of Aus

    Voice of Aus Member

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    is it just me JTR or does this thread make Jones look like an NBA starter?
     
    #2 Voice of Aus, Sep 18, 2013
  3. jtr

    jtr Member

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    Three frickin stars??? I put 3+ hours of work into that advanced stat dump. Plus the insight to recognize the analytical opportunity. OK. I arbitrarily modified minutes to suit my purpose. Minute allocation next season is unpredictable to say the least. I thought I had made clear.
     
    #3 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
    1 person likes this.
  4. Voice of Aus

    Voice of Aus Member

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    did u just read what i said wrong, I said nba starter not nba star....

    also is this assuming everyone plays 82 games JTR?
     
    #4 Voice of Aus, Sep 18, 2013
  5. oakdogg

    oakdogg Member

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    3+ hours? Seriously? I can see that it might be fun for you, but I don't see that it's useful to anyone else.
     
    #5 oakdogg, Sep 18, 2013
  6. jtr

    jtr Member

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    No offense intended. Everything is based on last seasons reality plus how I arbitrarily chose to allocate minutes. If someone played 76 games last season it is reflected in their advanced stats. The minutes I allocated to each player does have some effect, but that effect will always be dominated by the minutes of Howard, Asik, Harden, Lin and Parsons.
     
    #6 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
  7. jtr

    jtr Member

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    And that is OK. But for a statsoholic like me it is all good. It certainly has to be of greater value than quoting major news services which in no way covers what I am interested in. Quoting major news articles is not something I would ever stoop to. It is in some form or fashion degrading. It says that I do not have a voice of my own and that I am reduced to referencing MSM.

    Oh, and by the way, posting MSM media articles requires an IQ of 0. Would you like for me to write a bot that searches the web for Rockets articles and posts them on CF? Thought not.
     
    #7 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2013
  8. JustAGuy

    JustAGuy Member

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    Last year we had the least experienced team in the NBA, composed of players who had never before played together. That makes the numbers a little wishy-washy to begin with. I'd be expecting pretty much all those numbers to change this year, either from experience playing with each other or improved play.

    Accounting for improved defense for the extra 16 minutes of Asik/Howard is a worthwhile thing to do, though I don't know I'd want to go to that much effort to do it.
     
    #8 JustAGuy, Sep 18, 2013
  9. Rockets590

    Rockets590 Rookie

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    shhh jtr we still love you
     
    #9 Rockets590, Sep 18, 2013
  10. oakdogg

    oakdogg Member

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    Nice response. No harm in it, for sure. Just would be cool if you found something with a better ROI to put your passion and analytical acumen into. Sorry I didn't have any feedback on your actual analysis.
     
    #10 oakdogg, Sep 18, 2013
  11. JustAGuy

    JustAGuy Member

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    Of course, who am I to comment on where one spends time. I spent 2 hours writing a script to load the NBA schedule into a database just to find out information that was already available on the web.
     
    #11 JustAGuy, Sep 18, 2013
  12. jtr

    jtr Member

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    What I brought away from the analysis (other than the obvious defensive improvement) is that the players that Morey signed this season seem to be bottom barrel. Caspi? Williams? Brewer? Stats say they will suck. But Morey is smarter than all of us put together. I may be referencing this article in four months. I wanted to get on record.
     
    #12 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
  13. JustAGuy

    JustAGuy Member

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    Stats say they sucked last year. They've all had better years; I think he is just sifting for people who were stuck in the wrong system or wrong teammates.
     
    #13 JustAGuy, Sep 18, 2013
  14. jtr

    jtr Member

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    You sound like me a year ago. If I can be of any help just ask.

    And you should check out this graphic. It is where I am spending most of my time.

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js"></script><div class="tableauPlaceholder" style="width:654px; height:829px;"><noscript><a href="#"><img alt="Rockets Offense Comprehensive " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/te/test2_73/RocketsOffenseComprehensive/1_rss.png" style="border: none" /></a></noscript><object class="tableauViz" width="654" height="829" style="display:none;"><param name="host_url" value="http%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableausoftware.com%2F" /><param name="site_root" value="" /><param name="name" value="test2_73/RocketsOffenseComprehensive" /><param name="tabs" value="no" /><param name="toolbar" value="yes" /><param name="static_image" value="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/te/test2_73/RocketsOffenseComprehensive/1.png" /><param name="animate_transition" value="yes" /><param name="display_static_image" value="yes" /><param name="display_spinner" value="yes" /><param name="display_overlay" value="yes" /><param name="display_count" value="yes" /></object></div><div style="width:654px;height:22px;padding:0px 10px 0px 0px;color:black;font:normal 8pt verdana,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"><div style="float:right; padding-right:8px;"><a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/about-tableau-products?ref=http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/test2_73/RocketsOffenseComprehensive" target="_blank">Learn About Tableau</a></div></div>
     
    #14 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
  15. Voice of Aus

    Voice of Aus Member

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    i dont think Morey sees these guys as bottom of the barrel. same thing happened with delfino, people thought he had bottomed out.

    i remember hearing Morey talk about how Delfino when he was pursuing him he said he had such a high reboound rate when the ball was X feet away from him and that throughout his career if he catches the ball after X happens then he shoots the three ball in an extremely high percentile.

    dont think that brewer and cassipi have bottomed out in Morey's eyes. i agree with you when you look at the raw stats it may seem they have but with the cameras at the arenas (which is a huge breakthrough in analytics) Morey has a huge advantage over us novice analytic lovers..

    anyways thanks for the continual effort in your threads.
     
    #15 Voice of Aus, Sep 18, 2013
  16. jtr

    jtr Member

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    Like I said Morey is smarter than all of us. And thank you sir.
     
    #16 jtr, Sep 18, 2013
  17. JustAGuy

    JustAGuy Member

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    Morey does have more data, and having worked with it for several years he has a better idea what to do with the it.
     
    #17 JustAGuy, Sep 18, 2013
  18. Voice of Aus

    Voice of Aus Member

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    Morey has the cameras, thats the way for analytics and something we will never understand
     
    #18 Voice of Aus, Sep 18, 2013
  19. JustAGuy

    JustAGuy Member

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    Eh? Speak for yourself! I understand cameras just fine. :)
     
    #19 JustAGuy, Sep 18, 2013
  20. Voice of Aus

    Voice of Aus Member

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    http://www.nba.com/2013/news/09/05/nba-motion-tracking-cameras-ap.ap/index.html

    im sorry but your wrong, only the front office will have this information and the SportVU cameras (6 in each arena) will not be made public.

    stats like defensive rebound rate will become quickly outdated for someone like Morey who has alluded to this before in which he can find out how many rebounds Delfino hustles to and at what speed he hustles at, along with being able to tell what percentage he brings down the rebound when its within X feet.

    these cameras will not be able for public access so no one us know how powerful these can be for grading talent around the league.
     
    #20 Voice of Aus, Sep 19, 2013
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