You are one of the guys that wanted to fire Daryl Morey. I think your grasp of coaching is probably simmarly flawed.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Portland. They lead the NBA in made 3's and are shooting a staggering 42% as a team from deep.
Well considering they're actually running drawn plays to get open 3's, it should be semi sustainable.
I'm all for shooting the 3, but if we ain't making them and our elite sg goes 0-10 on 3's, I'll take a made 2. If were hot and were making them thats fine. But if we are not and we are colder that ***** we can literally shoot ourselves out of a playoff series. This isn't revolutionary. This is Nellie ball/euro with better overall skill at shooting the 3 as a team as opposed to only a couple of 3pnt specialist on the team like in the 70,80,90 and early 2000's nba.
I'm totally for this kind of offense. My only complaint is in the half-court set up we only have two viable options; post up Howard or drive & kick. One of which leads to a turnover 25% of the time. I'd like to see us have a few half-court plays that free up a shooter; like Garcia running around screens, isolate Harden in the low post(he's surprisingly good at this), a high pick & roll with Harden/Lin/Parsons & Dwight. Right now our offense is very predictable in the half-court and usually stoppable. You bet a team like the Thunder and Spurs will stop us in the playoffs. We have the talent to beat them and I genuinely believe that, we just have zero offensive structure.
Rocket shoot 5.9% from mid range. The next fewest is Detroit at 12.8%. I don't see the Rockets embracing a player shooting a lot of mid range jumpers unless they are uncontested. Average team is around 20%.
We are not a team of chuckers! I think of chucking as throwing up a high volume of shots at a low % and not changing when the shots aren't falling. ex. Brandon Jennings last season. The only time I thought we were chucking it was when Harden puts up 9 of 30 or 7 of 23... numbers like that. And that's only been 7-8 times over the last 2 seasons. Statistically, the layup and 3 is a nice system (euphemism for read & react?) and is also nice to watch. But this season we are changing because we promised to develop Howard's low post game (very poor conversion % + high turnover) so we are going a little away from what is statistically the best way to play.
In the last 10 years, 3 teams have shot 40% from 3 point range. None have shot 41%. It's unlikely Portland will finish the season over 40%.
There's almost no statistical difference between a long 2 and a mid range shot as you are defining them.
People need to stop using Aldridge or Dirk as examples. They don't apply here. This is like saying Battier needs to shoot more 20 footers because T-Mac made them. Or Steve Kerr needs to shoot more 20 footers because Jordan made them. If the Rockets let Patrick Patterson take mid-range shots, yes Aldridge and Dirk would get as many mid-range shots as they want. But that doesn't mean Beverley should spend all his time there too.
I'm fine with the style for our role players but I think the playmakers need to adjust and shoot more midrange jumpers when the defense adjusts to this style. The teams that defend us best now are running us off the three point line then sagging back in the paint because they know we won't take the mid range jump shot. I understand why it works for the spot up shooters but there's no reason why Harden/Lin/Parsons should be passing up those easy jumpers.
The Knocks had to be the first one on this list, right? A team with Carmelo, JR, Felton, and Barg.. Now that's a team full of chuckers.
Morey has run the numbers, it's not an opinion. He knows what shots generate the highest points per shot, and the team strategy is based on this. If midrange was a better option, the Rockets would be doing it. Fact. I think a valid criticism might be that the numbers are not based on championship team play in the finals, but I wouldn't be surprised if this had been considered as well. Basically, my fear is that if the team focuses too much on a limited amount of plays/strategies, that the best teams could take one or two of them away from us. Not having a midrange game that is honed over the course of the regular season could result in no fallback plan when matchups dictate we adjust to another team's D. Maybe the midrange game doesn't generate the most points against the league as an overall average, but if the best defensive team can shut us down because they don't have to defend that part of the floor, then we have a problem. I recall Yao focusing on one particular shot because the percentages said it was his best option. Defenders started looking for that and it resulted in turnovers and blocked shots, until he mixed it up again. On your second point, more teams haven't tried it because more teams haven't tried it. This is the NBA, not Silicon Valley. We're breaking new ground here. Coaches keep their jobs by practicing conventional wisdom because fans scream when they don't win every game. I recall a team from the 90's that had a pretty lame offensive strategy where they just handed it to this one guy over-and-over-and-over again. I thought they would never stop, but they won a championship twice. Phil Jackson said this offense was about "picking a scab until it bleeds."
Yes, Morey has sought players that fit a general team strategy. I agree 1000% that if we had a player whose points per shot on midrange was higher than their other options, they would encourage it.
I said this in another thread and I will say it here again. Shooting 3s instead of midrange shots might be preferable when you look at the numbers. However, we are not shooting open 3s anymore. I am sure shooting a contested 3 is a lower percentage shot than an open one, so we are making less of them and getting a lower utility out of 3 pointers. What we should be focusing on is finding uncontested shots. We can design plays (like it would happen with McHale, lol) to create uncontested shots at the 3pt line or just take it when we get a midrange one. Again, this is not an issue with the offensive philosophy, it is an issue with the poor coaching.
Shooting 3s is fool's gold according to Pat Riley. Sometimes for a team they fall, sometimes they don't. With lay ups, even good perimeter players that aren't unstoppable, a shot blocker, an Ibaka or Hibbert, will alter a lot of layup attempts and block some. Floaters of course help but here's where Harden, Lin and Parsons better think mid-range shots. Harden could develop post game, Parsons a bit of one and be more in a LMA mode at times, and Lin could do a drive and stop and pop combined with floaters and a 10-12 foot fadeaway rainbow shot. These will be needed in the playoffs when the 3-ball isn't falling and a lot of the better teams have rim protectors.
While intuitively this makes sense, I don't know what the stats say. I am curious. Our percentages are down this year so far, but everyone knew last year that we were going to hoist a lot of 3's. I can't imagine this explaining the drop.
There is no way having the option available will hurt us. Knowing when to use those options is another story.
So nobody is going to acknowledge that the Rockets are 3rd in points in the paint and 1st in FT's. We aren't strictly a jump shooting team, we just shoot 3's instead of long 2's. We played poorly against Indiana, but offense is not this teams problem.
