I have full confidence his shot is coming back, and his defense + hustle + intelligence has never been in question (other than on inbound plays). I look forward to PJ giving Anthony Davis and Dwavale Mcgoward fits in the next series.
lol any statistician who frowns upon that shot is a witch doctor and should be imprisoned for malpractice
I think the mid range shot would be justified using human psychology more than statistics as statistically a mid range shot isn't efficient. However never taking shots from that range makes it easy for defenses to hedge their bets when playing defense because they know where you will never shoot it. That always makes life easier on defenses
to say its not efficient is a bit misleading... midrange is statistically efficient in the big picture...the midrange is not efficient analytics will be looked upon as overly simplistic, the way we look at simple boxscore numbers today...too raw and overly simplistic to be significant of anything actually no statistics and number dont say anything ... numbers dont speak... its always a human interpretation and words that speak and need to be attributed and attached to the numbers... OTOH there is no such thing as ideal statistics and its always about the narrative and its always an interpretation and the 'eyetest' and thus open to being misleading and not an absolute truth or an absolute recipe for basketball success as per psychology, i like that you have mentioned it, those factors also need to be included in analytics... even the best of the statistics today will be looked upon as the simple boxscore in the future because there are too many variables that are not taken into account, one of them being psychological factors, thus making the analytics utterly misleading at times...
yes! I remember on one instance a couple of games ago, Harden had a wide open elbow jumper off a step back - a shot he's proven that he can consistently make - including a game winner against PHX several years ago - that he just completely passed up on, went back out to the 3pt line only to take a contested 3 point shot that missed. In THAT scenario 2 is better than 0. I'm all for shooting 50-60 3's/game, but heavily contested 3's are bad shots IMO which make them less efficient than a wide open 2's Gotta mix it up and keep em guessing.
its a little bit disheartening to hear him describe the end as pandemonium/chaos. I get he was also subtly saying everything is sharp and focus, etc. But you can hear in his voice the "panic" at the end was felt by everyone... and that's kind of the problem with this team from a leadership perspective. Love or hate CP3, that's "generally" what he brought more than anything. I say generally because you're in that situation enough, there will be times that just don't work. CP3 was not good in the clutch last night. But take a guy like Kobe. Actually pretty "bad" statistically in clutch situations, certainly relative to his reputation. But he has his reputation, because success or failure, he seemed cool as a cucumber. MJ of course never seemed like he was pressured. Hopefully squeezing out this tight one, and hopefully obviously for Harden and Westbrook the most, realizing you can win without shooting 15 threes that don't work, and then not being the favorite, takes the pressure off them for one round at least.
Just because a guy doesn't emote when something happens (Kobe, Kawhi, etc) doesn't mean they're not a complete mess, internally. The season was on the line. Harden's reputation was on the line. CP3 didn't want to get sent home by the Rockets. You can't tell me that not one person on the floor, on either roster, wasn't nervous or in panic mode. Tout CP3 all you want, but the way he kept complaining to the refs about everything? That's not leadership. That's panic.
I love that he's one of the few Rockets that at least was aware of what he wasn't doing well, so he stepped into a 2 and tried something different. But he has to stop alligator arming those corner threes. On Defense he was on skates against Paul. He looked foolish. He's got to get out of his own head to really help us. He can't take another series off .
"What are you gonna do now that you hit the final shot that helped lead your team to victory?" "I'm gonna have me a Peanut Butter and Jelly sammich. PJ...add the 'B'. You feel me?"
Under panic conditions in the last few minutes of the game, Westbrook got 2 deflections and a deny, Harden got 2 blocks and a penetration stop, and Eric Gordon was just not letting guards get by him. Defensive panic was fine. Offensively, EG was slightly out of control after forcing the turnover, but the charge call was BS (should have been overturned, and would have been called a block if watched in slo-mo imo) - EG was cutting across the lane, not into Gallo, and the contact that caused Gallo to throw his head back was actually between EG's body and Gallo's damn forearm. Westbrook was able to brick 2 contested layups (not the worst shots in the world), PJ had a decent 3 but passed it up for a floater - IT WAS FLOATER RANGE, NOT A MIDRANGE - know your shot charts, people . And Harden had a nice lefty drive on Dort. Kobe also bricked a bunch of shots (and made many too) while being cool under pressure. I think effort and just the random luck of shot-making is more important than being cool. You can be mentally intense under panic. Of course, we're talking about degrees here. You can't be too panicked so that you're just dribbling off your foot all the time. Last night, I think they were ok. The refs made a terrible charge call, but Gordon shouldn't have been pushing 1 vs 4 (which he does often in non-crunch time too). More importantly, the defense was great! They even mixed in non-switches to the PnR defense late (and earlier) to force the shot-clock down and force players to unsuccessfully drive on Gordon.
Well look, they won, so clearly they had more positive plays "under panic" than the Thunder. Just talking overall trends. Also I don't care for statements like: "just the random luck of shot-making". I don't think its quite exactly random luck. Like PJs pass on the corner three to drive and hit the floater. Historically he would have tried that shot, missed it and we would have said "random luck", "wide open", etc. That was another good clutch move there which for this game, for whatever reason, they were good down the stretch.
Mid range is key to milk clock and maintain the lead in the final minutes of a close game. Jack up as many threes as you want before closing time.
I was specifically thinking of that floater shot because before it went in, I'm crossing my fingers, lol. It's definitely in his arsenal, but maybe I have to find my old synergy account, because I don't recall his floater being automatic. That's exactly what I meant by random luck - that floater shot imo could have easily missed and who knows what would have happened afterwards. CP had a 10 footer in the lane that he missed to take the lead. That's the random luck of shot making I was thinking about too. I still believe that sometimes, it's just the basketball Gods and being a make or miss league. What I can agree with you on is avoiding the crap that happens when the offense is unfocused, tense, clumsy and no shot even goes up (see OKC last possession or Denver last possession with Mitchell driving on Harris into traffic). The Rockets, in other games, have screwed up much more offensively down the stretch in terms of not even getting shots up. Last night, it was 2 glaring turnovers by EG, but one of them was as terrible ref call imo. I didn't hate the Westbrook contested layups. Harden did make a tough layup to put the Rockets up 2 against Dort, but he had been struggling a lot. A Westbrook contested layup is maybe better than a Harden step-back 3 at that point.
