Hot Hand

I heard a lot of similar complaints when JVG was coaching. How many great coaches are we going to fire?

 

You cant blame the coach for lack of defensive personnel. You cant blame the coach for a brittle 7'6 center. The Rockets were a top 10 defensive team 2 years ago - what changed over the past 2 years? NO YAO and NO DEKE.

What would you have rather done with a good for nothing t-mac contract without handcuffing this franchise for the next 5+ years??

Morey has done a tremendous job IMO in setting this team up for success, regardless of what you may believe. Do you realize how many crappy contracts he was stuck with that he got rid of?

Has Morey made mistakes and some bad decisions? of course! No GM is 100% accurate 100% of the time. There will always be misses. But Morey has had more hits than misses.

CD was probably the worst thing to happen to this franchise by handcuffing us with 5+ yrs contracts to every FA that walked through the doors.

BTW - if i were Morey - i would make the trade for Battier 10 out of 10 times.. Rudy Gay is horrendously overrated in the garm. He's a T-Mac lite in the making..

 

They never seem to learn that the grass isn't alway greener.

 

Amen brother, also a way to keep him fresh since he is a bit injury prone when playing extended minutes like in Sac town.

 

Please read my post again... never said Battier was better than Gay.

But i'd much rather have Battier than Gay. Gay is OVERRATED. In his 5 years in the NBA - ZERO playoff appearances. Not including this year, his team has won an avg of 27 games. If you think he's a SUPERSTAR caliber player, think again. SUPERSTARS lead their teams to more than 30+ wins per year.

 

Morey has done an excellent job of drafting and trading, but so far he has failed at the bigger picture, which is putting it all together to produce a champion. People are too quick to give him credit for being a "great GM," when he hasn't produced results yet. You can make all the great trades and acquire all the assets in the world, but if you don't turn them into something, you've failed. Yao or no Yao, McGrady or no McGrady, I expected the team to be better at this point. Until he turns those assets into something, I don't think we can declare Morey a success.

 

Who would you suggest coaches this team? And do you think that person could get the type of production out of these same players that RA does? I'm sure anyone you name that's actually available will have someone like you creating a thread to complain about why said coach didn't overplay Martin. Sorry to burst your bubble but even professional bball players get tired. There's a reason why Martin was disappearing in the 4th in earlier games. Care to guess why?

 

Isn't it kinda hasty to be saying that Morey has failed so far at the "bigger picture" when we aren't even far enough along to actually see the big picture?

Judging from his excellent job drafting and trading, I think we should be excited about having him as our GM. We probably won't be able to judge the "big picture" ramifications for another few years since his first few years were spent trying to build around two pieces that are no longer contender material.

5-8 years from now it should be obvious if Morey can produce real results.

 

I honestly think its way too early to tell if Morey's great or not. The moves he's made so far have been GREAT. Is he a GREAT GM? Jury is still out, i think.

You have to take into account that he had over $40mil locked in on 2 injury prone players - both signed under former GM, Carroll Dawson. He went all in to make a deal for Ron Ron - and we were clearly contenders, but again, injuries got the best of us.

Now Morey still has $18mil locked in on a player that can't play and $7mil in a player who doesnt play (Jeffries). I think Rockets fans should be excited for what Morey will be able to do with some cap space.

I dont think this year's trade deadline will be "make or break". Obviously, Morey has made moves so far that has given us much more flexibility than what CD left him with.

I think this organization is the right hands with Morey and Adelman. There is no better coach out there in the market that could do a better job than Adelman - otherwise, they'd have jobs.

 

The Rockets don't have people that have played basketball at any level? Really? I would guess that Rick Adelman -- a former professional basketball player -- and a guy who's been around the game for many decades has played more basketball and knows more basketball than you. In this instance, he probably knew that Martin isn't exactly a work-horse and he probably needed a rest so that he'd be fresh for the stretch run. That's called knowing your personnel. Or, he may very well have asked Martin if he needed a breather and Martin said yes -- you don't know.

And, again, not saying that "hot hand" can't genuinely happen. But a lot of times, people mistake a random hot streak for a player being hot. It happens in all walks of life.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/hothandf.html

We're talking about offense, aren't we?


For people who have genuine curiosity and aren't just raising a topic and then refusing to consider different perspectives:

http://web.me.com/sandy1729/sportsmetricians_consulting/Hot_Hand.html

 

I can agree with this study, but it does prove a different point than you made in your earlier post.

You stated that Luck was involved in Having a hot hand.
I believe having a hot hand does improve the chance of making your next hand (because of confidence and smooth muscles). The problem is that many player when they have a hot hand tend to do heat checks or just try to make very difficult shots (like Martin did last night with his spin fade away with a hand in his face). that is the reason why statistically having a hot hand does not mean the chances of making you next shot is higher. I think it is mostly overconfidence.

So if a player is smart enough not to try more difficult shots he would probably have a higher chance to score with his next shot.

That being said. i do agree that Adelman should be a little more flexible with players who are feeling it. In one of the previous games Buddinger couldn't miss. Adelman took him out of the game, and when he came back he struggled.

last night It was a good move of Adelman to take out Martin. He was getting tired and would not be able to keep it up for the rest of the game. So up 13 with 8 minutes left he got some rest. It didn't work oput because the players that were on the court couldn't defend anybody.

 

There are just a lot of factors. Making and missing shots is largely a matter of chance. Yes, "getting in rhythm" plays a role, but I think its overstated. As mentioned in the study above, when players hit a bunch of shots they can become over-confident and that can actually work against them. That's especially the case for the prolific scorers. I've seen it with Martin in the past. He'll hit some shots, and then he'll start taking increasingly bad shots or rushed shots. Its a natural tendency for scoring guards. Combine that with the player getting more fatigued and defenses adjusting over time, and the "hot hand" phenomenon becomes overrated.

 

For the 100th time for people who seem to wanna just completely ignore the facts, Rick Adelman's Sacramento teams were top defensive teams almost every year he was there. You can't magically make a team like the current Rockets a good defensive team when much of the roster is made up of horrible defensive players.

 

Common misconception, that second sentence of yours. Rick isn't all offense, historically his teams have been better than average on defense.

Also, Rick doesn't play center, though it might be interesting to see if he could man the paint more effectively than Hill and Miller.

 

Actually, I wrote an article for the chronicle about this exact issue in December.

http://blogs.chron.com/onfurtherreview/2010/12/_yao.html

I agree wholeheartedly that Rick Adelman has been doing this all year long. When the Rockets are going well, he has consistently made substitutions instead of riding the group that is playing well. This has been disastrous on many levels throughout this entire season. If you didn't get a chance to read the article which was written on Dec 16th, you'll see that this is not a new problem.

Arguing that the Rockets suck on defense is a bad argument because it makes the removal of hot players or a working unit even more deplorable. When your defense is that bad, you need ever edge you can get to win these games. Putting players (like Luis Scola in that Portland game) back in when he was so ineffective the entire game is senseless.

Adelman obviously did not read my open letter to him in the blog.

 

That is not true. Prior to the road trip, at home, the starters sucked and the bench played great. The bench consequentially got extended minutes in the 2nd and 4th quarters.

 

It's called confidence. Statistically it doesn't give you shooting superpowers... but it helps for sure. A placebo effect.

 

The article was based on the beginning of the year, not the recent play in which I believed Adelman had done a better job and managing this. However, the Portland game was a flashback to the earlier problems. But to say it was not true at the first quarter of the year is false.