Why do the advanced stats like Terrence Jones more than D-Mo?

LMFBO :grin:

 

Not really. Everyone of the DMo fans complains how much his stats get hurt when he plays C.

 

I'm sure De Andre Jordan, Tyson Chandler and Rudy Gorbet would all agree with you that DMO can play center.

 

There are no great advanced stats for defensive awareness. D-Mo has some of the best defensive awareness you will see, and he doesn't get pushed around on post up attempts. Jone on the other hand is frequently lost, and is a poor post defender.

Offensively they are different players, but comparable overall. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. If D-mo can maintain his shooting, he's better, but Jones ability to get to and finish strongly around the rim is also valuable.

Defense is extremely important from the 4. One is a liability while the other one is above average.

 

dmo > tjones when in playoffs imo

 

Well so far that's been nothing at all vs a net negative.

0>-5 thus your logic checks out.

 

Domo came on once he became a starter but he was struggling before. I would wanna know his advanced stats after he became a starter.

 

When it comes to Jones and Dmo, it is an interesting debate. Both, young third year players, with vastly different play styles and skills who have been in various roles and lineups due to injury, etc. From the get go, there is very little you can point too that demonstrates one is clearly better than the other. Anyone who suggests otherwise, is clearly biased or agenda driven and needs to be ignored.

From my own non-statistical observations, my general thoughts are as follows:
-Jones is a physical, athletic big, with knack for shot blocking, garbage buckets (finishing off others creation), who gets to the line at a decent rate, but is a mediocre free throw shooter. He has a mediocre outside shot, but has some skills as a straight line ball dribble, with a touch of finesse. His post game is okay, but not really a "go-to" offensive weapon. He is best suited as an off the ball player who sets screens, rebounds, defends and looks for easy scoring opportunities by using his athleticism/quickness.
-Dmo is a tall and long, but un-athletic big. He moves his feet well and has a very effective post game which employs a nice arsenal of spin and counter spins. His post game is a good go to weapon due to its reliability. He has a good outside shot, though relies on spot up shooting, IE he can't create his own three. He doesn't get to the line very often, and doesn't hit them all that well when he does, which is a drawback to his game.

I see a lot of folks focusing on who is "better" and individual stats, which I find incredibly stupid, because it lacks context. We are better off looking at lineup outputs to get a true apples to apples comparison. For this team there are essentially two macro questions for our PFs. 1.) How do you fit alongside Harden/Howard and 2.) What can you bring to the team when Harden is off the floor? If we are too compare them, we should start with how they fit alongside our starters to produce the most potent offensive/defensive combination.

Since, we have had such a large number of injuries, it is hard to get a decent sample sized look at how each fared in our starting lineup over the past year. I eliminated Beverley being in the lineup from our control, and aimed to look at lineup output with each power forward alongside Ariza, Harden and Howard. Using the NBAwowy tool, I compared how the lineups performed with each over the past year or so:



http://nbawowy.com/w9xp5k7qgjtyy14i#/w9xp5k7qgjtyy14i
http://nbawowy.com/q5p62md38f7s0pb9#/q5p62md38f7s0pb9

From our data, its interesting to note that with Motiejunas on the floor the team takes a larger percentage of shots (+7%) from "good areas" (Dunks, layups, 3s). The difference is almost all the amount of 3s taken, which isn't surprising because Motiejunas is a significantly better three point shooter, while Jones tend to pass on three point shots, unless absolutely necessary. With Motiejunas on the floor, the team tends to offensively rebound at bit better as well. Despite these metrics, the lineups with Jones on the floor still outproduced Dmo's lineups with offensively, despite taking worse shots. The primary driver for this appears to be that they turn the ball over significantly less and they get to the free throw line significantly more often. When you look at these two metrics on an individual level, both do indeed support Jones.

I tried to look at the effect on Hardens game, and how they play off of him, but the data really didn't show me anything that was useful. Harden tended to produce points easier with Jones on the floor, which could be explained by defenders needing to respect Jones a bit more on the offensive glass, but that is a bit of a guess. Regardless, the net result was ~6.2 more points per 100 possessions for Jones lineups on offense.

On the defensive side of the ball, from our statistics, Jones lineup forced a greater percentage of bad shots, but the average distance was not as good as Dmo's. So of the bad shots taken between the two lineups opponents, Jones squad allowed "better" bad shots. A final note on defense, Jones group rebounded better which helped close the gap. Overall, Motiejunas's lineups outperformed Jones lineups, but only to tune of ~2.7 points over 100 possessions.

All in all, when we look to our first question: 1.) How do you fit alongside Harden/Howard? The answer appears to be Jones offensively, and Dmo defensively, with a net overall contribution going to Jones.

For whatever reason, Jones has become underrated here and Dmo overrated. The polarization of opinions by certain posters here is TROUBLING. There is no evidence to support some of the ridiculous claims people have made in this thread. Posters tend to cling to cliches such as "Better three point shooter = better fit", which is incredibly misleading. There is more to the Rockets than three point shooting.

For me, I am fond of both. Don't really see either as "better", just different. I like Jones to continue in the starting lineup in a supporting role, as he has excelled there, with Dmo as the go-to offensive option off the bench, utilizing his great assortment of post moves. Over the long term, I am not sure either are a long term solution at the position, as both are still somewhat mediocre and are about to get stupidly big contracts. Not to mention, both have very troubling injury issues. Its possible, one or the other, takes a significant step forward this season, but unlikely. Its not surprising we were after LMA this offseason, and I am betting Horford is another guy we will be targeting over the next year. Bottom line is, both are expendable.

 

Wonder if dmo will get the same treatment jones got when he didn't play so well returning from injury

 

Great post larsv8. I agree.


People get bored by looking at turnovers and free throw rate, but they are important.

The lineup matters a lot. We'll use DMo when we need shot creators and TJones in lineups already with scorers.

 

i love both of them

 

Great post larvs.

This was a great topic. But instead of having a good discussion it turned out YET AGAIN into personal insults and fighting for no reason whatsoever. All people here are Rocket fans not Dmo or Jones only fans ffs.

 

Don't be naive. The topic was not great. The topic was about creating an argument.

Notice my first post was in jest about DMo having better advanced stats with gfs than Jones.

Then the agenda ppl come in. Get used to it, but don't call this thread topic great, when it was designed as a rhetorical question to start arguments that we've debated before.

For instance, I could start a thread saying, "Why does Coach like Terrence Jones more than D-Mo" and provide a simple stat of mpg. The very same discussion would ensue.

The point of this thread, in the off season, is to reveal posters with agendas. So quality new posters like you can learn from longstanding posters like me to spot lame people.

bottom line: I like DMo. But I don't like the people who are condescending pricks to other posters who like Jones, especially when Coach does, too.

 

Here's what the DMo stans don't seem to be capable of wrapping their heads around:

Donatas has had to spend the bulk of his offseason focusing on rehab, rather than participating in full contact basketball activities and improving his game. On top of that, his focus has been on helping his body physically recover rather than adding strength for the upcoming season (and a 7-footer with a high center of gravity needs as much functional strength as he can get, particularly for banging with opponents down low to establish post position).

Meanwhile Jones, who is entering his age-24 season (i.e., the age at which DMo had his breakout) has had a full offseason to work on his game. And it's as if that's not even a consideration for these guys.

 

Jones is good for griding through the countless regular season games against teams not playing much defense, many free points to be had and he's good at that. But watching the defenses rather than him of the last few years in the playoffs make it really obvious that we could never win an nba title with him as a starter. Bench player sure, but that's who he is, the problem is the limitation of his skillset and how easily he's turned into a detriment.

Here's the breakdown of Jones' scoring range last year

68% 0-3 feet
36% 3-10 feet
18% 10-16 feet (no volume)
35% 16-23 feet (no volume)
28% 23 feet+

He has a shooting breakdown that has only ever been successful for players with massive physical advantages, we pay one a lot, and even he isn't physically imposing enough to be an elite offensive player, instead Jones is a tweener

So ask yourself, how do you defend Jones? It's not hard, check him at 5 feet, let him take whatever other shot he wants, help otherwise, and it's exactly what was done and why he sucks in the playoffs.

So why is he successful in the regular season? that ones also pretty easy, defense isn't a priority in a lot of regular season games, at all for bad teams and good teams would rather not let you see it and give you 6 months to adjust.

Now Dmo's breakdown

64% at rim, he's worse here, this is the land of free points and no defense
50% at 3-10 feet, he's one of the few players in the league that can even do this to a point where it's productive, defending at the rim is easy, defending in a 10 foot arc around the rim is not.
36% 10-16 feet (no vp;ume)
22% (no volume)
36% from 3 (he's productive enough from here that leaving him open is not a good idea)

Now here's the question, how do you defend this? It can be done, fronting to expose his lack of athleticism, which means he also doesn't punish zero d regular season teams anywhere near as well, but in a playoff scenario, the answer is far more frought with danger than "check him at 5 feet let him do whatever else he wants", you need to respect him pretty much everywhere, respect creates space and space is one of the most valuable assets in the nba.

And using lineup data from last year, because of Dwight is particularly useless, the games Dwight played with Dmo, Dwight was hurt and unproductive, the games he played with Jones he was mostly healthy. Dwight was healthy for the first 6 games, Jones for the first 4, then Dwight didn't play, and came back still injured and that accounts for Dmo's 60 games, Jones comes back, plays a few games, gets injured again, comes back again and now Dwight is back and healthy, so you're looking at a 98% overlap of unhealthy/no Dwight with Dmo and a 75% overlap of healthy Dwight with Jones and then attributing these to Jones/Dmo, what sort of nonsensical garbage is that?

 

Well said. I think DMO has been out since the end of March and its looking like he hasn't played a minute of full court basketball for half a year now due to his very long back rehab. I was hoping his recovery would be much faster but it looks like its the doctors call as to when he can start banging down low and working on his game. Hopefully the rockets have a backup plan. One of the keys to this season IMO is to have both DMO and TJ healthy. They still need to add a backup veteran PF and I don't know if they have the room or cap flexibility to do so.

 

Larsv8 repped.

 

I always find cliched absolutes like this utterly hilarious. :grin:

 

Yayyyy!!!! Another Jones vs Dmo thread!!