What can we learn from the 2024 Rockets Synergy numbers?

With a bit too much time on my hands today, I grabbed some offensive and defensive playtype numbers from nba.com and prettied them up.

Offense
Notes: NUMBER indicates the percentile of offensive performance: Jalen Green was better at finishing P&R plays as the ballhandler than 62% of players. COLOR indicates the frequency of the play: Jalen Green attempted at least 60% as many P&R ballhandler plays as the league leader in possessions of this type (Jalen Brunson, bottom). From darkest to lightest green: >60%, >40%, >30%, >15%, <15%. The league leader in each play type may or may not be good at that playtype, as you see the range between Brunson's 91th percentile P&R attacks and Clint Capela's high-volume yet only 27th percentile offensive rebound stickbacks. A blank indicates not enough sample size. Each number is relative to its playtype: a 50th percentile transition play is much better than a 50th percentile post-up. I'm unclear why NBA.com has no recorded transition number for Fred and especially Jalen.

Takeaways:

• Spot-up was the Rockets' most recorded play type, registering about 28 possessions per game. It does a lot to explain the Rockets' 20th ranked offense, and napkin math suggests that if the 7.5 spot-ups per game by Jalen and Dillon were conducted at the same efficiency as Jabari/Fred, that alone would have catapulted the offense up to 16th. The Rockets do play some excellent spot-up shooters including Smith, VanVleet and Whitmore, and one hopes that at some point the team's collective performance will improve with the much needed addition of Reed Sheppard. However, more Tari Eason/Amen Thompson minutes could further sabotage this stat team-wide.
• Good offense comes from getting high volume of a playtype that works. The notably above-grade finishes the Rockets get to the most are a VanVleet P&R finish (7.4 possessions, 82nd percentile) and a Jabari spot-up (4.1 possessions, 71st percentile).
• The Rockets tend to be a very solid P&R team, with multiple good finishers (Fred, Jalen, Holiday, Dillon, Cam) and multiple above average roll men (Alpe, Jabari, Amen).
• The team didn't run as much as you'd expect, and the below average efficiency of five notable rotation players might explain part of that.
• The team has not found a traditional #1 iso player. We knew at the start Fred isn't that guy. Şengün isn't a great face-up iso player. Jalen didn't get there either. It's hilarious and meets the eye test that Tate grades out as a downright all-NBA iso/post player but obviously that's a small sample size and he's not the next Luka.
• There's our guy Tari with the literal 0th percentile finishing on cuts. This meets my eye test on all those blown layups. Get him, Teroya!!
• Notable low-usage, high-efficiency plays that could in theory be called more: screening for Brooks, with or without the ball; Aaron Holiday P&Rs; getting Jalen more active as a cutter; Jabari as a P&R screener?

Those are just a few things I saw, but I'd love everyone to post their takeaways too.

Defense
Notes: Defensive stats on transition, cuts, putbacks, and miscellaneous are not tracked. A high number is still a percentile: 99th percentile allows the least points, not the most. I shifted the color scale a little since defensive possessions tend to go to a single key player less. Darkest to lightest: >70, >55, >40, >20, <20. It's interesting to see the leaguewide guys with the most plays of each type, as unlike the offensive playtypes they're almost all below average, suggesting this is not the most relied on players but the most attacked. Indeed, two Rockets face a league-high number of attacks: Şengün in the post, and Jabari in isolation plays. Neither does great.

Takeaways:

• Coby White exists for the promotion of quality spot-up opportunities apparently, attempting the most in the league at a good efficiency and defending the most in the league with poor results.
• What does Dillon Brooks even do? Eye test suggests he was underperforming as a stopper a little but I truly did not expect the numbers to look this bad for him on a generally excellent defensive team.
• If Alperen Şengün was awful, the Rockets wouldn't be a good defense. And indeed, he statistically holds his own, broadly speaking. But the sheer amount of plays that opponents are able to wage against him in iso/post-up/P&R adds up when he's defending at a mediocre efficiency, suggesting a limit to how good the defense can get without him improving. Big men, good or bad, face a lot of defensive possessions.
• One interesting advanced stat I've been keeping an eye on all year is the putrid on-off lineup numbers for one Jabari Smith, and I was interested to see if this analysis could explain it. It left me with even more questions, because by all accounts he's mostly getting things done on a number of key playtypes. That iso defense could be something to watch, though. It seems forwards like going at him one-on-one. A more positive spin on that would be that if he becomes an 80th percentile iso defender, he's already looking great in every other regard and we're talking about all-defense team level play.
• Excited for a full year of Amen Thompson on defense.
• I love that Fred's 91st percentile defense on rolling big man is exactly what I expected. He forces turnovers on 31% of the finished plays he defends and that doesn't count any of his strips that go out of bounds and aren't recorded as blocks.

Okay, so let's get the eyes of the Clutchfans hivemind on these numbers. What are YOUR takeaways? Are there areas to focus on? Are there red flags for any of our rotation players?

 

Yes - as noted when mentioning Brunson and Capela, the most common play for a playtype can be either good or bad at it.

Alperen is the league leader in the frequency of defending post-ups that end in a shot or turnover. He's slightly below average at it in terms of efficiency/success.

Misc is a squirrely category that is hard to take any useful info away from. As I understand it, it includes end-of-clock heaves, shots directly after a loose ball, any inbounds plays that don't get counted as spot-ups, and a number of other junky situations.

It's relatively rare: the league leader in it, Embiid, only has 1.9 possessions a game that qualify, so I would largely ignore it.

 

Yeah, I think this is in general the right takeaway. He posts against good defenders and does fine against them. Even Jokic is only 81st percentile. It's a rare enough play that the "elites" in the percentile rankings are guys like Kyrie Irving (1.43 points/possession, but only 14 possessions all year or, as we see here, Jae'Sean Tate. The 100th percentile is Larry Nance and Xavier Tillman (both 16 points on 10 post-ups all year). The best semi-high-volume post player this year was Porzingis (1.3 points/possession, 3 possessions/game).

This stat also has no way to account for assists generated off post plays, it's only shots, drawn fouls, and turnovers.