A lot old school bigs would develop differently in the modern era. Hakeem would have a three point shot if he was in his 20s today and grew up in the 2000s. Most NBA teams today want a floor spacing big.
A good NBA offense needs all 5 players to be able to play off-ball in some capacity. A team structured around an on-ball creator with no off-ball game will always be doomed if that player is not an offensive engine in the vein of Harden. Even then it's not ideal. That's why it's important for Alpi to have a serviceable 3pt shot. Thankfully, he gave positive signs last season. I'm sure he'll reach the adequate level. That will make our offensive potential much bigger. If he becomes more than adequate he'll become an MVP contender and the offensive potential will be MASSIVE.
no im talking about exchanging harden with Jalen… not Tucker with Jalen. Defenders guarding Tucker two passes away from Harden at the top of the key in my recollection weren’t blanketing him or even strongly on him. They were the proper two pass away defense. Positioned to both help and recover. And when Harden eventually drove they’d come way off Tucker to help and double, triple or quadruple team Harden in the lane. A bunch of defenders in the lane is the antithesis of spacing. but as I said… I think it’s contextual for sure and not the best example. Harden was that good. And if it was Steph on the 3 line the defender might never leave him thus providing actual spacing. this is the nba. Teams aren’t going to pack the paint 2/3/4 passes away just cause - eg almost every possession of every game with every team there’s “spacing” at the start of say a PnR play or really any play. It’s what happens as the play develops that’s more relevant to me. As the play developed teams packed the paint against Harden. But contextually that’s because of Hardens greatness, and not a reflection of Tucker or EG or Ariza’s ability to provide spacing. We saw this so much to the extreme that the Warriors employed it in a game 7 to beat a Rockets team that couldnt shoot that game. Harden didn’t have interior spacing to score. And the outside shooters couldn’t hit shots. Disaster. as it relates to the current Rockets, I saw teams sag off and rotate off our outside shooters to clog the paint as plays developed pretty regularly, almost regardless of who the shooter was, with FVV getting the most respect, rightly. This happened on drives and post ups greatly.
Sure would have been nice to have a offensive system during that Harden era that was more versatile where guys don't look lost in the sauce as soon as they had to do anything more than catch and shoot or make a lob attempt off of Harden dancing with the ball. This isn't a championship level offense if we are doing heliocentric Sengun or heliocentric anyone.
Totally agree.Last season, the opponents focused their defense on stopping Sengun and dared the other Rockets to shoot from outside. I can't wait to see Alpi and Reed on the floor and see how the defensive schemes will be from opponents. This coming season can't come soon enough.
I rarely hear cleaning the glass reference. Synergy is referenced all the time. I would trust it more. I would also use context, tape and eye test. I don’t think any poll of clutchfans, twitter, Reddit or wherever else would conclude that Sengun is holding the offense back more than Jalen. I doubt they’d conclude he’s holding the offense back at all. I saw an offensive stat the other day that did not have either Jokic or Embiid as a top 10 center per the metric. I ignored that stat lol. Im personally good with bball reference though. It’s free and better than the nba ones imo. Feel free to discount it if you want!
I’m not in favor of the offense they run currently. I generally don’t like heliocentric offense. HOWEVER, much like the dumb archetype convo … I think it’s kinda a moot point. Usually teams that have clearly better talent win. once CP3 went down the warriors had like double our talent. the heliocentric mavs team finally got more talent around Luka and went to the finals but got effectively dominated by a team with just a lot more talent. edit: all things being equal archetype and spacing and system matter. But much more important is just actual underlying talent.
You're missing the entire point. It's not going to be heliocentric offense, if your favorite player can make his shots. The Rockets played PnRs against box and one defense pretty much whole season. Guess why? Because they can't make jack sh*t from behind the arc.
It sounds like we've got different definitions of the concept then. To me, that is spacing. The space was created prior to the defense collapsing, and that was the goal of the spacing to begin with, to open up the paint. The defense wouldn't need to collapse and nobody would need to help if they had a rim protector. And then there would be no open 3.
We'll look at the five best offensive players of the past decade and see their impact on offense and see if it jibes with reality Luka: almost every season above the 90th percentile on offensive efficiency impact https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/4432/onoff#tab-team_efficiency Lebron: almost every season above the 95th percentile Harden: pretty much every season of his prime years above 95th percentile Curry: 99th or 100th percentile almost every season. KD: Again hovering between 90-100 percentile in his prime years. It seems pretty reliable.
I watch a lot of nba. As I noted most plays start out with “spacing” across the league. It’s what happens after the play and the degree to which defenders sag off their man or fully rotate, double+ team etc that is relevant to me. there are of course nuances. Steph provides “extra” spacing from the get go. Kinda like Reed did in the game against Minny - getting harassed 5+ feet behind the line before play even started.
The thing is we already know for a fact that BBall reference doesn't do anything with on/off efficiency stats in terms of noise reduction like Cleaning the Glass. That's why the service isn't free and is reputable amongst the NBA analyst crowds like Zach Lowe. When I see these analysts look at on/off stats they never use bball ref.
Ok. Well I wasn’t referencing on/off in the first place. That’s very contextual. Who else is on the team. Which lineups the coach is using. Etc. they had better offense and worse defense after Alpi went down and was off. Counter intuitive to what everyone thought would happen. I’m not about to start saying Alpi is a more important defensive than offensive player. Jalen was better. Amen was insanely better. Etc. Also I went to cleaning the glass and they’re highlighting articles from 2017 … weird (but maybe those are the most recent free articles they have. we can simplify this. You think Jalen was a more important offensive player than Alpi? That’s a question for you. I don’t think it’s remotely close and think, outside a stretch of like 15 games, we could have replaced him with any average nba shooting guard, creation abilities or not, and been better offensively. The end lol.
I don’t know, yall. I think we need to extend Sengun. Teams have extended several lesser players, and I seriously doubt we sign anyone close to a max player next season. I just can’t imagine signing a big FA when we have so many extensions coming up.
Dang. Cavs going all in. Guess they are doubling down on the commitment to Mitchell. I don’t think Mobley is worth it.
Have you really never heard of cleaning the glass? I wish it wasnt a pay base, its fantastic and much better then bball ref
