Dean Wade is good. Good non-trade / signing to calibrate the front office’s thought process and strategy.
Of course they're interested in Dean Wade. His metrics are incredible. If you want to know who the Rockets FO thinks is good, and who they don't, just use this table (from the analytics guy who popularized RAPM-like metrics): https://xrapm.com/table_pages/RAPM_29y.html Check out where all the veterans this FO has acquired or tried to acquire are on the list. FVV, Dillon, Brook Lopez, Jock Landale, Aaron Holiday, Dorian Finney Smith, Clint Capela, and of course KD. Not a coincidence.
Here is last season’s xRAPM page: https://xrapm.com/table_pages/xRAPM.html where the new acquisitions fare (all with their old teams for context) DFS: 92th Percentile KD: 91st Percentile Okogie: 84th Percentile Capela: 70th Percentile (CC ranked 85th + for multiple years before last year, some speculation that it was injury related) where the guys we traded out ranked JG: 37th Percentile (in his 4th year!) Brooks: 77th Percentile Whitmore: 58th Percentile Landale: 68th Percentile It’s fair to say, from an advanced stats perspective, that the FO knows what they are doing. P.S. Dean Wade is 94th Percentile !!
That is an eye candy for y'all but I can say with safety that no team in the NBA is treating Dean Wade as a lockdown defender or game changer.
Sorry but nobody was talking about game changer; we are talking about value players that far surpass their contracts and perceived impacts.
His game overlaps a lot with KD, Jabari, Tari and Finney Smith, all 4 who are better overall players, and has never played more than 20.5 minutes per game and that 6 years into the league. Because he could not score more than 5.6 ppg .......maybe if the Rockets had a logjam at Guard and not at Forward. Okogie is smaller and can at least play at the Guard Position.
Rockets were interested in Dean Wade before they signed DFS. And part of the FO’s job (and that differentiates from other FOs) is to find good, scalable players before they get detected.
Reed Sheppard really needs to have a breakout start, be confident and productive in the Start of Training Camp. Continue building himself up to be a Key Rotation Player.
The one year versions of these metrics are noisy. The full sample version is better. Here's what the full sample numbers are for veteran players this FO has acquired above the minimum: FVV: 98th percentile Dillon: 94th percentile Adams: 97th percentile Holiday: 91st percentile KD: 99th percentile DFS: 93rd percentile Capela: 92nd percentile Landale: 93rd percentile (Dean Wade: 91st percentile) (Brook Lopez: 91st percentile) So basically, if you ever want to know which veteran players our FO thinks are good, this is all you need.
