badgerfan, what you're missing is shots vs touches. There isn't a stat for that I don't think and that's what you're missing. A team could single dream and he'll pump up shot after shot because you couldn't stop him. Now on that night they singled, he probably would have 30-35 touches. They could double him and he would still shoots 20 times. On the other hand, Yao could get the same touches and shoot 13 times. Why is that? Its because dream could shoot mid range, run the court, backdoor alley oops, offnsive rebound and take a guy off the dribble from 15 ft. Of those different ways dream scored, how many can yao score off of ? Exactly, so dream,shaq and guys like that scored on more of their touches vs yao taking a while to get into position and fighting the shot clock with reposting and finally kicking it out. Sometimes, the opponet will double yao with a guy that shouldn't even be threat, but it makes yao think which takes away from his aggression.
It's called a model. The idea is it can be approximated in that way. That's why I said "roughly proportional". For some reason, you read that and assumed that's the same thing as "equal' in your last post. I don't know why. You want to just compare turnovers per minute, but if you think that's actually valid that means you think Yao and Hakeem got roughly the same number of touches in the post per possession. But all this time you're arguing that Yao doesn't get the ball enough, which would suggest you think he's getting the ball less than Hakeem. If that's your position, then surely you understand why just comparing turnovers per minute isn't sufficient. Hakeem is handling the ball more. You think that, somehow, Yao is passing it out of double teams and such much more than Hakeem, but if that was so it would be very unlikely that his assists would be so much lower relative to his shot attempts/turnovers. I watched Hakeem play probably more than I've watched Yao play. I don't agree at all that Hakeem passes it out of double teams much less often, as you say. I know you don't seriously think that Yao is as secure with the ball as Hakeem, and I hope you recognize that saying Hakeem turned it over much more in the championship years is misleading (what point were you trying to make with that?). So let's move on from this topic. We take the information we have, and we make a best guess on what's going on. That's my approach. I've seen nothing in games, nor any statistical information, to indicate that Yao is "comfortable" shooting from the outside in game. Very often, he's wide open and he doesn't take the shot. Is that comfort? I'm not attempting to prove anything, because I understand we're all dealing with limited information. So this "sample size" stuff you bring up is weird. Can I not disagree with you without having to prove it somehow in a mathematically rigorous fashion? Is that not allowed? But I agree that our offense would be better if Yao was a consistent threat from outside. I've made the same point not too long ago. If Yao gets to the point where he shoots that shot like Ilgauskas does for Cleveland, that would be great. The defense has something to do with it as well. The Rockets regularly run stuff looking to get Yao the ball. It's not like they're forgetting a 7'6 guy is in the paint calling for the ball. If Yao isn't getting the ball for a long stretch and our offense is suffering, that's usually because the defense is doing something to deny Yao the ball. In which case we can do two things: stop running post ups for him (as we did late in 4th quarter against the Spurs when our offense finally got back on track), or figure out a way to move the ball and make the opponent pay for their ball denial on Yao. That second one is something that the Rockets need to do a better job at. Then why did you bring up your "law of large numbers" when that would only apply if there's no defense at all? I'm glad you find it obvious now, but apparently it is not so obvious to you that the more a team tries to go to a player who's efficient, the more the defense will focus on stopping that option. It's not a mysterious force. It's called the defense. You seem to be assuming that every possession is completely independent. So the chances of a play working stays the same throughout the game, no matter often you go to it. If that was the case, then you're right we could keep increasing a players shots indefinitely, and his efficiency wouldn't suffer. But that's not how it works. This is really a common sense point. The more a defense sees a particular play, the better they will be over the course of the game at adjusting to it. That's why teams run different stuff and try get multiple players involved. It keeps a defense off balance. What you're asking for -- Yao must get the ball as much as possible or the offense is failing -- goes against that. You're not recognizing that there are diminishing returns as you keep running the same plays to get Yao the ball (and there are only a finite number of ways to get him the ball). At some point, it will become counter-productive. Again, that's why I asked you what is the ideal number of shots he should be getting. You're still not understanding, and I don't think you actually read the link if you're going to just repeat the same argument. It can not be shown by finding a correlation between shot attempts and FG%. I said so in the prior post, so I'm not sure why you're making the same point. If a player gets more shot attempts, there's at least one obvious factor there. Good defensive teams would deny him shot attempts, and good defensive teams would also tend to lower his FG%. If you want to show it by correlating shot attempts and efficiency, the data points can't be individual games because there's just too much variation in the opponent's defensive strength. So you admit there's a sweet spot. But that would indicate that past a certain point, Yao's efficiency will decrease so much that it wouldn't be beneficial to get him the ball more. But according to your law of large numbers, that would be "mathematically illiterate". The rational expectation is that if you keep trying to run the same set of plays for a player there will be diminishing returns and at some point a sweet spot will be reached (meaning, after that point, it's counter-productive to keep going to him). If that wasn't the case, then a team can just keep running their most efficient play over and over again throughout the game. It would be nice if offensive basketball was so easy, but it's not.
Actually a big part of my point is that Yao doesn't get enough touches, regardless of whether or not he shoots. To a large extent the Rockets' offense is dump the ball to Yao, wait for the double team on him, and then prosper. That open shot isn't going to be there unless Yao gets the double team in the post.
I don't know the level of ball you've played or your understanding of the game, but there are a lot of things you're missing in this whole idea. Let me explain. Dream or Shaq had the stamina to dominate for 35 of the 40mins they would play. Yao can do it only for about 20mins. So there are stretches when he doesn't even cross the court in transition or times when he's not even looking at the basket because he's tired. Here is a touch scenerio and I'll use dream as the example. Dream would touch the ball 35 times a game and shoot 20, but his breakdown would be like this. 1 touch in transition for a easy 2. 1 overplay backdoor alley for another easy 2. 3-6 touches off dribble pentration and kick to short blk. 3-6 off facing up the guy from short blk. 2-4 frm ft line and the rest from straight post. So even if yao and dream had the same touches and even if dream was still more playmaker than play finisher, he also played a lot as the play finisher. Cause yao is limited in his stamina and area of workability, his stamina doesn't allow him to be as productive as just a scorer or screen setter to free other people up.
Actually I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just pointing out that for any two arbitrary numbers, x and y, you can express their relationship as x = cy. Well, duh. That's kind of useless unless your constant really has some intrinsic meaning. Sure, but that's not really measured in the box stats. It could well be one of the magic new stats that Morey tracks. And again, the point you're missing is that Yao's assist numbers are going to be artificially deflated compared to his "true assist" numbers. Morey was talking about this a while back, specifically citing the situation where Yao draws the double in the post, kicks the ball out, and the ball gets passed three or four times around the perimeter before it finds the open guy. That play's run so much that it could accurately be described as the Rockets' bread and butter. My own sense is that Yao, being much taller than Hakeem and proportionately less coordinated, is probably worse at handling the ball but not dramatically so. Unfortunately all you have are subjective impressions because the stats are not useful. Maybe the numbers Morey tracks are. For a small sample size I don't draw a conclusion, either way, because you can't deduce anything from a small sample size. If you take a college science lab and tell the prof that you're going to make a best guess, even though you have insufficient data, I'm guessing he'll be more than happy to mark you up with an "F". You shouldn't be trying to prove anything if your sample size is too small. All I'm trying to point out is that you can form whatever subjective impressions you like but there's not enough data there to actually draw a conclusion, one way or the other. And the only reason I bring this up is because you're the one who brought up fg% in the first place. Also, just let me make it clear that I don't have anything against subjective impressions when it comes to basketball. For a lot of critical information the numbers simply aren't tracked or the sample size is just too small, even adding up all the games over the season. Even in the absence of that information you still expect coaches to coach and make game changes, based on...their subjective impressions. Just remember that those gut feelings are on shakier ground than the stuff that can be actually backed up with numbers. So your theory is that the defense is responsible? I don't think that was the point at all at that link you posted up. Which was kind of my point way back when I listed off all the individual factors which could be significant. The problem of course is that the article you linked to is summing data from individual games--how could it not? It's got the exact same problem. Uh, no. You're confusing multiple issues here. I'm not impressed with that article you linked up to but my college education was in the hard sciences and we always sneered at the regression analysis the social science guys dabbled in, which is what that article smacks of. And actually the way I envisioned it is that you may reach the point where Yao's efficiency continues to go up as he gets more shots but that curve is outpaced by the team's efficiency as a whole as he defers. If you want my honest opinion I would say that that's completely dependent on the team you're facing, the arena, the phases of the moon, etc. There are so many variables in play that change from game to game, even when you play the same team, that making a blanket statement just isn't going to work. Some games you may be able to run the same play over and over and the other team will be helpless. Yao traditionally has "big games" against some teams and some teams have big games against him. Some games, even against the same team, that won't work. So I wouldn't say it's a "rational" expectation at all.
Rockets simple doesn't have a starting PG who can utilize Yao to the maxium now. They have no choice but to underutilize him. The easy baskets and the opportunites where opponents have to foul to stop a layup are gone, AB just doesn't have the vision and skill to pass the ball to Yao in the right spot at the right time under the basket. Now Yao has to work extremely hard to score every time unlees it's a turnaround jumper. In turn, his TOs are up, FT attempts are way down.
The Rockets may be able to get Yao more touches, or take more shots, but that doesn't mean the team would have more Ws. There are a lot of "what if", or "may be" on paper, but ultimately, the result is what matters, and the Rockets are winning with the way they are "utilizing" Yao, that means they are doing the right thing.
badgerfan, here's my main point: The Rockets could be smarter at looking for Yao, and maybe he gets a few more looks in the game that way and its all good with no drop in efficiency. But I don't think there's a way to significantly increase his scoring opportunities per game without the efficiency on those plays going down. Because in doing so, we'd likely have to ask Yao to score more outside his comfort zone as the defense won't give him the same easy looks. That's the gist of what I'm saying when it comes to this thread topic. Everything else is details, but if we can't agree on the above than I think there's no hope for finding much common ground. For a more detailed response to your points, you can click below if you like. Spoiler We're not dealing with arbitrary numbers. We're talking about pass outs of double teams from the post and assists. What is the relationship between the two? Do you think it's completely uncorrelated? If so, why? What I'm saying is that people have looked into this topic in detail. Bob Chaikin charted all these details very closely for a large number of games and determined that there is an approximately linear relationship between pass outs and assists. What that would suggest is if one player gets a lot more assists than another, then there's a good likelihood that he's also making passes to teammates for potential assists more often. That's why when you claim Yao passes it out of the post for potential assists more often than Hakeem did, I'm very skeptical. If you have any evidence to back it up, I'd like to see it. And the point you're missing is that any player's assist numbers is going to be less than his "true assist" numbers. Morey never claimed that this is especially true for Yao compared to Olajuwon, and that certainly can't be inferred by anything Morey has said. So, again, I have to ask if you have any actual evidence to back that up? And my sense is different from your sense as far as Yao and Hakeem are concerend. I think Yao is dramatically worse at handling the ball. You mention that their turnover per minute are about the same. First of all, it's not. Yao is averaging 3.4 turnovers per 36 minutes this season, and over the last three seasons it's been about the same rate. During Hakeem's prime years (92/93 to 94/95) his turnovers per 36 minutes was at 3.0. Second, Hakeem got more touches in the post in his prime than Yao does. So the disparity is even greater. No one tried to prove anything. I think I said that already. Your comments here are kind of funny. It sounds like you're saying that along as one keeps to vague statements ("I've seen Yao shoot jumpers in a number of games, and he looks comfortable") then that's a legitimate support for their argument. Bringing up actual verifiable facts -- Yao shoots about 30% on those jumpers over the last two seasons -- on the other hand is "meaningless". I don't quite get that. My observation tells me that Yao is often very uncomfortable taking that outside shot, and I see him miss it quite a lot, and whatever evidence is available seems to support that perspective. Notice that I am not saying that I've some how "proved" Yao can't hit that shot consistently. Obviously, I don't know that to be the case. I just want to make another point here. There is a difference between rational decision making (making a best choice based on the limited information available), and making scientific claims without statistically significant data. In sports, we have to make inferences about players and what's best for the team based on limited data. You do it when you say that the Rockets will be better off by going to Yao more often, or by getting him to shoot more in the high post. Even the Rockets do this, despite having mountains of more data to work off of. That's just the nature of the beast. You get a feel for what the data suggests, you combine that with your observations, and you make a "best guess" on what direction the team should go. I agree with that. The link described results from which one might infer that the discussed usage-efficiency exists. Not why it exists. For that, it's just a matter of understanding the game. The "mysterious force" you talked about is accounted for by the defense. If there wasn't a defensive team forcing the offense to make adjustments, then players could shoot the same shots over and over without their efficiency dropping. There would be no reason not to just run plays for your most efficient player over and over again. It doesn't have the exact same problem. The naive approach of finding how a player's usage correlates with his efficiency does not have any way of holding the other factors (like interior defense, or a player just being hot) constant. If Yao shoots a lot in games when he's facing soft defenses, then it wouldn't be too surprising if his efficiency stays high.. So efficiency can't be said to be purely dependent on usage in a given game. You have to somehow adjust for how good the defense was, or how good the offense was in those particular games. That's very difficult to do. The article's method is asking a different question, then tying the results back to the usage-efficiency question. It's results indicate that when you put players together who are low usage, their collective efficiency is not as good as it usually would be, and on the flip side if you put players together that are high usage their collective efficiency is better than it usually would be. Instead of trying to correlate individual efficiency with individual usage, it is correlating lineup efficiency with how "high usage" the individual players making up the lineup are. One way to interpret the results is that if high usage players are playing together, they don't have to use as many possessions and therefore their efficiency increases (they don't have to take as many shots outside their comfort zone). And conversely, if low usage players are playing together they have to each use more possessions than they are accustomed to and therefore their efficiency decreases (they have to take more shots outside their comfort zone). But you could interpret the results in a different way. It's supporting evidence, but not what I'd call absolute proof because one still has to interpret the results indirectly. There are a number of other links within that article where you can read more discussion on usage-efficiency relationship, if you're interested. Something tells me you are not, which is unfortunate because it's key for this thread topic (increasing Yao's utilization). Explain what you meant, then, when you said you expect efficiency to stay the same regardless of usage because of the law of large numbers. That suggests you don't understand (or momentarily forgot) that there are two teams on the floor. Also, please explain why you think Yao's efficiency would go up if the Rockets get him the ball more. To me, that's a very non-intuitive claim. And you may be disappointed to know that the Rockets, and most other NBA teams that mine data, use regression analysis quite a bit. But then, basketball analysis is largely akin to social sciences, as opposed to chemistry/physics. In fact, the author of that article was hired by Daryl Morey prior to this season. Its the type of analysis the Rockets are investing heavily in. I'm sorry to break it to you. So you think there exists a professional team out there against whom we could go to Yao every time, his efficiency wouldn't falter, and he'd score like 130 points? Of course you don't. No NBA team would allow the Rockets to run the same play for Yao over and over and over. Basketball is a game of adjustments. The more the defense sees the same play over and over again, assuming the defenders have memories/brains and their coach is capable of calling a timeout to discuss it, over time they should get better at defending it. Ok, maybe they're such a terrible team that they never reach the point where they deter the offense from running the play. But what shouldn't happen is the defense gets worse at defending it. That would indicate true incompetence. Never assume the opponent is incompetent!
this thread is becoming interesting, like a post-graduate thesis debate. hope to see more of that on this board. as a fan, i'd like to see ym's usage rate go up a little, at least in the playoffs. and i believe he can handle it. i expect to see him play 38-40 minutes per game in the post-season. this will be the first time yao being the absolute #1 option of the team in the playoffs. at least we shall see if how well he can handle that (and i have high expectations). if he doesn't handled it well, then morey's off-season plans may have to be altered a little. they will have a little time here and there to practice before game 1. hopefully we can have a game or 2 where the starters can take a break should the games turn little meaningful. i think for yao, as for any player, when his usage rate goes up, his efficiency tends to go down. but even under that scenario, the decreased efficiency of yao could still be higher than say brooks'.
He can easily drop 20+ points and grand 10+ rebounds per game with the current Adelman system, In what other way how can we not out-work him as much while having him "healthy" and ready for the playoffs?
The usage-efficiency seems very intuitive me, but I admit its difficult to put in words why I would expect it. For guys like Chuck Hayes and Shane Battier its obvious. They were both really efficienct a couple years ago, but if they were asked to shoot 5-10 more times a game, I don't think any reasonable person would expect them to maintain those efficiencies. The reason is because they rely on getting open looks created by their teammates, so the more they have to shoot the more they'll have to create shots on their own or take contested shots. With Yao, in some respects its similar. He relies on his teammates getting him the ball in favorable positions. It's not like the defense just allows him to post up 5 feet from the cup and receive the ball uncontested. He, and the team, have to work to get him those kind of looks. The less often the Rockets need to get Yao the ball, the more discriminating they can be. For example, if they only need to get Yao the ball 5 times a game, they can just wait for those possessions where he's able to get his feet in the paint. If they have to get him the ball 50 times, obviously they become far less discriminating and his scoring opportunities become less favorable (hence, the efficiency goes down).
Just like durvasa said, the other team has something to say. Also I think people try to put him in a class he can't make the grade in. I think yao will just need to shoot the ball more. He has the touch, stop waiting and looking around and make a move to shoot.
i'd agree with this. however, i've heard from adelman many times after a game that how yao made good or poor decisions out of the double teams. not sure some nights if "waiting for" the double or "making" the other team double is actually what adelman has game planed for.
What I usually hear from him is that he wants Yao to be more patient with the ball. He wants Yao to understand where the defenders are, and where double teams might be coming from. He wants Yao to let the play develop -- like allow cutters to go through the lane or run along the baseline, etc. I recall JVG preaching something different. He wanted Yao to make his move quickly or just turn and shoot. That's how I remember it.
He's not dumb, but when yao has to think a lot, it usually doesn't end well. He's not really a fork in the road type. I forget what they call it, but its what nfl people use to determine if a qb has the flexible capacity to handle the position. He's not a guy that can anticipate plays ahead. If it develops from a definite pov, he's cool, but when it gets a little complex, he overthinks vs react.
For the hell of it, I did check how Yao's shot attempts and scoring efficiency game by game related to eachother this season, last season, and two seasons ago. I expected there to be a positive correlation, which sort of goes against the point I've making about higher usage leading to less efficiency. I assumed Yao mostly got more shots when he's playing against bad defenses, so his efficiency wouldn't suffer. I still think that is a factor in this, but its not enough to keep the poly trend curve from sloping downward. I went ahead and removed Yao's top two and bottom two efficiency games for each season in case that distorted the results. "Score Eff" is like TS% -- except x200. Shots/min is shot attempts (approx. with FGA+.44*FTA) per 36 minutes. What other factors may be at play here? I offer this not as proof or any type of evidence, but just as extra information that might be of interest.
In the 2nd half against Spurs, Yao got the ball 4 times in the low post. Yao scored 3 times, ball got slapped out of bounds by Thomas once. There were two more times that the ball went Yao's way and Yao didn't even touch it, one bad pass by AB, another LOB by battier, Yao was held and refs refused to blow the whistle. That means other Rocket players only throw the ball to Yao's direction in low post 6 times for the entire 2nd half. That's underutilizing to me, no matter what kind of defense was applied by Spurs. 8 shots in 36 minutes with no FTs(technical doesn't count) is an all time low for Yao since his 2nd year, I believe. Glad we won the game, but offense was not pretty at all. Anyway, AB simply is the worst starting PG on Rockets ever to feed Yao the ball, it's not even close. And Rockets has the worst starting PG among west conference playoff teams, that's also not even close.
stats are far from enough to reflect the real capabilities of a player. Yao looks good on paper but he can't never gain the dominant power that Shaq used to have.
I doubt anyone here cares what a spurstalk member has to say about Yao. I'd like to hear how awesome Scola is from you guys though (again lol).
