[JCF]More Mythbusting Didnt see this posted but its second part to Jason Friedman's "MythBusting" series on the Rockets Click the LINK for the rest
Nice column, Jason. I'm a bit worried about Wafer since him being unrestricted means some team out there will likely offer him something way more than he is worth. We may have to do without the V-Hawk next year. And I especially enjoyed the "**** You, Solomon" second half. Jerome took a spoon to a gun fight.
great to have someone like JCF writing for the rockets. he clearly cares and does his research which is something that can't always be said for sports writers.
No. I'm saying he only touched the ball 4 times in low post for the entire 2nd half. and he was making every shot in 2nd half. 1st half Yao played bad when he had the ball, so it's ok not to pass to him. 2nd half was a completely different story. AB stopped any attempt to Yao in low post after his low bounce pass got stolen by Thomas, result: 13 point Rox offense in 3rd quarter. Generally speaking, there is a strong relationship between Yao's touch and his shot attempts, especially when he's single covered. 8 shots in a game with single coverage means Yao is underutiliazed badly. Especially for 2nd half, 4 touches in low post total.
Go back and re-read what I posted: the point I was making is that Yao doesn't need to shoot for the Rockets to prosper. All he needs to do is draw the double team and then kick the ball out, which requires a lot less effort/stamina than putting the ball up.
isn't that a good thing? or where Yao could find energy to make two clutch passes and we stole a win?
If we're actually going to go down this route, then let me point out that you cannot prove a negative. If you think there is some correlation then the burden is on you to provide the evidence. Again, I can't prove a negative. That's impossible. It's ironic that we're talking about this because Morey has talked about "true assists", and also because this is the team that Shane Battier's playing on. The knock on basketball statistics is that they don't really give an accurate portrayal of what's actually happening in the game. Again, given the nature of the offense Yao's contribution is going to be undervalued given that when he kicks the ball out it may go around the perimeter, via two or three or four passes, before it finds the open man. And again my point is that Chalkin's analysis is flawed unless his constant really is a constant. What's the ratio of Yao's assists to his passes? Five? Six? Two? One? I think it should be pretty obvious that different values for that constant give you drastically different pictures of what's happening in the game. I don't think the statistics exist to make a firm argument. My hunch is that Yao's TOV% is going to be inaccurate because it's based on FGA/FTA and those are not going to accurately measure what's happening in the post when he has the ball, especially given this team and the offense it runs. You're cherry picking years here though. Why talk about Hakeem's championship years only instead of say 89-90 when he averaged fewer minutes and more TO's? The point I keep bringing up is that it's a small sample size and that you can' t do a rigorous analysis for precisely that reason. All we're left with is subjective impressions and my impressions are that Yao has been comfortable with the 15' jumper in some games and worse in others. I don't consider that meaningful because he's had the exact same problem in the post in any number of games, missing point blank layups and dunks. Then in other games he's been on fire. As a matter of fact what I've noticed is that when he's hitting inside he's also able to hit the jumper from 15'. In toto you cannot make any real conclusions because of the small sample size. I can understand why these would be hard points to grasp because numbers to me mean much different things than to the layman. And again, this isn't a video game. Players pick up new skills all the time--Yao as a back to basket low post player and his hook shot are both skills he developed after he got to the US. Yao's going to get more comfortable playing in the high post the more he does it and so is the team around him. Given the value of playing him in the high post (see the last game against SA for instance) and Yao's ability to shoot I think it would be a huge mistake not to continue exploring this option, although it's likely too late in the season to see too much of it this year. Uh, that's exactly what I said. Go back to my previous post and re-read the part where I wrote that "Coaches still need to coach..." If you actually go back and read the article it clearly delimits a difference between high usage players and role players. I would say that Yao clearly falls into the former category so I don't think that article even applies. Secondly you can't just make a blanket statement that it's clearly explained by the defense. There could be and probably are many, many factors in the mix which are not constant from game to game, night to night. Here's a far simpler explanation--players get tired and they start to miss their shots. But obviously fatigue is going to vary from night to night. I mentioned in a previous post how much the guys in my department back in college used to scoff at the statistical techniques used by the social science guys. Here's a confession though--I mostly felt sorry for them. Figuring out whether, for instance, concealed carry permits have an effect on crime rates is a thorny, thorny problem. Figuring out which factors are significant is nightmare enough. And yes, that same level of complexity applies to basketball games and the kind of analysis Morey is trying to do. See above. Yao is clearly a high usage player, he plays with the starters who are also presumably by default high usage players, and I don't see how this article applies. It certainly cannot be extended to extrapolate theories about defenses adjusting or the role of fatigue. Do you really want to go into a rigorous discussion about the math here? We're already on different pages, I can tell, so I wonder how useful that would be. Actually two teams on the floor has nothing to do with it since we haven't even determined yet how significant the other team's defense is with regards to this issue. Also consider that defense is going to vary from night to night as you play different teams. There is a world of difference between GS/Phoenix and Boston/SA in terms of the quality of the defense they play. And strangely enough Yao will sometimes have strong games against teams like SA/Boston and terrible ones against the likes of GS/Phoenix because there are many, many other factors at play here. There's a second, different issue. Viewed over the season as a whole Yao's scoring numbers represent an accurate picture of his game. Since it's already a statistically significant sample size then increasing the number of shots he takes should not significantly affect the distribution of "bad shots"/"good shots", especially since he already has games where his shots/touches are very high. I said I would expect it to stay the same or maybe even go up. My point is that those are just as valid predictions as predicting that it would go down. Actually that's pretty much what I expected that the Rockets are doing. I would say this: it's the best those guys have, but I wonder if it's very good at all especially when you're talking about basketball. That's why I feel sorry for them. That doesn't make me any less skeptical though. No, but I expect that there are teams where your models work and there are teams where it doesn't. Yao clearly has games against teams like NY or GS where he can score at will and does so consistently throughout the entire game. And again, even against the same team, that's going to vary somewhat from game to game. No, it wouldn't. Didn't you watch the Memphis game where the commenter talked about how the Rockets could be the ideal playoff team because they grind down the defense? Over the course of a seven game series that could be significant. In other words, fatigue could indeed contribute to breakdowns in defense as individual games go late and as series go to more games.
Are you kidding? We may never need those two assists and risk losing game by bonner's jumper if we scored 20 points in 3rd quarter.
I'm not trying to prove anything. I've said it over and over, and you keep ignoring that. Until you acknowledge this, I'm not going to answer the rest. <hr> Alright, I lied. You made some good points, and some perplexing ones . My answers are below. I'm putting this in spoiler, because these back and forths are getting too lengthy. Spoiler I'm not asking you to prove anything, and I'm not trying to prove anything either. This is pretty good tactic to use when a person wants to refuse to acknowledge the merit of another person's perspective without reexamining his own -- unless you can prove it, I'm not budging! You made a claim -- Yao passes the ball out of the post more than Hakeem did. That's a positive assertion by you. Why should the burden of proof be on me to "prove" otherwise? You seemed to have shifted it over to me at some point. Here's the fact of the matter. Neither of us can "prove" anything unless we go back and break down all the film. You remember it one way, and I remember it another way. I think the limited information we have would suggest that Hakeem passed it out more. But I'm no more obliged to "prove" it than you are to prove that Yao passed it out more. I don't think you're understanding the purpose of his work. The goal is to make a best guess on how many touches a player got based on the box score. Are you guaranteed to get the number correct within a certain amount? No, but that does not make it meaningless as a piece of information to consider. By only comparing turnorvers/minute, you are tacitly assuming that Yao and Hakeem got about the same number of touches/plays per minute. Is that any more accurate than using Chaikin's approximation of touches, for which he carefuly charted hundreds of games to determine? Do you think it makes more sense to just assume they got the same number of touches, as you are effectively doing, or instead try to approximate touches in an logical manner based on the limited information available? Again, it's not about "proving" anything. Whether you realize it or not, when you compare turnovers/minute to assess how turnover-prone two players are, you are making assumptions. You need to reflect a little more on why you are making those assumption, and how sure you really are. Maybe, perhaps, you can do better. Yeah, not really: "Hakeem actually averaged way more TO's than Yao does, especially in the championship years." You attempted to make a point about Hakeem in his championship years being much more turnover prone than Yao. Are you not sticking by that comment any more? Hold on. According to your "subjective impressions", Yao has been comfortable with the 15' jumper in some games. How many times has Yao actually hit even two of those jumpers in a single game? How can you have such an impression when (1) he rarely takes it, and (2) he usually misses it when he does take it? That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to prove that Yao can't become a good shooter from out there. I totally agree that's not possible with the information we have. We each have different subjective impressions, and I'm just trying to figure what you based yours on. Is it because he's a good free throw shooter, and as a rookie he had reputation as a good outside shooter? Is it just a gut feeling, based on nothing in particular, that if he got more of those shots he could be successful? Help me understand where you're coming from. I actually agree with this. I think it would help tremendously. It doesn't delimit any such difference. You can have above average usage (more than 20%) or below average usage (less than 20%). That's not what I'd call a clear delineation. Let's consider your simpler explanation. Suppose we eliminated the defense from the equation, and there was only one team on the floor. Over a 48 minute game, how many points do you think the team would score, and with what efficiency? They would score as much as they like, because there's no one offering resistance. You see, while fatigue can be a factor, it only is a significant factor when the defense forces the team to work harder. So, ultimately, it's the defense that's responsible. Maybe you have another explanation in mind. The article doesn't just look at lineups consisting of low usage players. It looks at thousands of player combinations. I don't get what you're saying here. Probably not useful at this stage. There are some fundamental basketball concepts which we're not seeing eye to eye on. But this isn't what I'm talking about. Of course, Yao could shoot 20 times and at a high efficiency against GS, while shooting only 10 times at a low efficiency against Boston. And vice versa. That's always possible. I'm not suggesting that Yao's efficiency would always go down if he got more shots. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think about this problem in this way: Suppose the Rockets have 5 ways of trying to get Yao the ball. Suppose for a large stretch of games against a mix of opponents they attempt to get him the ball on half of their possessions in those various ways. Ok, now suppose that there's another large stretch of games against a similar mix of opponents, but this time they attempt to get him the ball on 3/4 of their possessions in those various ways. If that's all you know -- nothing else -- would you expect Yao's individual efficiency to stay about the same, go up, or go down? If I know nothing else, I would expect his individual efficiency to go down. Here's my reasoning. If the Rockets only look to get Yao the ball on half of their possessions, that means they can afford to be more selective on when they get him the ball. That leads to more quality shots compared to bad ones. And if the Rockets want to get Yao the ball on 3/4 of their possessions, they have to be less selective. His looks, on average, aren't quite as easy. For really great offensive players, there's a high threshold. Jordan could probably take 35 shots a game if he wanted, and still have been really efficient. He was just that good. But if I had to guess, I'd still expect his efficiency to go down slightly with more shots. Just not as dramatically as, say, Shane Battier's efficiency would drop. It's not easy for me to prove it, but that's what my intuition tells me. What works has been done to try to probe harder into this question seems to support that view, but perhaps it can't be said to be rock solid evidence. Again, I go back to this: if my supposition that as usage goes up, efficiency will eventually go down is not true, then you could expect a player to shoot every time with sustained efficiency. There have been some fluke games where it almost seemed like that could happen, but its never something you would expect. By this logic, if we increased Yao's shots from 20 to 40 per game, the distribution of "bad shots"/"good shots" shouldn't significantly change. You honestly think we can get Yao 40 shots a game without most of them being terrible? That's what you're saying "should" happen. And I'm asking you to explain why you would expect that. Do you even have a reason, or did just arbitrarily decide that what's you believe? I don't consider a prediction based on literally nothing to be as valid as a prediction based on something (even if that something isn't itself statistically significant). A simple example to illustrate this. You see the following pattern: on, off, on, off, on, X. You get a million dollars if you can guess what X is, and the choices are "off", "on", or other. So, what do you choose? A rational person would look at that pattern, and if a million dollars is at stake, guess that X=off. Is that past data (on, off, on, off, on) he has enough for him to make that prediction with 95% certainty? Definitely not! Would he be an foolish for choosing X=on for no particular reason? Of course! But there appears to be a contradiction here. You said that you think its quite possible that Yao could score at will, and his efficiency wouldn't change at all no matter how much you ramp up his shot attempts. If that's so, then that means you think it's possible, against certain teams, for the Rockets to go to him every possession and for him to shoot at his season averages of 55% from the field and thereby score 120-130 all by himself. Of course, we both know such a thing could never happen, but that's what your logic leads to. I don't think we would be able to beat Memphis, or any NBA team, by running the exact same play over and over again. The defense getting fatigued isn't a good enough reason. Our guys get fatigued too.
rockets would lose yao if they overutilized him, it's really hard to control the degree of using yao.
Which is exactly what I've been saying for the last two posts. One more time: your subjective impression is that Hakeem passed it out more. Mine is the direct opposite. I don't think the numbers exist to prove it one way or the other. And I completely disagree with the idea that the limited information available "suggests" one thing or another. I don't know how to break this to you, but an insufficient amount of information is just as useless as no information whatsoever. [/quote]Again, it's not about "proving" anything. Whether you realize it or not, when you compare turnovers/minute to assess how turnover-prone two players are, you are making assumptions. You need to reflect a little more on why you are making those assumption, and how sure you really are. Maybe, perhaps, you can do better.[/quote] Again, I'm offering up my subjective impressions and I've never made any bones about the fact that they're anything but. On the other hand I hope you understand that that's all you're doing as well. He did indeed average more TO's per game than Yao, which is at least one measure. One, he's had at least a couple of games where he looked pretty good from 15' and hit a couple of long shots. I don't remember exactly who the game was against but again it seems to me that when he's hitting his jumper reliably inside that translates to his being able to shoot well from outside as well, which is what you'd expect from a shooter. Two, the free point line is about 15' away from the basket an everybody knows how well Yao does shooting ft's. For an absurd example let me offer an absurd idea: fatigue is still a factor. Try running up and down the floor and shooting 3's for 48 minutes. You might do well for a few minutes but I doubt you could sustain the effort for all 48. Nope. Fatigue is a huge factor and it's not always related to what the defense is doing. Which has absolutely nothing to do with that article you posted up. Second, you're blindly making assumptions with no data to back it up. Do you have anything which suggests that the "quality" of shots Yao gets goes down as the Rockets get him the ball more? Nope. Bottom line, all you've got is your intuition. Morey's intuition, as well as Adelman's intuition, seems to be that Yao needs to get the ball more. Strangely enough that's how I feel as well. Frankly, I'll go with the pros on this one. I'm saying I have no idea what would happen, and neither do you. You have your "intuition" and no firm evidence. LOL, I'll just answers that it's my intuition. Uh, the bottom line is that there's not enough data there to know. You can guess whatever you like but that's all you're doing, guessing. Nope. I would expect that fatigue would begin to play a factor at some point and Yao would start missing shots. You're missing the point, completely. I'm just responding to your idea that defenses don't break down as the game goes on. In fact as games go on sometimes the defense does get worse and worse, instead of better, precisely because of fatigue. And again, the bottom line is that the Rockets have taken a very public stance that Yao needs to take more shots. Why exactly do you think there's been a bunch of stories in the Houston Chronicle about Yao needing to demand the ball more? Psychological warfare? I'm guessing that both Morey and Adelman are on board with the idea of Yao taking more shots, and frankly I find their credentials to be more convincing than yours.
watched Blake Griffin's last couple games - he has a repositioning move that Yao could definitely use. he first establishes post position. then when the defender starts to front, he starts pushing the defender out/away from the basket. when the defender starts to counter and starts backing in against him, Blake turns around quickly and establishes his initial post position again. If we have a skilled passer that knows when to throw the ball into Yao during that brief window of opportunity, Yao could really do a number on the fronting defenses.
The obvious danger to the other team is that Yao could clear a path to the basket and a speedy guard (Brooks, Lowry) could go straight to the lane. Sounds to me like it couldn't hurt if the Rockets give it a shot.
the bottom line is yao isn't getting more shots or being utilized the way you want. you can come back when he is and say you're right all along. until then stop argueing.
