Rockets stats analysis suggestions - for a conference

Hi All,

There is a scientific conference that I'm thinking of attending in September (the 2009 New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports). I have experience in scientific research and am thinking of putting together some kind of project for it. I know plenty of stats but haven't done much basketball analysis. I'd like to do a project related to the Rockets and basketball in general.

If anybody has any suggestions for good statistical questions, and more criticially, if they can point me to some available data, I'd be much appreciative. If I end up getting to present the work, I'll be sure to shoutout to Clutchfans and your handle.

I am thinking of questions along the lines of : How important is height for centers? (interesting issue for Chuck Hayes and Yao), or how poorly are Rockets players rated by stats such as PER? (interesting issue for defensive-minded players like Battier, Artest, Lowry, Hayes, etc.)

Thanks.

 

I should mention that I went to this conference previously, and it was attended by a lot of the stats-minded people interested in the NBA (Hollinger, Rosenbaum, Wolfers, etc), so good ideas have a good chance of being heard.

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to analyze existing data. Defensive quantitation is a good idea. My impression from the conference last year is that the existing analyses which have been publicly discussed are not that sophisticated -- mostly a bunch of linear correlations of things like shooting % vs winning %, scoring vs winning, etc. I'm sure Morey has much better analysis since he can keep people working on this full-time, but he keeps it in-house.