The author of the article wrote a bunch of stuff, but there is no point behind any of it. The Ariza stuff is especially weird, you really can't figure out why Ariza has a lower FG percentage compared to last year?
Based on this article, there is only one conclusion. TMac and Yao didn't make their teammates better.
ariza's FG% is down because he is taking more contested shots. last year kobe or gasol would draw a double team and find ariza open for an uncontested shot. IF t-mac comes back and draws double teams ariza's FG% should go back to what it was, if not better.
The reason Ariza shooting percentage is worse is because he is asked to create a shot when the 24 second clock is running down which is different from what was asked of him previously. Anyone who is asked to do that will suffer in shooting because of all the bad shot required of that person.
While I agree with this, it's also a testament to these "role" players that they are just simply that good individually and didn't need anyone to make them better.
Agree: it is full of sound and fury. Also agree with the poster mentioning adelman -- that's the (unwritten) real point to the story. Adelman is a master at getting great player performance and maximizing a given player's efficiency. This leads us to the monacle.
Adelman's name was not mentioned even once when he was talking about Rockets... That's just plain ignorance.
It is not based on yao and tmac being playmakers. It is based on that with the fact of yao being gone and tmac just coming back, the other players have to take up bigger roles, which can be hard (Ariza) and for those who have comfortably taken up bigger roles, (Rest of team), they will be taking more shots. Unfortunately, that also means they will be missing more. Also, our new running offense has us shooting ALOT, so players are going to miss alot of shots as well as make alot.
I think it's easy to forget that these Role players were still developing last year and only have come into their own late last year and this year. There was no Chase or Ariza last year. Brooks only started to blossom at the end of the season and the playoffs Lowry was a recent addition late last year Landry was beginning to play well but then got shot Scola's first year was not fantastic - last year was his first year that he performed well. Only Shane has been the constant really. And even he had issues the first half of last year. All in all, Yao and T-mac have never really had a chance to play with this group.
This is the most reasonable explanation. It's not the number of shots, it's the level of difficulty of the shots he takes. The reason your shooting percentage declines with the more shots you take is obvious - you take worse shots and the defense pays more attention to you. Anyone can just never take a shot unless they are 70% sure they can hit. Of course you'll only score 2 points that way. But also, the thing to keep in mind is that last year Ariza played with Kobe. Kobe takes a lot of defensive pressure off everyone else which means easier points. Last year, Ariza was scoring points thanks to Kobe. With no Yao or T-mac here to take defensive pressure of Ariza - he now being the main dude to shutdown, it's a challenge for him to get the same number of good shots. Now you add on ttop of that he has to take more - and wow, it's amazing his shooting isn't even lower.
When you compare this year to last year, we are really only missing Yao. Tracy was a net negative. When he did play, he played poorly. In fact, I think we would have had a better record last year if TMac did not play at all. I think his coming into and out of the lineup cost us several games against poor teams.
I think this is true on offense. However, Yao has an undeniable impact on our defense. He is a huge moving tree around the basket. If he can come back and do a lot more high-post and garbage man work around the basket, we will be a top 10 offensive and top 10 defensive team. I have heard Morey mention this as one of his goals many times. Yao will happily accept this role if it is what wins us games. Next year is the year if Morey can turn McGrady into valuable contributors or cut his salary in half and sign something extra with the difference.
