I don't know about the 9th best team in the league and I'm normally pretty optimistic about the team. Feels good getting some props though. I've pretty much been in the dumps lately, but now that there is some certainty about Yao I'm feeling a lot better. The fact is right now this team is not very good, playoff wise. Our defense sucks and we've had problems closing games. But the Rockets have put themselves in a good position. Everyone was hoping on a healthy Yao, but IMO Les and Morey knew the odds were against Yao. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Yao's on his contract year and can move on on to plan B. The CBA is right around the corner and Morey has a cabinet full of assets. IMO we need a dominate big man that can defend the paint like no ones business. Total re building? No way, just move who doesn't contribute, get the rotation down to a solid 8-9 and ask Santa for a tough big man. The Rockets aren't that far off, they just need to keep working on fitting the pieces and find some defense. Chris Paul wouldn't hurt either. but it's probably alittle late for a letter to Santa. Hopefully Morey beat me to it.
These are mathematical calculations. It doesn't matter if Hollinger likes us or not. Are you guys idiots?
That was the same year the Celtics Big 3 came together and started tearing through the league. The Celtics were 19-5 during that same stretch.
Hollinger's stats are stats, a computer crunches numbers and gives you the "power ranking". Imagine the following (sorry for those who have learnt probability theory) : You have a stat - Hollinger's Power Ranking (let's abbreviate it HPR). You can say that for every value of HPR, say x one can have a winning percentage in the interval from a to b. Let's say the HPR's actual value is 102.705 (the actual Rockets' value). The wins associated with this value can be around 42 and 55%. That means that a team with a stat like that could have wins between 11-16 and 15-12. It's safe to say (especially with the 0-5 in mind) that we're on the lower tail of the distribution. By keeping this HPR rating, in the long run, our winnings should go over 50%. In short: we got statistically unlucky (although we could give a perfectly good rationalization for every lost game we had). More interesting is the fact that HPR itself is not very stable. The hornets fell 0.5 and 4 places after a loss to Philly. That seems a bit much for me. For those who don't get my reasoning. Do you think it's plausible that you flip a perfect coin 5 times and all of the outcomes are heads? There is a tiny chance that this happens. Can you assume after that (knowing that the coin is perfect) that the probability has shifted towards heads? Is 50 repetitions enough? Would you be willing to put 1.1$ on heads against your opponents 1$ on tails? (That is, you expect to win ~52% of the time.) I think neither HPR nor wins are the best indicator of how good a team is. If there were more games played in an NBA season (say 300), wins would be a better indicator. Anyway noone should hate on Hollinger, he is certainly adding some new ingredients to our thinking. I think his stats are skewed, but that's another story and I guess no one is interested in statistics.
Most statistical measures had us outperforming our "expected" WL last year, so we got lucky last year to have a winning record, and we may get unlucky this year.
Our ratings are slightly inflated by a number of different factors: RATING = (((SOS-0.5)/0.037)*0.67) + (((SOSL10-0.5)/0.037)*0.33) + 100 + (0.67*(MARG+(((ROAD-HOME)*3.5)/(GAMES))) + (0.33*(MARGL10+(((ROAD10-HOME10)*3.5)/(10))))) 1. The margin for our last 25% of games is +7.20 2. We have played more road games than the teams that should be ranked ahead of us. Our rating should continue to rise as we feast on weak West coast teams the next few games. The good news is our margin of victory of the last 25% of games. We have been playing much better and shooting at a much higher percentage. Also, we are playing well at home and our schedule will eventually put us there a bit more. If we lose a road game by a bad margin, our ranking will tank. Hopefully our real record catches up to our statistical ranking and we can start talking playoffs more than the lottery. In other positive news, the Knicks have lost 3 in a row.
There wouldn't be much point to the rankings if all they did is reflect what was already shown in the actual standings. Why don't people read what they're actually about before "picking" them "apart". lol
This would matter if we were at least .500 and in a position for the playoffs. Right now we are fighting out of a hole and not even at the half way point of the season yet.
