I think it was durvasa who did something like this before. I am bringing this back up because to me there was a clear culprit to why the data played out like how it did. And we can isolate this culprit now that we have a little bit of sample size each way. Since Brooks returned from his injury he played 29 games as a Rocket. In those 29 games, here is how the team did with Lowry OFF the court. Code: CLE -1 DET -1 PHI -3 DEN +11 DAL -12 MIN -5 MEM -12 UTH -14 LAL -5 SAS -13 DAL -13 LAC +2 MIN -11 ORL -1 MEM -8 NYK -4 MIL -3 ATL +11 NOR -14 OKC -6 BOS -5 DEN -1 POR -2 TOR +13 MIA -10 WAS -5 LAC -5 GSW +1 SAC +1 That is an average of -3.97. Meaning on average the team lost almost 4 points per game when Lowry went to the bench. During that same stretch of 29 games, the team had an overall point differential per game of +0.89. Seeing how talent deficient(allstar deficient) this team is, the margin of error is razor thin. As matter of fact it is exactly 0.89 points thin. To lose 4 points every time your starting PG is off the court is an absolute anvil dragging down the team. The good news is, we seem to have solved the "problem". Goran Dragic has played 4 games as a Rocket. In those 4 games, here is how the team did with Lowry OFF the court. Code: IND +0 LAC +9 POR -4 NJN -4 That is an average of +0.25. It feels nice to have a backup PG again. Or at least one that won't throw the game for you the second he's on the court. Hopefully the Dragon can keep it up.
I think you have a great idea here. There is one problem: you posted it a bit early. Let's wait another 15 games before reaching conclusions. +/- has an extremely high variance especially with second groups and small minutes.
I agree, we need a time line similar to your control in this experiment. While I already agree with the observation Goran > Brooks, I will still give Aaron his due and wait for more stats.
It's hard to make any kind of assessment of Dragic right off the bat like this, but hell the point is taken: an average replacement player backing up the point is a hell of a lot better than someone who since December has basically been building a bomb based on Derek Bell's original Operation Shutdown blueprints. I'm sure Brooks' mentality wasn't, "so they want me to be the sparkplug do they? well then every time I get down the court I'm gonna chuck that mother up and if it doesn't go in then f** them, the Rockets have it coming anyways;" unfortunately, that's the way his game made it look. If you need a statistical basis for why the Rockets have done so well of late, just look at Kyle Lowry's efficiency spike since the trade deadline. 5 games: 6.6 FG-13.4 FGA, 49.3 FG%, 40.6 3PT%, 75 FT%, 18.2 PTS, 7.8 AST, 3.2 RBD, 2.2 TO I've always liked Lowry for his tenacity since we acquired him, but folks I wonder now if we're beginning to see a late-bloomer PG stud emerging right before our eyes. They do say that PG's develop later right?
Goran is basically another Lowry who looks for his shot a bit more. I liked how he kept attacking the basket tonight.
You could've predicted this from last season's performance, while everyone was praising the MIP, a deeper look at the numbers show's that the rockets starters were negative +- whilst the bench was positive. swap brooks and lowry and it confirms it, lowry was carrying the 2nd unit last year, and brooks was holding the starters back.
i don't think the sample size is large enough, but i do think the trend will continue. The problem always seemed to be you couldn't sit battier with brooks out there or vice versa...im not sure how much one deal influenced the other, but it feels like they were a package deal to keep the offense strong and re-distribute the defense.
To be clear, I am not trying to make too much of a conclusion or say how great Dragic is. I like him, quite a bit, and think that he will only get better as he gets familiar with the system. That said, it is not like +0.25 is lighting the world on fire. We are only barely holding court now with Lowry off the floor. The point, however is that holding court is far and away better than what we had before. We have 18 more games to build up more of a sample size as to how he can help us. But for now, I will settle for a break from that sense of dread whenever Lowry goes to the bench.
I love seeing our bench performing well. But “culprit”? Sounds like a cleverly disguised, “Let’s bash the midget again!” thread. No doubt AB has had a terrible season, but the data also doesn’t factor in his having to recover from a nasty injury. So let’s just move on and, like you said, be happy we’ve got the Dragon. He was beasting tonight and Lowry’s absolutely been ballin’ as well. Love that we finally have a position with two TWO-WAY players!
Those were my suspicions last year, and what all the "stat heads" clamored over, especially after he won the MIP(undeservingly so according to them). However, the counter argument from his supporters made enough sense. That Lowry's numbers were inflated against backups, while Brooks had to deal with starters. There was no proof or data either way, since Lowry didn't start a single game. But it sounded fair enough, so I held my tongue. Well, now that Lowry has started almost a full year, we can comfortably and confidently conclude that that theory was a giant, massive, towering piece of turd.
dude. when you want to show some sort of correlation, make sure you have a large enough sample size. You cited durvasa and his stats as all of us have seen, but you will never see him do that.
It's not too early to make the case. Because you can see it on the floor. BALL MOVEMENT!!! Let me emphasize it some more. BALL MOVEMENT!!! BALL MOVEMENT!!! BALL MOVEMENT!!! It's not one guy dribbling the ball around expecting everybody to set screens so he can shoot. Rick: "We're not at our best when we go one-on-one. We're at our best when we move the ball." What has happened since the trade is the ball is moving. We've lost one game.....4th game in 5 nights....and we probably could've taken that game if we hadn't gotten in foul trouble early with Chuckwagon. BROOKS....was not good at ball movement. He was just like McGrady playing in this system. He dominated the ball when he was in the game and focused the defense on his dribble. The defense did not have to scramble, they did not have to move. All they had to do was stand around and cheat off their man to help on Aaron. You can point at how good his assist numbers were but that's fool's gold. You give a guy the ball at the top every possession he is in the game and he either takes the shot or makes the first, last, and only pass, he's gonna have a lot of points (if he shoots a decent percentage) and a lot of assists (because he's the only guy making plays) but the team is going to lack because he is using a disproportionate amount of possessions to get his numbers..........unless his name is Lebron or Dwayne Wade, which Brooks is not. Brooks is a nice player. He's a weapon. But we were going nowhere with Brooks taking the third most shots on the team in the bench minutes he was playing. If he had been starting and taking even more shots, our record would have been even worse. He completely jammed up the productivity of our second unit and he was stopping the flow of the starters before he went to the bench. He's a talented player. Unfortunately, his game never evolved to fit into Rick's system in a way that would be most beneficial to the team. I'm sure he will enjoy success in Phoenix where he can dribble, dribble, dribble and get the screen at the top and take it to the rim, or shoot the J, or if he is doubled, he can throw it up to the big man. That's not Rick's system.
I'll buy in to your reasoning when I see the top echelon teams in that sample size. The rockets are what the rockets have been the past few years: a mediocre team that feasts on other mediocre teams that just doesn't have the talent to compete with the top tier squads. You guys want to micro analyze individuals but you fail to recognize one important fact: the strength of our opponent.
CXbby, I like your thread and do think need a larger sample size. Because, despite your adamant conclusion above, it doesn't take a genius to note your sample size is way too small. It's clearly impacted by the one +9. If you just look at number of games where they did better with Lowry off the court, it's only 1 out of the 4. Still better than the 6 out of 29 games in your larger sample size with AB, but only marginally. I am interested in seeing how this turns out over the rest of the season.
To OP, nice numbers but your analysis is somewhat like looking at a sick person and treating the symptoms of their sickness instead of trying to fix the source of the symptoms. There really are a variety of factors as to why Dragic is playing more efficiently than brooks. I think you could detail this with a statistical analysis but you would have to include things like this; Point differential in game during minutes played by Dragic/Brooks (to show importance of playing time) Opposition W/L. team assists per minute by lowry and by backup team turnovers per minute by lowry v backup etc etc... Trying to eliminate garbage time stats would make this analysis more complete +/- doesn't tell the whole story in my opinion. You really have to be able to look at WHY the +/- is what it is, rather than just the actual number.
Yeah I agree. the outliers are too large to assess. If you take out the biggest value of them all, we'd be averaging -2.67 without lowry. In a sense, 9, -4, and -4 are all outliers compared to lowry's average effectiveness off the court....so we're left with 0?
Repped. I could not agree with you more. We're almost impossible to stop offensively not because of the individual talent of our players, but because of the execution and selflessness. I think having a level-headed Brooks coming off the bench would have made us that much more dangerous, but I will settle for Dragic. People will always overrate the ability to score one-on-one. I'm sure there are some people who think we'd be better off if Iverson were in the lineup over Lowry, simply because Iverson can drop 30 every night and Lowry can't.
To be extra clear, regarding sample size, I believe 29 games is enough for me to conclude that ANYTHING is better than what we had before. Now 4 games with Dragic is clearly not enough to gauge his value going forward. Thankfully we have another 18 games to do so. However, and this is indeed only my assumption, Dragic does = ANYTHING. And for that I am thankful.
