Beyond the raw stats, looking at how the Rockets compare through 10 games

A post from NVP from dreamshake regarding to our offensive problems
(@Hornets game)
Read more :http://www.thedreamshake.com/2012/11/15/3648758/prevent-offenses-does-not-work

 

Pretty good Meh and I will add my .02. Its obvious this team is very limited both offensively and defensively. The youth aspect of it doest help either.Most times withyoung teams,defense is the last thing they pick up unless their best player is a beast defensively. If that's our gauge and harden is our best player,we're in trouble. Harden makes martin look like gary payton as a defender. In terms of offensively,they don't have many natural offensive players. 3 out of the staring 5 are not natural threats. Off the bench,morris is a offensive player but has turned 1 dimensional,smith is not offensive,delfino is just a spot up guy,and jones isn't getting a lot of minutes.

 

A brutally honest assessment, as usual.

I think Harden looked particularly horrid last night on defense, but I'll chalk that up to his flu-like symptoms or whatever that was. I'm not ready to say he's as bad as defender as Kevin Martin, but defense is not a strength of his and as one of our "leaders" he needs to put more in effort on that end.

Not sure why you think Morris is turning 1-dimensional, however. He's rebounding, playing better defense than last year, he's hitting the spot up 3-pointer and he's also able to put the ball on the floor and hit the mid-range jumper. His all-around game has been one of the few positives of late.

Let me also give you credit for your early assessment of Patrick Patterson way back in his rookie year. You claimed he was a "back-seat" player. At the time, I thought that was an unfair assessment and that he had the potential to be a solid to very good starter (if not an all-star level player). Two years later, and your initial assessment looks to be the closest to the mark.

 

Morris is not 1 dimensional. He can score from anywhere on the court.

 

Nice stats. I think they pretty much show we are a young team. Poor at defense, high energy leads to rebounds, sloppy with the ball.

It will be fun to see them improve throughout the season. We really need McHale back. This is the most exciting season in a looong time.

 

As good of a take as it gets meh. So the Rockets are right where the life long NBA fans thought they would be. Mocking the use of basic arithmetic symbols to represent a team:

(Youngest team) + (Highest roster turnover) + (average talent) = LOTTERY

But I think most of us are optimistic. The Rockets should improve faster than most NBA teams this season, and there is the lottery and the max contract to consider.

 

Agreed with everything you said.

As great as Parsons has been shooting he's not an offensive minded player.

PPatt could be but he's too soft to do anything

Although Lin likes to attack the rim, if it's not open he can't do much on offense (because he can't shoot)

We may have the most inept offensively talented team in the league. I feel like every game we have to hit every one of our shots just to stay in it.

 

Definitely agree with this. It is sad that Patterson has regressed in needed areas. He's gotten better on positional defense and his shot has gotten better, but his rebounding just has gone from marginally bad to atrocious. His shot blocking was an okay plus his rookie year to meh now, but I think that is him playing smarter defense. I thought he had a shot at being a very good starter.

 

This season Parsons has been running A LOT of PnR's....something that's not really his strength. I think it's by necessity when we have noone else who can create.

Parsons never ran a PnR when we had Dragic and Lowry running the show.

 

Parsons was a rookie last year. Just an observation.

 

In practice?

 

Lin and Harden are not working together well at moment. I expect Lin will get his scoring efficiency up close to where he was last season. That alone could account for nearly 2.5 extra points per game.

I suspect Jones will have a decent TS% once he settles down. This will also add points once he is in rotation. Losing Patterson eventually from rotation will probably hurt the defense short term.

I wonder how bad the transition defense is for Rockets as that could be contributing a lot to the how bad the total defense is. Half court defense needs to improve, too.

 

Rockets transition offense 1.07 PPP 22nd in the NBA
Rockets transition defense 1.22 PPP 24th in the NBA

 

We are one win from the playoffs based on current standings, and one loss from bottom three in the western conference.

Given our age, inexperience, lack of chemistry, and having being in every game except against the LAL, I'd say we're tracking ahead of progress.

 

Interesting ... I would've thought our transition offense was better. Eyes do lie.

 

Not surprised. Our transition offense is ****. We turn the ball over a lot in transition. Players need to stop dribbling on the break & pass. It is a lot easier to defend the drible in transition than it is the pass.