PER and WS don't tell the while story either. And the stats in the first post aren't intended to be interpreted as player ratings.
Smith was beyond terrible. Omer would get points via offensive rebounds or rolls. Smith rarely provided either. Smith was terrible defensively as well. Not boxing out and just horrible rotations and awareness. Smith better spend the entire offseason watching tape and becoming a better team defender. I do like the kid but he has a long ways to go before becoming a consistent rotational player.
T Jones did well in game 3. Why did we bring in Smith anyway? I hate to be one of those "i posted about this weeks ago" posters (but I am), but I said in a thread a while ago that the Rockets should prioritize getting a veteran, defensive-minded backup center EVEN if it does cost - God forbid - more than the minimum. Had we had a guy like Dalembert as backup center instead of Smith, I believe we win this series.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying we should have kept Dalembert. I just think signing a player like him this summer would make a huge impact.
I know most will look at Lin's +/- but this is great data to show that we were better off using Jones instead of Smith. Really disappointing for McHale to not play Jones after how productive he was at the end of the regular season. Even more disappointing considering how awful Smith was in Game 1
Delfino's and Brooks numbers surprise me. I did not think Delfino was that bad, or that Brooks was that good. However, Smith's numbers look right to me. I remember when he was substituted in for Asik, OKC immediately went on an 11-0 run in 2 minutes! After I saw that, I cringed whenever he went into the game. The main culprit in my eyes was all the weak fouling he was doing, leading to and-1s. He also didn't do a great job boxing out. We definitely need an upgrade in the center rotation.
Confirms what I was watching. I felt completely uneasy when smith or lin were in the game. Surprising that Durant' s + is so low but Garcia did sort of shut him down.
Smith and Lin basically killed any rhythm we ever had every time they stepped on the floor. Lin took care of killing the offense and Smith took care of killing the defense. Asik couldn't come off the floor for a second because of how bad Smith was.
I know they wanted Smith's size on the floor, but I wish they had gone with Jones over Smith. Also wish they had let AB play more minutes. He played well and gave us another person on the floor who could create his own shot and create shots for others.
That can happen in one or two instances, yes, but if +/- is averaged out throughout the whole series, not just one game, it's usually a pretty good indicator. Anyway, like others have said, I'm not surprised at these numbers at all.
I think the Jones-Smith discrepancy is a little skewed due to Jones playing so few minutes. Put him out there longer and his numbers likely look just as bad as Smith's or close to it. Anyway, nice thread. Some fool 1-star rated it, but I think we all know the reason for this.
I think when using +/- numbers, large sample size is a must. As that was determined with not only who you are playing together with, it also has something to do with who you are playing against. If a whole season's sample is used, since you are against 29 teams, and that variation pretty much average out, and suppose you are also playing with various rotations, thus with large enough sample size, it is a nice indication about how one individual player on the floor is contributing to the team. However, in playoff, first of all, it is only against one team, and from game to game, both team are adjusting their line ups, and strategy, thus the sample size is not only small, but also biased. Thus in this situation, +/- number could be very miss leading. In this example, game 1 Rocket got blown out, not only due to Westbrook was still healthy in that game, but also Rocket's line up was pretty bad. And it is not surprising Smith got the lowest number, since he is the starting PF in that game, and he played major minutes in that game within this series. It is just the match up was not great, and he did not get much minutes in later games, thus he did not really got chance to play in a line up that match OKC well since we go small. Jeremy, out of his 70 min, other than 13 min he played in Gm6, maybe 20 min in Gm3 when he is really injured, pretty much all his healthy minutes were against Westbrook, plus with a bad line up in Gm1 when Rocket have not adjusted yet. He was not healthy thus did not play in Gm3,4,5, when Rocket find a way to counter OKC, and OKC has yet find a way to adjust. They changed in Gm6, and too bad Rocket run out of time to counter it back. And Beverley, he is good of course, but his +/- is also inflated with playing together with Harden and Asik most of the time. I'm not saying +/- is a bad status indicator, just that using this for playoff series (only one series), it is really biased and misleading. Even it goes well with eye test, since all those background information is so easily missed or ignored.
