Rebounding Stats: Who outboards Mo?????

Yeah yeah, how many of those guys draw more offensive fouls than Mo?

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

miles is only getting 18 minutes or less? thats not helping develop his potential

 

I should just keep my mouth shut, but

The "Mo can't rebound" horse is dead.

We upgraded the PF position by adding Mo. Without Mo we'd have KT, Los, and maybe Bull at the 4. With Mo, we have Mo, KT and Los at the 4. Mo, KT and Los is better than KT and Los. Particularly after our backup center gets hurt.

We upgraded the 4 more than any other position during the offseason. (Collier and Langhi etc etc)

I miss Charles too. My first year with season tickets was last year. I enjoyed nothing more than seeing Barkley pull down offensive boards. I loved shouting "CHARLES!" every time he grabbed one. I was heartbroken when he went down. I feel very lucky to have shouted "CHARLES!" at all Barkely's home games last year.

Even so, I'm not complaining about Mo. Everyone here agrees that he can't board, that he's not as good we'd hoped, that we probly shouldn't resign him. All true. We had the greatest power forward in history last year. Mo can't measure up to that.

We upgraded the 4 more than any other position during the offseason.

 

Hopefully Mo will eventually come around. The good news is we only signed hime to a one year contract. If he sucks, oh well.

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*** Number 1 rebounding team in the Western Conference? L.A.Clippers

*** Number 2 rebounding team in the Western Conference? Golden State

*** Numbers 10 thru 14?
10 Portland
11 Minnesota
12 Dallas
13 Utah
14 Houston

*** Top FG% teams in Western Conference?
1 Utah
2 L.A. Lakers
3 Portland
4 Minnesota
5 Sacramento
6 San Antonio
7 Dallas

*** Rockets in Top 50 FG%?
20 Hakeem Olajuwon .481
30 Steve Francis .466
43 Maurice Taylor .456

There's more to winning basketball games than than rebounding. A LOT more.

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GATER

 

SmeggySmog, you replied to GATeR. Why not reply to me?

 

"More importantly are we really better at the 4 spot?"

How could we possibly NOT be better? Of course we're better at the 4. We added a player. He starts and plays 27 minutes. You'd rather have last year's PF rotation?!?

Perhaps we could have better upgraded the 4. Perhaps we should have signed a different player. At the time, I thought Mo was the best PF available to the Rockets. I thought there was some consensus around the league that Mo was a desirable PF. Maybe that was all Falk hype. Even so, how could we have done better? Should we have signed Pig for $2M?
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I miss Charles.

 

SSmeg -
We didn't hire Mo to rebound.

The point is that having the most rebounds (team or individual) is a small aspect of the total picture.

The Mo/rebounding bashing is getting old, tiring and monotonous. What's a rebound really worth? Go back and look at the games the Rockets lost:

Minn > Rebs: Rocks +1 / FG%: Minn +3.0

LAC (#1 in the WC) > Rebs: LAC +14 / FG% LAC +10.0

PHX > Rebs: Rocks +8 / FG%: PHX +2.8

PORT1 > Rebs: POR +23 / FG%: POR +13.2

LAL1 > Rebs: LAL +9 / FG% LAL +3.4

BOS > Rebs: BOS +13 / FG%: BOS 13.1

SAC > Rocks +10 / FG%: Kings +5.3

PORT2 > Rebs: POR +6 / FG%: POR +.7

In 3 losses, they had more bounds but shot worse. In 3 of the 9 wins, the Rockets had fewer boards and but a higher FG%.

FG% is more important. And Mo shoots well.



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GATER

 

To do a complete test of the correlation between one stat and winning games would be a somewhat complex statistical endeavour, as certainly there are many correlations between field goal percentage, rebounds, and other facets of the game.

Maybe, for example, the other teams had better field goal percentages against us because in the majority of the games we lost they also outrebounded us.

Regardless, Smeg is just making a point that our PF is a pathetic rebounder. I happen to agree. I also feel that he is not much of an improvement over last year. I can not say, for example, how his scoring in the 1st quarter may have mentally affected Shandon Anderson's game, and thus, actually hurt us in the long-run. In any case, I think we can all agree that FG% is actually not this teams problem. We have other good FG% players in Francis, Dream, Mobley, and others. Bullard shots threes aat consistently high percentages for example. Rebounding, however, is definitely our weak point, especially in the front court where it needs to be improved upon. Beyond that, Mo is not a very good position player, and plays bad defense. Im not saying he was a bad aquisition, cause he came cheap and for a short period of time, Im just questioning his role on the team presently and whether or not it should be diminished.

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Remember.... You are not really drunk until you must hold on to the grass to keep from falling off the earth.

 

JayZ -

1) Absolutely agree that the "stats" formula would be complicated. IMHO, the rebounding part would not be that significant. That's why I used the Clips & Warriors as examples.

2) Mo takes a terrific bashing in this BBS. It's like a fixation when there is so much more to talk about. I think the amount bashing is disproportionate to reality. Mo played Rasheed well and had only 1 less reb in 5 fewer minutes. Mo forced Kemp (the man Portland got to answer Shaq) into a perimeter game. Kemp was unable to postup Mo!Not a positive word anywhere. Back to the same old tired bashing.

3) Rarely is the HORRIBLE TO/assist ratio of Cat and Steve brought up. For our complex formula, we need to factor this in as well. They are at the bottom of the league for guards.

4) For the complex formula, I propose that we add in a Mobley ISO factor. How does one rebound a Mobley ISO when the other team lines the weakside lane?

5) Lets's add a "playing another position" factor. Mo spends a lot of time playing the 5. This is due to Cato and Collier being injured, Dream getting into playing shape, and Rudy's partiality to the 3 guard offense with KT & Mo at forward.

6) The Rockets shoot ALOT of 3's and only rank 7th in the conference in %. I propose this as a factor for the formula. Rebounding 3's is NOT an exact science. (Incidentally, the Rockets are dead last in defending the 3 - I guess this is Mo's fault as well).

7) Bull is NOT shooting well. Walt is. Walt is getting a handful of shots. Mo bashing takes precedence over Walt not getting shots.

So what's my point? Just that the negativity is old and the bashing is not in ratio to other "faults" displayed by the Rockets. If Mo was a rebounding monster, how much better would our record be? Especially since the corelation to rebs & wins is not that strong for this team.

Sorry for the long post. The negativity is wearing down my patience.

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GATER

 

Great points GATER.

I wonder how many "our point guard gets no assists" threads the Bulls' discussion boards had from '91-'98.

 

Those are solid points-

When you go back and look at it though, I think every player on this team has taken a lot of bashing so far, the 4 most being Mo, Shandon, Francis, and Cat.

Mo takes the most bashing though because not only can he not rebound well, he cant defend well and is always in fould trouble.

While Francis, Shandon, and Mobley have their problems, they tend to make up for some of them in other areas of the game.

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Remember.... You are not really drunk until you must hold on to the grass to keep from falling off the earth.

 

We already have a guy that stands around and waits for a pass so he can jack it up (Bullard) Why bring in another player that does the same thing?

The Rockets need an aggressive rebounder who plays D and can score when asked to. Mo was not brought in to be the focal point of the offense. Oh sure, his FG% is good, woop-de-doo. He stands outside while Francis or Mobley penetrate, drawing Mo's defender, leaving him wide open. He damn well better have a good FG%.

Every rebound we get, means less shots for the opponent. Think about that.



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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

Well we all can quit complaining about the lack of rebounding at the 4 on Dec. 16th when Cato comes back and Hakeem slides to the PF spot, assuming Rudy goes back to the rotation he used for the first few games.

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Five to one baby, one and five...no one here gets, out alive.

 

Actually, there are ten teams that shoot at or more threes than the Rockets do. And nine of them out-rebound us. Rebounding threes might not be an exact science, but do not attribute shooting threes to poor rebounding. We are after all 25th. This might not be Mo's fault, but he must take part of the blame.

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Little O