A fair analysis on Rockets' up and down after Yao's injury

Queeni, very good opening post. But I think the recent struggles can be blamed more on lack of energy on defense. Part of it is Juwan & Deke slowing down but the other players are guilty too. If we get our defensive intensity back, we will start winning again. Uglyball only works when you stop people.

Another factor is with Yao hanging around, the team is distracted. This is understandable.

 

Rockets really need to hire a offense assistant coach.Can we steal a assistant coach from the Suns?

 

Why? What has he done that makes him more of a "championship caliber" coach than JVG? Sure he led him teams to winning seasons but he never got it done in the Playoffs. IMO, Adleman wouldn't be able to keep us winning without Yao like JVG did. Adleman won't make us the best defensive team. Everyone knows that our key to success heavily depends on our defense

 

See, I think the key to success is in balance, not on one side of the ball.

And, Adelman has a better resume than JVG, he has coached defensive teams and offensive teams.

But you are right, there is no way to quantify whether or not Adelman would be able to hold the ship together ala JVG....but there is no way to say he wouldn't be able to do it either.

IMHO, it is really all about the players and specifically Tmac and Yao. The overall problem is that we don't have a fiery on court leader....and we need one.

DD

 

This shows what our offensive and defensive efficiency has been over the course of the season (looking at "last 5 games"):



Nothing surprising here. Our offense has tapered, and our defense has gotten steadily worse during this month.

See here for our team's game logs. Note the drop down menu in the upper right.

 

I agree with you, but their is allot of people who think that we should start winning instantly. I do think that our bench players should have had more playing time during the games instead of just in trash time. Not a bunch of minutes but a few.
Deke J. Howard need to cut down to about 12 minutes a game to rest, even if it means losing some games. It might make a few more wins when playoff times come.

 

Offensive Efficiency is points scored per offensive possession. Defensive Efficiency is points allowed per defensive possession. So, increasing defensive efficiency is actually bad. I estimate possessions with the following formula, which is pretty accurate:

poss = fga + 0.4*fta + to - 1.07*(orb%)*(fga - fgm)

Formula is from basketball-reference.com, if you're wondering.

Each dot corresponds to a game (actually, a game and the previous four games; it's a 5-game moving average). I labeled every other game on the X-axis so it wouldn't be so cluttered -- that's why there are more dots than labels.

 

Adelman for Rocket's "Offensive Coordinator" posisition????!!!!???? I like it. Does he have a good history of working with PG's like Kubiak with QB's?

 

I don't think we can put our inability to deal with double teams entirely on JVG. This team was built to surround two creators (Yao and T-Mac) with a group of role players. Only problem is, very few of the role players have the ability to consistently create offense. Going down the list:

Rafer is a good ballhandler, but terribly innefficient at anything but spot up threes.

J-ho is solid, but needs someone to spring him for that midrange jumper, and tends to be a little bit of a black hole in the post (rarely creates offense for others like yao and t-mac do)

Battier is also more of a spot up shooter. Everybody loves battier, but hes a cog in the machine, not the engine that makes it tick...that's why management sold him as a "win now" player to fill in around Yao and T-Mac, not a potential individual star.

Chucky--pretty much the same story (though he did have a sexy little baby hook last night....)

Deke--same as chuck and battier, only older (though i wonder who would win a game of horse between deke and chuckie)

Luther--bangs open 3's with alacrity, but may be the worst passer at a gaurd position in my recent memory, has a midrange game that by and large clanks in the night, and can't really handle the ball. Won't create a lot of open looks for people.

Snyder--big cutter/ finisher, plays great d, but not a good shooter, ballhandler, and passer.

Why does this matter? late in the game, when teams lock down t-mac, we need to create offense from somewhere else, somebody else needs to initiate, and force the defense to adjust, which creates the open looks that our players are so capable of knocking down. Without this, we'll lose no matter how brilliant T-mac is, whatever coach we have, period. Example: Iverson's career with the Sixers. Another example: Kg's career in minny. Or how about the lakers when odom is out, T-mac in orlando, the list goes on--its really, REALLY hard to win with just one star, or one offensive initiator, and a bunch of role players...correct me if im wrong, but historically, no one has gotten far with this model of team, and we have honestly been very, very lucky to win as many games as we have without yao.

Now im sure people have noticed that i made a couple of omissions when listing players. There are two guys i think could serve the role of a second playmaker while yao is out:

Bonz: Bonz has skills, but is still a deeply flawed player. sometimes it seems like he cant really dribble. He's not a drive and dish perimiter passer, and he's not tall enough to pass over people out of the post like yao does. he can't really create like we need someone to late in the game.

Vspan: i am an unabashed v-span lover, but he still is a total spaz. He turns the ball over a fair amount, gets lost on defense, and his 3 point shooting makes Rafer Alston look like Reggie Miller. However, he IS a good passer, good slasher, and certainly can create something from nothing. he's got a lot of potential, but really isn't quite ready yet (though i beleive he should play more, and will be a good pro).

So you might say: "What do we do!???!! fire JVG!! Sign Scottie pippen!!! trade T-mac!!!" no. shut up. what we do is wait for Yao to get back, and thank our lucky stars that JVG is a good enough coach to guide a gang of role players to the record he has.

pardon my rant...

 

Dude, as an unabashed VSpan lover you sure know how to express your love.

Do you know that VSpan has NOT turned the ball over once for more than a month? In fact, in the last 12 games he's played (since 12/14/2007), he had only 3 turnovers in a total of 49 minutes of playing time.

People who keep screaming about VSpan's turnover problem and blowing it out of proportion are not being honest with themselves.

 

I was going to post the same thing.....it may be time for another....What turnover problem thread....

DD

 

This has been ongoing since Sura went down. Even though McGrady can score a lot, one could argue that Sura could put his "will" on a game more regularly than McGrady can. If only Sura's attitude and energy could be transferred to the whole team... they might still lose due to mistakes, but the other team would sure know they had been in a game.

Yao "seemed" to be developing a fire before he got hurt, but now he'll have to get confidence that his knee/leg is OK before resuming the journey to "fire". And that can only come from playing with no reprocussions -- same as McGrady's back.

 

its not like i was "screaming" or "blowing it out of proportion", i said he turns the ball over a fair amount. I wasn't aware of these recent stats, thanks for bringing them up, they certainly give me heart. still, most of those minutes came in garbage time where defense is lax, not late game where defense is exteremely tight and execution is critical, and still, his A/T ratio is a far from "Problem free" (.9/.8.)
That, and he's currently shooting 20.8%, i repeat, 20.8 percent from three point land and 33 percent from the field. As someone who would play the 1 or 2 gaurd position and get the shots in the offense that luther or rafer otherwise would, thats pretty much unacceptable. Like i said, i like the guy, and i think he could be practiaclly impossible to gaurd going to the basket, and i think he could (and should) be an important part of the franchises future. My only point was that everyone who thinks playing V-span is the immeadate cure to our problems now is REALLY not being honest with themselves. Not to say it wouldn't help--i think it would--but as long as yao is out, this team is likely to struggle. my two cents.

 

In his last 12 games (49 minutes), Spanoulis's per-40 minute stats are 13.9 points, 6.5 assists, and 2.5 turnovers. Not bad, until you look at his scoring efficiency -- 39.5 TS%. Yuck. And if you think we shouldn't pay much attention to the scoring efficiency because he's playing meaningless minutes and the sample size is so low, then let's also not pay any attention to his turnovers being reduced.

 

I second that. Also, I would like to add that Adelman is a coach who will utilize all of the assets on the bench. He once had a 10-12 man rotation with the Sacramento Kings. He would replace all five of his starters and replace them with the second unit to end quarters. if I recall right he's been to the finals once with the trailblazers led by clyde drexler but was defeated by the Jordan led Bulls. Also had successive Western Conference Playoff appearances with the Kings including that strong showing against the Kobe and Shaq lakers. In that year they were the only team that really gave the lakers a run for their money.

I've read fans talking about acquiring Reggie Miller and talking him out of retirement . In my opinion, the guy we should try to talk out of retirement is Jon Barry. We could really use his energy but the question of course is if he still has some mojo left in him?

 

He certainly has much to learn and prove, shooting included. But to dismiss his improvement on turnovers (BTW 8 of those, or 40%, are from 2 games when the final outcomes were certain) is simply wrong. Twelve games account for nearly half of the total number of games he's been allowed to play in his rookie season thus far, not quite a small sample size.