Sitting at the game (UNREAL) and watching the fourth, during the whole quarter a friend of mine and I were counting how many passes the Rockets made on each offensive possession (after crossing halfcourt -- i.e. outlet passes don't count). For the last 12 minutes of regulation and all 15 minutes of overtime, the Rockets did not even once pass the ball more than two times before shooting!! They didn't even attempt, much less complete, a third pass. I'm not sure what this means, but, as you might expect with the high percentage of isos and pick-and-rolls, the offense is likely to be highly streaky and dependent on individual performances (such as taylor, mobley and norris tonight). By the way, for those of you who weren't at the game, Moochie's play to start the third OT was SICK! He was literally all the way up against the boards behind all the seats behind the basket before he ran back into the corner for the money ball. ------------------
I saw that! I saw him sprinting to the court, then catch and shoot. Amazing! ------------------ Behad Sergeant at Arms of the Clutch BBS
3 Passes? Why 3 Passes? Two is plenty to get the ball to any open man!= JR, how many passes did the Pacers make. Stats like these mean little in a vacuum of your own reality. You must look at the rest of the league. Everyone goes to ISOs. Passing without purpose is worse than dribbling the clock down. All it achieves is allowing the defense to dictate which pass they want to be the last one, forcing that player to shoot. Passing without purpose is definitely worse than pretty much anything you can name. This is not junior high where the coach must say, "pass 3 times before shooting". You must first protect the ball in the 4th Q of the NBA. Next time you look at cool stats like these (and it is cool, keep it up), count both sides of the court to make is relative to something. Also, when you see the offense is likely to be streaky on ISOs and pnr's (tell that to Stockton), I can definitely attest to complicated motion is likely to get disrupted and bogged-down in the 4th. We may not like pnr's and ISO, but pretty much every coach in the league does it at crunch time for a reason, and it isn't about individual performances or the quality of the NBA going down...it is about forcing doubles as a means to initiate the ball movement that you want. 4th Q defenses are pretty stellar, and so are playoff defenses. Watch those passes!
what the hell are you talking about. Passing the ball to the open man is much more effective than dribbling the ball for 10 seconds or more and hoping that someone fouls you when you drive to the basket. And speaking of which, does any team take longer than the Rockets to bring the ball up the court. Yeah, I know that you have ten seconds to cross the half-court time, but there is no rule that you have to use all ten seconds to do so.
Negative stat of the night (I'm entitled, I find positives in defeat, I'll find a negative in a win): Mobley 29 shots - ZERO assists. Impressive team statistic of the night - As crummy as the Rockets played most of the 2nd half (regulation), they only had 13 turnovers for the entire game. ------------------
It's not like i'm advocating a Gene Hackman offense. I'm just saying it really surprised me last night. I did look at the Pacers and they did pass the ball 3 times on several occasions, often getting open looks off of them, but it is true that as the game got tighter, their offensive sets more and more resembled the Rockets' sets. If your reread my post HP I'm not bashing the Rockets' offense. I'm simply trying to come up with an explanation for how a team can go 6 1/2 minutes without anything and then score nearly every time down after that. The complete lack of passing in the 4th was probably caused in part by the absence of a spot-up shooter (bull, walt) who typically gets the ball on the weak side after two or three passes around the top (or one over it). One other thing that was pretty amazing, but not a stat, was the defense the Rockets played down the stretch. Mobley in particular played some great D, and so did Francis and of course Shandon. So did Cato and Mooch actually. But there's no way the Rockets shut down the Pacers in the 4th with the Wizard out there. Not to be unsportsmanlike or anything but I hope his hand keeps him out until November. ------------------
Get on topic Tod. We are talking about the merits of a stat that counts passes. Motion offenses need more than 24 seconds. The problem with Motion is if one of your five guys can't shoot and is a bad passer (Cato), the defense will overplay the passing lanes on everyone else, and by the rules of Motion, that means you must pass to Cato. Think of the Run n Gun football offense where Pittsburgh just overplayed everything so that Givens had to take a 5 yard slant into the helmet of the middle linebacker, by the rules of the run n gun he had to run into the helmet. Pittsburgh turned it into the Run n Cover offense. hehe, I just made that up...pat myself on the back. Motion is not the same as Ball Movement offenses. We have a ball movement offense that is triggered by double teams. Motion was invented by Bobby Knight to beat zones with slow shooters who he could teach to pass and pick, instinctively. Trust me on that one. Ball Movement was championed by John Wooden to crush you with superior talent that demanded double teams. Tex Winters also based the Triangle on the need for exploiting superior talent. All the best Bulls plays required no more than 2 passes. Hell, if you can't Flex in two passes you are screwed, and if you make more than two passes, you are likely completely resetting because the defense stopped Option 1 and the Flex option as well.
