I’m getting the feeling that six players are going to be getting a lot minutes: Harden, Howard, Parsons, Lin, Beverly (close to starters’ minutes with what is often a three-man rotation) and Asik (both as a backup center and, depending on the matchup, half of a twin towers). Meanwhile, Garcia will get moderate level minutes as the backup three and, depending on the matchup, as the backup 2. With some twin towers and some small ball with Parsons at the four, that might leave only an average of 35 minutes or so to divide between D-Mo, Jones, Casspi, and Smith. Plenty of teams have won with one position being played by committee, but I know there are good arguments against going with a committee (including building chemistry and building trade value). In last night’s game I was pleasantly surprised by D-Mo’s passing (which I knew was good but thought looked even better than I remember) and his defensive rotations (which were horrible a year ago). Casspi’s shooting explosion off the bench was also nice. And I liked T Jones’ intensity level. But I think all of them and Smith have weaknesses that are unlikely to be resolved this season, so I doubt one emerges above the rest. My guess is that we are going to see 4 by committee all season, with probably three players sharing those 35 minutes or so and one riding the pine or being traded. What do y’all think? (BTW I am of course expecting some blowouts this season, which will skew the minute numbers for the committee upward. When I said 35 minutes to split between them, I meant: excluding fourth quarter blowout minutes.)
Howard, Camby, Asik, DMo, Jones, Smith, that's 6 pure PFs/centers. Not to include ~3 other players who can play 4 in a small lineup. 6 big guys is too much, I'd imagine trade coming as soon as possible, sending away probably two of those 6.
Casspi probably will be our end of game 5th player. I think he needs to play a good amount with our regular starters in pre-season. I do not advise starting him at the 4, though, I rather us start D-Mo or Tjones.
DMo seems to have good team awareness where he will do his role and nothing else, leaving the other 4 starters to do their job. He will probably start the games but I don't know who will finish them.
Last night Casspi played every single one of his minutes at PF. In the brief glimpses we've gotten of their training camp footage, Casspi has been the PF next to Howard each time. So far, as a Rocket, we have only seen Casspi at the PF spot. Which amazes me even more how many times I still get told that Casspi can't play PF. When Dwight Howard is on your team, I'm pretty sure I can even play PF.
I am not that worried about the PF situation. The one spot that should see a up in production should be the PG position. Points, assists and steals should go up and Turnovers hopefully down.
I have a new thread ready to go that may impact this discussion. Basically the conclusion is that there are 5-6 shots available to the power forward position when playing with the starters. No more, unless of course you are willing to rip shots away from the (probable) starters Harden, Howard, Lin and Parsons. Why reallocate shots from those players to the much less productive power forward position? I feel sure that the Rockets have done the same analysis only in much greater detail.
You can really tell from just one pre-season game. I want to see what the team can do against Indiana Now that will be challenging
Very interesting. Looking forward to it. Just from watching last nights game, I already saw how its incredibly important that whoever starts alongside Howard actually NOT take away from Howard/Harden/Parsons/Lin, but COMPLEMENTS them and most importantly.... is a very good passer & solid team defender. Lin & Parsons hardly got shots as it is. So throwing a superstar PF out with the starting lineup... would they really even look like a superstar PF playing alongside all these great players??? Anyways, its a GREAT problem to have, and looking forward to your post.
Thank you dobro. You do know that I value your opinion highly. I am just waiting until Monday to proofread it before I hit the submit button. The current footnotes to the post: (1) One might leap to the conclusion that more FGA per game is a good thing. Actually the exact opposite occurs. Only 1 out of the top 9 teams in FGA per game made it to the playoffs. The bottom 4 FGA per game teams made it to the playoffs, led by the Heat with only 77.2. I will leave the why up to the readers. (2) (2) This leads to the interesting conundrum that, with the addition of Howard, I expect the Rockets total shots per game to drop next season. (3) LMA is really good at the worst shot in basketball, the mid-ranged shot. From beyond the rim LMA averaged 0.25 points per shot less than the Rockets team from beyond the arc. This is one of the most basic tenants of advanced stats, and Morey has made it his mission to drive mid-ranged jump shots as low as possible. So you truly hit the nail on the head. There are not enough shots to go around to even think of allowing the PF slot to become an offensive force. You actually end up weakening the team if you add serious talent at the PF spot.
