In a preseason game... without Duncan and Parker... with Ginobili barely playing... and with a few players seeing time that won't likely make the roster or see the court when the regular season starts. Not much to read into that statistic.
No, but we had some of our young guys playing too....our D will be more perimeter oriented this year, designed to allow for jump shots, and stop penetration. It will be a challenge but I think we will still be near the top because our guys are committed to defense. DD
That is not quite apparent. The impression conveyed in the essay is that they have these two systems - SCHOENE and NBAPET, and that each has its merits -- the implication is that there is merit to the NBAPET projection. Basically what it says is that "yes SCHOENE says 37 wins, but based on our other projection system these guys could also win 52 games. They took ownership of it, they didn't shoot it down. I expected them to explain why NBAPET would suggest that the Rockets could lead the league in defense. Sans that explanation, NBAPET is complete nonsense and they shouldn't have even brought it up to begin with, let alone take ownership of it. I said "unlikely". And yes, you and I are in complete agreement that the Rockets won't rank 1st in defense -- they could crack the top 10 with their overachieving ways, but 1st place not going to happen -- which is why I feel like my intelligence is being insulted with the NBAPET projection. SCHOENE is pessimistic but not at all unrealistic, and if that's their official prediction, I have no qualms with it. My opinion here is that unless they can offer a better explanation of what NBAPET is doing, that system is complete trash and their decision to feature it in their essay reflects badly on their analysis as a whole.
"What will be worth noting about the Rockets’ defense this season is to what degree, if any, Yao’s and Mutombo’s presence inflated the individual defensive metrics of the players around them. " I think this is the big difference. The NBAPET probably has a hard time estimating how much Yao kept people from the paint versus how much Shane kept people form the paint.
If and when McGrady returns, our starting backcourt could be Brooks and McGrady. That could be the worst defensive backcourt in the league. Lowry is awesome but he won't be out there all game. And despite this hype about playing Brooks and Lowry together, I think we'll quickly learn that it won't work very often. Lowry will either start getting into foul trouble early playing overly aggressive against bigger players or he will simply be overmatched despite his amazing ability to play bigger than his size. In the frontcourt, Scola and Landry are both defensive sieves. You can highlight their positive defensive attributes all you want because they do have some but, overall, neither has proven to be a good defender. Andersen should get eaten alive by average bigs. Most importantly, Yao is out. I think his absence in the middle will expose other players. I think we will all come to realize how much his big body in the middle deterred opposing offenses. Guys like Hayes and Battier our terrific but I think they'll struggle without Yao anchoring things in the paint. If this is our starting lineup at some point: Brooks, McGrady, Battier or Ariza, Scola, Hayes... we may be in more trouble defensively than we realize. At three positions we will be very weak (PG, SG, PF) and even though Chuck is a defensive stud, he's still a situational player because of how much size he gives up in certain matchups. That means that on certain nights, the only position in our starting lineup where we are likely to be above average defensively is at SF. This argument about how we are going to become perimeter-oriented this season in our defensive schemes doesn't sit well with me. With the current rules, perimeter players have a huge advantage over their defenders. This places a premium on big men that can cut off penetration and alter shots. We don't have a big man that can consistently do both of those things. Therefore, I see guys like Battier and even Hayes (who will be playing more minutes in unfavorable situations without Yao in the lineup) being exposed for their limitations.
That can't be so hard to do. The Rockets were an elite defensive team when Yao was on the court (101.4 ppp) and rather poor defensively when he wasn't (108.1). That is a big gap. I have faith in Chuck's ability to fill those shoes, but I don't think he can make up for that. If NBAPET thinks Chuck can, then maybe that is a plausible explanation. I surely hope it doesn't think that David Andersen will be the one to fill them.
I disagree with the "very weak". Scola, McGrady, and Brooks have not been proven to be very weak. Scola is pretty decent man to man against PFs. McGrady has may not be a great defensive player, but he usually does an okay job on the 2nd best offensive wing player. Brooks has liabilities against bigger PGs, but the fears of his defensive inadequacies have been overblown in my opinion. The Rockets defense has been predicated on two important pillars: 1) Don't foul. 2) Don't give up 3pt attempts. While McGrady and Brooks may give up a lot of marginally contested 2 pt jump shots than a lot of players, that is better than giving up FTs or open threes. Without having a force inside, it will be more difficult for the Rockets to foul as little as they have and to contest as many 3 pointers as they have. On a side note, I would really like to see McGrady get traded for a shotblocker and a scorer.
Agreed that with Battier + Ariza out there our perimeter D can be good, and despite his slightness in size Brooks has fared better defensively than I would have thought just watching him on the court. But believe me, watch the individual performances of guys like Budinger and Andersen on defense. If they have any significant role in our rotation, then our defense will be BAD when they are in.
That is a huge gap. I don't expect the Rockets to be the top defensive team. I expect they'll do okay depending on who/how they play. I think the without Yao stat is probably skewed by garbage time stats, but think we should expect a decent drop. While McGrady doesn't play, I expect the Rockets defense will be pretty good as I think Brooks and Scola are average defenders with Chuck, Ariza, and Hayes as good defenders.
I figured some people would say that Scola is a good defender. I think his rebounding and help defense are solid but I've seen him get burned in man-to-man situations quite a bit. He also gets shot over with relative ease. He's more defensively aware than Landry but I still have very little confidence in him when it comes to man-to-man defense. He seems to get walked around all too often. As far as the pillars you list as the basis of our defense, I think you missed the most important one: Yao Ming clogging up the middle and altering shots. (I know you mentioned Yao but you didn't list his presence as a pillar.) I think those other pillars you listed will prove to be relatively small ones once we see the impact of losing the big pillar. As far as McGrady, my concern isn't that he will give up marginally contested jumpshots. He's actually pretty tough to shoot over. My concern is he will get beaten off the dribble with relative ease and will not give a consistent effort on help defense. He'll always make a couple of great individual defensive plays over the course of a game because in the end, he has the capacity to be a very good defender. The problem is he only gives full effort about 2% of the time. Whether that is an issue of mind or body or both, I do not know. This has been an issue long before his latest injuries so I don't expect much change even if he completes his latest comeback. In Brooks' case, I still see him regularly losing focus on defense. It's not just an issue of giving up size. Unlike Lowry, or even Alston, he seems to quickly lose track of his man. I can see us getting beat on the weak side quite a bit when Brooks gets caught watching the ball. Despite his size, he could become a passable defender a la a Darrell Armstrong if he worked extremely hard and paid attention to detail at that end. So far, I haven't seen that though. Watch him relative to the guy he is defending if he plays tonight. More often than not, he gets caught staring at the ball and has to relocate his man and recover late. If he doesn't fix this issue, he will get exploited for reasons beyond being small.
The Rockets didn't have many garbage time minutes last season -- certainly not nearly as many as the previous season in which they routinely blew out inferior teams particularly during the winning streak. It's pretty difficult to discount Yao's impact there. That said, I do agree that they should at least be above average defensively. I think Ariza still has some progressing to do defensively and there is a possibility that there will be some initial dropoff there compared to what Artest gave them last season, but he certainly has all the tools to become much better and already has much better lateral movement and turnover-forcing capability than Artest had. If they can learn to put up points efficiently as a team, they should be able to put together a winning season. Making the playoffs will be difficult simply because of the strength of the field -- the Thunder are an example of a team that could make it even more difficult for them to crack a playoff spot. If McGrady returns and somehow regains his 2007-08 form, then there's really not much telling what this team can do. That team did some special things and while they had Mutombo in there blocking shots, they certainly weren't as talented from top to bottom as this team is.
JeopardE, it may not be apparent from the 4 page sample, but SCHOENE is the primary featured projection system of the book. They describe it in detail at the beginning, and at the end when they list their preseason W-L predictions, its based on SCHOENE. NBAPET is mentioned sporadically through the book as a counterpoint to SCHOENE in the team previews. Generally, at the player-level the projections match up, but in some cases there are stark differences in how they predict team performance. The Rockets are one example. The writer does present some particulars on the Rockets defense that suggests why there is such disagreement between SCHOENE and NBAPET. He considers Ariza an upgrade over Ariza that will improve the perimeter defense (according to NBAPET-driven "skill ratings", Ariza is a +4 on defense while Artest was a +0). Later, he writes: "What will be worth noting about the Rockets’ defense this season is to what degree, if any, Yao’s and Mutombo’s presence inflated the individual defensive metrics of the players around them." Evidently, SCHOENE attaches much more defensive value to those players than NBAPET. It is perhaps a fair criticism that he did not delve more deeply into why NBAPET attaches less importance to the loss. NBAPET's team defensive rating projection look to be derived from individual box score matchups (e.g. how well did Player X limit the offensive production of his counterpart). This is explained in an early chapter in the book ("Statistical Toolbox"). One particular flaw that Brad Doolittle may not have taken into account in this projection is that David Andersen was given a +5 defensive rating. How that was derived for a player with zero NBA experience, I have no clue. In any event, relying exclusively on matchup data to assess the defensive value of a center doesn't make much sense to me. I think SCHOENE's approach, which takes into account team context, makes much more sense. At the same time, I consider its prediction that we drop all the way to 18th in defensive efficiency overly pessimistic. So, frankly, I don't have a problem with Doolittle mentioning NBAPET as a counterpoint to SCHOENE's projection. The most likely outcome defensively falls somewhere in between, I'd say. You made a remark earlier that the disjointed presentation was a weakness of the preview. I actually somewhat disagree with that. A good overall analysis of a team will be disjoint to an extent, because otherwise its making assumption on how all the data should fit together even though no one really knows that. So, personally, I prefer some separation in the actual discussion and specific projections cited. Present the relevant information, give a projection or two based on systems for piecing together that information, and then let the reader form his/her own conclusions. These projection systems are not authoritative and necessarily make simplifying assumptions. That doesn't make them trash by any means, but its reason enough not to spend four pages focused on justifying their predictions.
Just on Scola - I might be wrong here, but weren't there some positive stats on the Hayes/ Scola defensive combination? I think we'll sorely miss a "presence" inside - considering that's been the foundation of our defence in the past few seasons, I was highly surprised that we didn't make a play for one in the off-season.
Well, it's better than Landry/Scola. But its not nearly as good as the Yao/Hayes combo, generally speaking.
I should have also mentioned not giving up easy shots at the basket as a pillar of the defense. Basically, deny great scoring opportunities. Scola and Brooks make bad plays. There are a lot possessions in a game. The NBA isn't like the NFL where missing gap responsibility once leads to a 61 yd TD run and accounts for 25% of the offense in a game. Scola does a good job on average denying high percentage shots, doesn't bail out his man often, and Yao wasn't picking up many fouls from his man either. While Brooks may lose his man a lot, he gets back quick. He isn't Alston or Lowry on defense, but I haven't seen a game yet where his defense was a liability.
I think 52 wins is waaay to optimistic with this roster in the WC. 32 seems more accurate........prove me wrong fellas.
