By the Numbers: A brief statistical year in review.

I was bored today, so for fun (and a little grief at the same time), I went through our team's splits and statistics for various players, from various sources. I'll point out some significant ones here. I'm not going to go ultra in-depth, and I'm not going to go over each player the same way, but if anyone wants to add a more comprehensive analysis, be my guest.

Let me preface this by saying that I have watched about 74 or so games this year, though I was often busy with something else, so I haven't really gotten a consistent, direct view of the trends on the team.

Month-by-month win-loss totals:

Oct: 0-1
Nov: 9-5
Dec: 8-7
Jan: 8-7
Feb: 5-8
Mar: 8-8
Apr: 3-3 (to date)

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For players, we'll start with Yao Ming. He's been a focus all season, so I'm going to focus on him here. His stats are interesting. (I'm going to leave out everyone's October numbers for obvious reasons.)

He plays approximately equally well on the road and at home, except for blocks, which suffer on the road.

His most telling stat is most likely his FG%. Since the end of December, he's been a sub-.500 shooter. I was honestly a bit surprised at this.

Nov: 67.5%
Dec: 52.4%
Jan: 44.6%
Feb: 50.3%
Mar: 47.7%
Apr: 42.6%

Yao's FT% suffers from a similar amount of fluctuation, between 70%-90%.

His Blocks and Rebounds have also tailed off since December as well, with a significant decline in blocks.

Blocks per Game:

Nov: 1.36
Dec: 2.73
Jan: 1.87
Feb: 1.46
Mar: 1.69
Apr: 0.83

Rebounds per Game:

Nov: 5.3
Dec: 10.2
Jan: 8.9
Feb: 8.8
Mar: 8.1
Apr: 7.8

Defensive rebounds were fairly consistent. Offensive rebounds dropped sharply from December->January and February->March.

Personal Fouls were consistent, assists didn't have significant enough variation at such low numbers, and turnovers didn't look that important.

I'm going to estimate touches per game and give minutes per game here, since it's a hot topic. Not sure how accurate my formula will be but it should be within reason.

Nov: 15.1 20.4
Dec: 27.4 33.0
Jan: 22.3 28.9
Feb: 27.5 35.5
Mar: 24.2 29.5
Apr: 23.5 28.2

There is a direct correlation here with minutes played, as should be expected.

Yao, like most rookies, has definitely suffered from an up-and-down year, but it looks like he never quite got back his form from December.

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Now we move on to Francis. His numbers were very interesting to me. His season is basically a tale of two halves: pre- and post- All Star break.

His numbers don't change much month-by-month (except for turnovers, which climbed steadily until the break)in these two halves, but his best all-around month was probably November, the Rocket's best month record-wise.

PPG 23.4 REB 6.9 AST 6.3 TO 3.7

His worst month by far, like just about every Rocket on the team, is April. Not sure if Larry Smith's handling of the players has much to do with this, or just fatigue catching up from playing an overload of minutes this year.

PPG 15.2 REB 6.2 AST 4.7 TO 3.5

Now for pre- and post- splits, significant differences only, and assists, which surprised me.

Pre-ASB
FGA 17.3 3PA 2.8 3P% 39.8 FTA 8.1 STL 1.60 TO 4.2 REB 5.9 AST 6.1 PPG 22.7

Post-ASB
FGA 14.7 3PA 3.4 3P% 30.5 FTA 6.2 STL 1.94 TO 2.9 REB 6.5 AST 6.1 PPG 18.6

From what I can tell, most of the adjustment occured from Francis not driving to the basket as often, settling for outside shots. This cut down on his TOs, and although he focused on getting his teammates the ball more, without penetration, the opportunities just weren't there to raise his assist total. Not sure what's going on with the 3P%; he may just be a better shooter off the dribble.

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Cuttino Mobley: He's remained fairly consistent, except for his three-point shooting (I blasted him on this earlier this year) which he has raised significantly after December. Also, since the All-Star break, he's seen the ball less often in the offense, as his FGA, FTA, and Assists all went down. He too is suffering from a terrible April.

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Eddie Griffin: Griffin's also been consistent this year, for better or for worse. So I'll compare his numbers stat-by-stat this year to last year to see if indeed, there was any improvement.

Minutes Per Game: His minutes actually suffered a decline by a minute and a half per game. He's the one who gets the least minutes out of the starting five.

FGA and FG%: While his attempts remained about the same, he actually raised his FG% by about 4%, and if he maintains his percentage for the last three games, he will finish above the 40% FG mark.

3PA and 3P%: He's dropped his number of attempts by about 30%. So he has been hanging out at the three-point line less. He's actually raised his accuracy slightly, and is on par with Cuttino Mobley's accuracy. He's been very good since the All-Star Break, shooting 37% since then.

FTA and FT%: He's suffered most significantly here, dropping 12%. Not sure what happened here.

Steals: Eddie is much more active, stealing three times as many balls as last year.

Blocks: Suffered a decline of about 30%, not too surprising with Yao in the middle anchoring the zone.

Assists and Turnovers: Both went up slightly; he's passing more.

Rebounds: Slight increase this year, both offensive- and defensive-wise.

PPG: The same.

So, while Eddie had his minutes slightly decreased, his numbers for the most part slightly increased. While not particularly encouraging, his numbers show that he has been playing inside more. His FT% is probably the biggest area of concern; if he's going to play inside, he needs to hit a decent percentage.

He's drawn comparisons to Antoine Walker. While this is probably a good baseline for projecting what Eddie might be offensively if given starter's minutes (Eddie's a slightly better shooter, but %s tend to decline when given more and more attempts and minutes), Eddie appears to be a better rebounder, is certainly a better shotblocker, but his passing game is deficient compared to 'Toine.

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Unfortunately, this took up more time than I thought it would, and I'm going to have to stop the analysis here for now. If anyone wants to pick it up, feel free to run with it. I'll see if I can add the other players later today or tomorrow if there's interest.

One thing looks certain, though: adjustments were made after the All-Star Break that just didn't work out to the team's benefit.