You don't fix what isn't broken. The first two games we were playing really well and the ball was moving well. Harden was unstoppable, Lin was getting his share too. Don't know why McHale and Sampson changed things to make Harden the primary ball handler. Harden can play well off of Lin. Lin however is a very poor spot up shooter and can't be asked to play shooting guard. It is really simple.
To be honest, those numbers could be just from defense keying in on the Harden-Lin combo. But it is partially true that Lin's lowered usage rate reflects an unnecessary change to what had been working. The Lin-brings-ball-up-hands-ball-to-Harden method is a terrible concept.
Ha, thanks! I did tweet it to Morey so hopefully he sees it too. I got a feeling there is a disconnect between Morey's statistics staff with the coaching team because it shouldn't take 5-6 games to realize that the offense stagnated when Harden played PG. They shouldn't force him to be a PG. Just look at how easy he scored when he gets the ball from Lin.
I haven't read the entire thread, but add me to the list of fans wondering why Jeremy Lin wasn't playing in the OT. I thought it was bizarre. Toney Douglas in crunch time? What has he done here to earn it? Why not play the fellow you went out of your way to grab from the Knicks for exactly these kinds of situations? A head scratcher, for sure.
No, I'm saying Sampson could have gone, "guys needed to step up, we'll have a lot to work on tomorrow at practice." I'm saying that he should have addressed specific and targeted critique internally. I'm saying it's a whole different thing when you're talking in public versus amongst your team. I basically feel like Royce White is unprofessional for the same reason; yes, he has valid points and communication and honesty is key, but it needs to be targeted communication instead of passively delivered on twitter. If Sampson is honestly trying to critique his players, that should be directed AT the players themselves; even though Sampson's words are honest, I don't feel they would inspire confidence from the players playing under him. This is just common team-building and management practices and doesn't apply to just basketball.
Actually I did think that what they did the first two games were unsustainable, they practically weren't involving their teammates and that had to change; Harden and Lin can't be playing 40+ minutes over 82 games, they'll wear out. Plus 2 versus 5 will lose in the long run, Harden needed to build chemistry with his teammates. I think they over-corrected, however. Harden's usage is about 30% and Lin's 16% during his worst games, during Lin's better games he has closer to 20% and I don't think that's happenstance. Lowry and Dragic's usage numbers with the Rocket's hovered around 20~21%. Ideally, I think Harden's usage should be around 21% as well, maybe 25% given that he's the most experienced, and then the rest are touches spread around the rest.
ask Sampson , and you know what , he said he thought Douglas did well. and i honestly think he actually mean it. that's how clueless he is to me now
No problem It did take me some time but hopefully it helps Rockets win some more games by going back to what worked well in Game 1-2. Thanks for reading the whole thing. My whole approach is to use statistics to validate what we can see with our eyes (i.e. offense feel 'forced' with Harden-iso and both struggled) and see why the opposite is true (i.e. offense is free-flowing when Lin played PG and Harden got easy shots).
Given that, can you add in the usage stats for Game 9? (dunno if you can just to reg game instead of OT?) Or otherwise continue to track this as the Rockets play more games?
Everyone is somewhat biased, including myself; therefore, I try to judge actions by the result and action itself, instead of perceived or self-claimed "intentions". Whether it's second-guessed by observers, or proclaimed by himself, we can never verify one's "intention". Sampson sat Jeremy Lin, the starting PG of Rockets, for the entire overtime against Blazers, in favor of TD. Ironically, that was the game struggling Lin actually played quite well, both offensively and defensively. The reason given by Sampson was that TD might have been a better defensive match up. In other words, he relied the OT on TD's defense against Lilard and Harden's ISO offense. On the end, TD switched the first two possessions against Lillard, who scored against Parsons on both occasions. So there was no defense from TD against Lillard. Harden's ISO offense failed as well, as a matter of fact, there was no offense at all in the OT from Rockets, running by TD or Harden. Obviously, Sampson's bet in OT failed on both offense and defense. He was completely wrong. There really isn't need to argue why he made the wrong decision and continued the wrong judgement for the full five minutes, because nobody can prove anything. Hopefully Sampson can learn from his mistakes and show us something different against LA.
That's a great idea! We can do a simple chart to track the Usage Rate numbers. I saw his Usage Rate number is about 17 including the OT so it must be higher w/o including OT. I'll look into it.
The first 2 games are `Let`s see what happen`. Everyone do their role. PG played as PG and SG played as SG. Team basket ball won. After 2 games, Star is born. 4x in 1st game, 5x in 2nd game. Play set is completed. Just let Star handle all the score and will eventually get over 100. PG please hand the ball to the STAR and hide at the corner and do not waste any scoring opportunity passing the ball to other players.
That seems to be the standard reserved for Lin. If he's "on the court" and the other PG scores, it doesn't matter whether Lin is guarding him, it's Lin's fault.
I finally got caught up with this thread. I have to give a shout out to torocan, novaman and flyingbeagles. I handed out more reps than just these 3 but these 3 really impressed me. Torocan, can I be the president of your fan club please? :grin: I'll register the Fans of Torocan name if you say yes.
Well said! Alas, the Rox had no wind in their sails against LA... But seriously, how can you blame them? Losing 2 games in which they had a promising lead in the past week, and the latest one in SUCH a demotivating fashion...
