ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Wizards 12/9/2006

Yao had hot hand that night,if Yao had hot hand every night,I say,yes,he'd score 35 points every game.I mean how you defend a guy whose much taller than you when he shoot fadeaways?

 

Illegal defense. Veteran centers know better about how and when to illegally defend Yao.

 

In your post, you keep saying that two facts may diminish Yao's feat:

1. Washington lost two centers. I don't buy this logic. Yes, Washington lost two centers. But because of what? Because they tried to defend Yao. If I remember correctly, one center collided with Yao and injured the leg and the other tried to defend Yao's strong move and twisted his ankle. It is Yao who caused the loss of Washington's two centers and dominated the left ones. If Wizards came into the game with only two centers, I agree with you. But that is not true. Washington used all their centers but still get dominated.

2. Washington is not a good defending team. I really don't know how to answer this. Following your logic, any team's winning over Washington and any player's dominating performance against Washington should be discounted because Washington is not a good defensive team. Isn't that a little bit funny? Don't forget, dominating means not only offense but also defense. It is a overall performance measure. Washington is pretty good at home. They only lost 2 before the game with Rockets at home, and there are only 2 teams lost less home games (Which two? Utah and Huston ). Defeating Wizards at Washington is not that easy. "Washington is not a good defending team" should not be a valid argument to diminish Yao's or Houston's feat.

 

and oucho cinco will be open

 

It just felt good seeing Yao control the game. Ive seen Yao have great games statsticly but this game felt like he was in complete control... thats dominating ESPN biatches

 

My previous comment with regard to Yao's production and impact on the game was solely based on my observation by watching the entire game. No conspiracy theory was involved, but thanks for playing.

Take, for instance, Yao's "least productive" quarter, the 3rd quarter, where Yao registered only 2 points on 1-2 shooting, 1 rebound, and 2 assists on the stats sheet:

The Wizards opened the quarter with a 3-point from Arenas to increase their 1-point half-time lead on the Rockets to 4. [Rockets 51-55]

On the ensuing possession, Yao drew double teams in the low post, found an unguarded Chuck Hayes under the basket, and delivered a perfect pass to Hayes who duly scored a deuce with an easy layup. [Rockets 53-55]

Arenas made two FTs after being fouled by Alston. [Rockets 53-57]

Yao passed out the double-team to a wild open Alston outside the top of the key. Alston sanked a 3. [Rockets 56-57]

Arenas missed a jumper. Hayes grabbed the rebound. Score remained unchanged but Rockets got the possession.

After some scrambling involving a jump ball at the Rockets' half court, Yao powered his way into the paint and scored a 2-pointer. From this point on, the Rockets almost never looked back for the remaining 2nd half (other than the brief moment where the Wizards scored 4 points on a technical and shooting foul on Juwan in the 4th quarter) after they played nearly entire 2nd quarter trailing the home team. [Rockets 58-57]

Battier blocked Jamison's shot at the other end, Hayes rebounded, Alston received the ball and sped up acrossed the half court. Seeing Alston coming fast, Yao quickly sealed his man Thomas behind his back while also drawing attention of another defender, leaving a clear path to the post for Alston, who scored on an uncontested layup. [Rockets 60-57]

Butler made a shot on assist from Arenas. [Rockets 60-59]

TMac missed a jumper and possesion went to the other way. After two misses by the Wizards, Yao got the defensive rebound. Again drawing double team, Yao kicked it out to an open Alston. Seeing a Yao help defender coming back at him, Alston swung the ball to the left where Battier was all by himself. A three by Battier. Rockets ahead 63-59. Wizards head coach saw enough and called a timeout.

TMac took it from there in the remaining of the 3rd quarter to keep the Rockets in the lead. But it was Yao that had a hand in every one of those Rockets' FGs in the beginning that shifted the momentum of the game in Rockets' favor. The stats sheet won't tell the whole story.

Sure you don't have to care, but when it comes to objective analysis, your dismissive attitude and nitpicking only show how spurious your argument really is and the kind of mindless drivel your posts have become lately.

Whether Yao could have scored 23 points (on 6-6 shooting and 11-12 from the line) against the top tandum of Thomas and Haywood in the 4th quarter is anybody's guess, just like whether Yao can score 23 again in the 4th with the likes of Lang and Booth defending him in a future game. It's about as relevant as the question if a completely healthy and offensively powerful TMac can again score 13 in the last 35 seconds against the scrambling defense of the Spurs. Both were phenomenal performance by a dominant player who had hot hands at the right moments.

Several factors contributed to Yao's personal success in the 4th quarter, including an unexpectedly extended break between the 3rd and the 4th quarter, tight whistles by the officials on the illegal defenses thrown at Yao by the Wizards, and his teammates' help on the offensive end -- espcially Luther Head's killing 3-pointers and Juwan's timely 15-foot jumper -- which in certain degree kept defense honest and in turn boosted Yao's own confidence. To single out one uneventful occurrence as the deciding factor is naive at best, misleading and disgenuous at worst. But I am not really surprised to see it coming from you.

Huh, what kind of bullcrap is that? Do you really need to assume Yao and the Rockets didn't purposely injure players from opposing team?

I am not sure what's so fortunate about playing against 3rd and 4rd [sic] string centers. If anything, these "scrubs," who by the way are still NBA-calibre players, were super-motivated, had nothing to lose, and might possibly outperformed their starting counterparts in many stretches by denying entry passes to Yao and playing even more physical on him, with constant frontings and double-teaming.

Note JVG said he thought Booth did a good job. Also, how about acknowledging the physical toll taking on Yao who had to battle multiple fresh legged x-string (where x = 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4rd [sic]...) centers from the Wizards?

Oxymoron?

Maybe, maybe no.

Well, the best playmaker, who left with 6 minutes to play in the game, was pretty much a non-factor in the 4th quarter. So this is again a moot point.

How about you walking me through it?

 

That's ture if one on one agaist him.

 

Nice try dear durvasa, just purely intelligent analysis from a cool head, but,
sh... don't speak too loud cause if Yao hears this,it will be such a confidence-boost-spoiler.

 

I love Yao and Head!!

 

All these talks/analysis by these party spoilers are just so annoying. Remember, paralysis by analysis.

These talks of Yao Ming only erupted and dominated AFTER Thomas and Hayden injured out were just ridiculous, and completely negated the fighting spirit, energy, passion and the champion heart of Yao Ming.

As he said it after the game, TMAC was injured.....and he had to step up for his team in order to win.

It is not the first time that when the chips were down, Yao Ming would step up and delivered. He did it in 2004 Olympics and 2006 World Championship when his team (i.e. the national team) was about to be eliminated out of the preliminaries.

There is no reason WHY people, except maybe YOHs, continue to doubt this.

 

OK. Yao sucks..happy?

 

durvasa is what he is, and he likes to analyze. he's not putting yao down at all, he's just saying that there were very big factors that helped yao with his monster 4th quarter. to say that thomas and haywood being out did not change anything would be complete nonsense. just ask yao ming, he himself said that he knows things were made easier for him with those two out.

 

Well, by the same logic, TMAC sidelined due to his back spasms in the middle of 4Q should also have made the life of Arenas & Company easier. They could just swarm and shutdown Yao Ming by 2 or 3 or 4 players, if both Lang and Booth proved ineffective.

What I am saying is that by saying Yao Ming only erupted and dominated due to Thomas and Haywood injured out was to completely negate the fighting spirit, energy, passion, and leadership of Yao Ming, who stepped up when his team needed him.

 

yao lit it up in the 4th b/c of the light problem at the arena...extra rest

 

Actually if you looked at the 4th quarter, some of the shots Yao took were really tough shots. So I think it has less to do with who guards him. He just got it rolling on the 4th quarter, and by that time nobody can stop him. It helps that his confidence was higher than usual due to him knowing that he is not facing any worthy center.

 

That's true. Except no one said that.

 

You think that 5 minutes break REALLY made the difference ???

Man....it was the 4th game in 5 nights (??) for the Rockets. IMHO, that extra breather did not REALLY make the difference.

What REALLY matters as Yao Ming disclosed afterwards was a small note that Jeff Van Gundy sticked to his seat on the team bus when they departed from Charlotte. Jeff Van Gundy reminded Yao Ming that he never had a dominating performance on back-to-backs. Spurred on by the untimely injury of TMAC, he felt he needed to dominate and lead his team when TMAC was not on the court, and that he would not disappoint Jeff Van Gundy.....

 

Won't work. Otherwise people will be doing it already and analysts will be out of a job.

Even in a "normal operating year," there are still significant changes in day to day operations to not warrant the changes in stock prices to the good earnings announcement.

Similarly, many things can affect how Yao does in a game. Did he shoot more jumpers instead of layups. Did he have a fight with his girlfriend. How did the refs call the games, etc, none of which can be separately identifiable.

And the only way you can do an event study is by separately identifying them.

For example, you hold everything else the same (including playing in the 4th quarter, with a 15 minute breather, etc), and put Lang/Booth on Yao. If he scores 10 points. You say OK, interesting. Then you hold everything else the same again, and do it again and see how he does, which may not be 10 points. Eventually you do it enough and if he scores 10 points each time, then you gain some confidence to draw a conclusion.

And even then, it is only CONFIDENCE, NOT CERTAINTY, due to the inherent induction nature (instead of deduction) of statistics.

That's what you need to do an event study, which obviously CAN'T BE DONE.

Predicting basketball may very well not be more predictable than the market. Put simply, people simply don't appreciate the inherent difficulties of drawing conclusions from statistics.

On contrary, the test existing has EVERYTHING to do with your argument.

Haywood is better than Lang? You won't find an argument from me. How much better though? 23 points better? If Haywood or Thomas was in the game instead of Lang/Booth under the circumstances that occurred, how many points would Yao score? 5? 10? 15?

Once again, incremental analysis, which you have not done.

Katherine Schipper, former president of the American Accounting Association (AAA), former editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics, current board member of the FASB: "Event study is dead."

Yeah that's right, it was a direct quote. You may argue that it's her opinion and it's wrong, but the numbers certainly seem to back that opinion.

We've see that the plethora of event studies in the 60's and 70's all but fall off the face of the earth in the 80's. And not much credense is given to the few handful of minor remaining ones for good reasons.

Actually I did. That's why I'm wondering why you said what you said. Like you pointed out, this is the "game analysis" thread. So I am looking for analysis from you.

OK, Yao is gonna have great quarters against weak competition. Sometimes he'll do even better than expected.

Know what that is? That's a tautology. It has to be true. It's just like me pointing out Yao's first NBA game. "Boy, he stunk." That's also a tautology because it has to be true.

Alternatively, I could say, "Yao CAN score 30 points in a quarter." However unlikely that may be, that is also a tautology, because it has to be true. It is always theoretically possible.

So I'm wondering why you just made the above statement, which seems to be without purposes, especially according to yourself, you are trying to do game analysis.

 

MFW, that's a very good post.

Nowadays, people tend to use more and more "statistics" to win arguments, both in D & D and GARM. But intentionally or lacking of knowledge, such applications often failed to honor statistics itself, in terms of sample size, reasonable premise, proper critical reasoning. Most data in discussion are valid, however the intepretation and especially the data picked out of thousand more available ones are highly subjective.

The most telling example would be, the emphasis of the "benefit" of injury at the opponents' center position, but ignoring of TMac's sudden injury at the same time. Trying to draw conclusion from an obvious one-sided "observation", is a very dishonest or incompetent way for any "analysis" or "study", to say the least.

 

Made some edits here.

There are an inifinite number of things you can examine. But only a finite set of variables have significance over a large sample. That's why, in science, you construct models. You abstract. You make assumptions. Progress wouldn't be made in any scientific domain if scientists thought they had to incorporate every little detail into their models.

Sure. Statistics are inherently probabilistic. Did I ever say anything to the contrary? By this argument, you could say that Yao may not actually be a good player. All his stats so far have been a fluke. Does that mean we shouldn't pay any attention to any statistics?

But I'm not doing an "event study". This is a topic you brought up, unnecessarily. Do you bring the "eveny studies don't work" argument up every time someone looks at situations that occurred in a game that might have had an impact on the result? Is every coaching decision invalidated because "event studies don't work"?

Perhaps. But this has nothing to do with the Thomas/Haywood discussion (I didn't draw any conclusions from statistics), so I'm wondering why you brought it up. I didn't look at Yao's numbers during the game and conclude that Boothe/Lang are easier to score on. His numbers happen to support that notion. But Yao should be expected to score against them more easily, regardless of what the actual game stats were.

Exactly. I haven't done it -- didn't even attempt to quantify it. Do I really need to?

And how do those numbers in any way invalidate my statement that Thomas/Haywood's absence in the fourth quarter probably hurt the Wizards.

You're arguing against event studies. Ok, I don't know what "numbers" you're talking about, but in any case they have nothing to do with what I'm saying in this thread.

Great. As I know nothing about the event studies you refer to, their methodology, the conclusions people were drawing, etc. this has zero signficance to me.

What "analysis" do you expect? You expect me to put a number on how much more likely Yao would score against Lang/Boothe than Thomas/Haywood? Any such number, firstly, would have such a huge %error that it would be pointless to even bring up. Secondly, I don't have the time/resources/desire to investigate it in depth.

Do you disagree that Yao would likely have an easier time against Lang/Boothe? If you do, just say so. Otherwise, there's no disagreement and this "event studies are dead" stuff is just a waste of our time.

What above statement? "Yao is gonna have great quarters against weak competition. Sometimes he'll do even better than expected." is not a statement I made, though it's obviously true as you say.

I'm not trying to do "game analysis" at a rigorous, quantitative level. Don't know where you got that idea. I said (paraphrasing) playing against Lang/Boothe probably made it easier for Yao to dominate than playing agianst Thomas/Haywood. I didn't intend for it to be really insightful comment, I thought it was rather obvious. Later I read that JVG and Yao both said that the centers being gone had an impact.

What else is there to say?