Here's some facts. Rockets vs Blazers last season: HOU 4-0 regular season sweep. If last year's team plays Portland this year, we still advance. Again, all about the matchups. Anyone who understands how playoff basketball works understands this critical concept.
SIZE=7]FUNNY...BUT WRONG. I'd like to think that all the non players contributed. That includes Mcgrady, Hakeem, Charles, Steve Francis, and all of us ***** talking fans [/SIZE]
I remind you that we are talking about Tmac. But I don't really mind. By quoting the above fact, you ignored another self-evident fact: Blazers becomes much much maturer this year. Data tells the truth: 2007-08 Blazers ends with (41-41), and it ranked the 14th of 30 on the offense end, while it ranked 17th of 30 on the defense end. For this season http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2009.html Check it out yourself and tell me what you find.
Again, matchups. That Portland team got better this year, but their main components didn't change. Their team still revolves around Roy and Aldridge. Just look at some of the boxscores in these games with those two dominating the points stats. Reminiscent of T-Mac and Yao in our 40 point loss in Game 7 vs the Mavericks. As long as we have guys that can contain Roy and Aldridge, we will always matchup well with them.
i was about to post something sarcastic and ironic like this, and after reading all your posts..... Sighhhhhhhhhhhhh, he is still one of the rockets
This statement shows you don't shyt about the game. If Yao and you have Tmac, Portland is going to destroy inside without Yao dumb ass...where do you get that idea. Roy will have an easy day attacking the basket. Did you know much Yao change the way Portland play in every damm possession?? Portland basically can't do shyt when Yao is guarding inside ...so all they did was shoot from outside. If we don't have Yao, Portland is going to score much easier inside. And Tmac with his inconsistency is going to destroy this team as well. Wake the **** up and start analyzing the game before you make this kind of statement.
MATCHUP, exactly. That's why it is always tough to play with JAZZ. I used the data of the last 26 games in the regular season, when our roster finally stabilized, to do a seperate calculation for ORtg, DRtg and Pace. What I found is that this Rockets is in its best shape in the last 10 years, by which I mean we are more balanced, with better offense (around 9th of 30) and TOP defense (4th of 30). And Usg% tells us that we are playing team ball now. Also I did some research on Tmac's performance (excluding this year). The conclusion is that his contribution is mainly on the offensive end while he do harm to our defense during his stay in Houston. There is indeed something positive: his performance on defensive end gradually improved, but that is not enough. The above conclusion is totally drawn from data, without any emotional factor. Let me give something personal here: even if Tmac is willing to play team ball, there is still a long way to go. Just look at Allen Iverson in Denver, you know what I am talking about. Given that nobody knows what will happen this summer, this is our best chance. So let's enjoy this Rockets.
hey just out of interest can you show us the data and what you used? It seems you did a indepth analysis that might give us some good discussion specifically those last 26 games
Nothing special, as I mentioned above, ORtg, DRtg and Pace Sure, here is the details: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pnOAnancFJFzieOju7DGHLA Also if you are interested in Tmac's impact on our defensive end, the material on 82games is very interesting. The most interesting part I thought is the following on/off stats: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pnOAnancFJFx7j578Yp5pHA I only conside players playing more than 500 (I don't remember the exact nember) minutes each season . Blue means that player played a significant amount of time, and the percentage equals Minutes Played/ Team Minutes Played. Red means the player did harm to the team, while green is the good color. Before reading it, please note the following: First, starters usually have better performance. That is simply because starting lineups are stronger. If a starter gets red, you know there is a big problem. Second, a newcomer usually has bad performance, because he is not familiar with the former system. On the other hand, if he does has that familiarity, like Ron Artest or Bobby Jackson, haha Third, when you change the coach or the system changed significantly, e.g. 04-05 season, you guess what will happen. The reasoning is similar to the second one. I should have posted it as a seperate thread, but I cannot.
And on the last play of the game, it was Tmac's assignment on Roy too. Lazy Defense. And when we played the Lakers with Tmac at the beginning of the year we got DESTROYED.
