David West: 'Stop letting nerds tell you how to play basketball....'

So in the regular season everyone is all hyped that the Rockets are beating the Warriors and this is the year.... Then the playoffs come and lose and now everyone has excuses....

PURE BS!!! The warriors keep making adjustments and the Rockets make none.... Playoffs are about team ball and not about 1 on 1.

Warriors had no Boogey.. No KD.. but the other players stepped up and they were involved in the game...

Stop making so many excuses everytime this team loses and stop making excuses for Harden... If winning the championship was easy, everyone would have a ring... As I stated before and I will state again..

The Rockets have made change after change every year except for 2 things..

1. James Harden
2. This stupid Analytical ONLY offense...

You keep doing what you're doing, you will continue to get what you get...

T_Man

 

Exactly. The 2, far and away, biggest reasons we continue to come so close to beating a team we have no business beating.

Good point.

 

is he making excuses? doesn't look like it.

he told you the rockets have gotten closer to GS than any other team since lbj. that's a fact not an excuse.

 

so you're saying that the % on wide open mid range is lower and % on guarded (of any kind) layups/inside shots is higher. I can believe that definitely.
How would you change the following ranking in terms of best shot, assuming say a solid SF type player.

1. Open layup dunks
2. Open threes
3. Contested layup and dunks
4. Open mid range
5. Contested threes
6. Contested mid range

??

 

But it is also excruciating pain to know you can only come so close because you lack the one thing or two little things to defeat them.

At least if you have no business beating them, 2 wins against them as the Clippers did, would feel more invigorating.

 

I think I would sandwich open midrange between lightly contested 3s and contested 3s.

 

I'm pretty much in agreement, here. I think the value of a midrange shot comes down to who is taking the shot and the quality of the shot. If a player can consistently nail an open midrange jumper, then a team should work to get that player that shot.

Anyway, nearly every team incorporates analytics, these days. And no one complains about analytics with respect to the Warriors, who have been on the cutting edge of employing data science and were early adopters of analytics through their organization. It doesn't help that Morey's high profile has made him the face of analytics, but, really, I think, the Warriors should be the poster team for the movement. When it comes to the stats, it just boils down to the model a team employs, what they are measuring, and how the numbers are employed. For instance, the Warriors use the number 300 as their magic marker. It is the target number of passes the team is expected to meet each game. They use the analytics to enforce their style that emphasizes using passes and player movement to create open shots. Their analytics guru is Sammy Gelfland. There is nice profile on him in the NYTimes.

 

So is the objective to get close or win.....

Maybe this new era of looking at things is totally different...

T_Man

 

the objective is get as close as possible and obviously get over the hurdle and win.

what exactly has anyone else done to get any closer than houston? oh that's right nothing. they're still all trying to catch up as stated before

 

David West: “I was really bad at math growing up. Never been much for worrying about strategy either.”

 

This is the epitome of loser mentality, and its always funny to see how the same posters tip the scales after they've been vomiting out cherry picked stats to proclaim harden is the best offensive player in NBA history etc. With Durant and Boogie out, the warriors aren't that much more talent heavy. In fact , they are actually at a disadvantage if you compare the benches. The reason they are able to get good production out of the players they play is the constant movement in their system.

You can't simultaneously assert that 1.) this system is the best, when the drop off of known talented players is evident (yes CP and capela didn't play well, but our system had a lot to do with it), that Harden is as talented as you say he is but along with the cast he has not, can't beat Curry, Thompson, Geen et al. If you are going to do that, you'd have to acknowledge that Curry is in a tier above him. That can be your "talent disparity"

This is what NO company wants in business models. Its defensive and yields moral victories only. "Well ,we could have beaten them but they had x, y, z". "We almost beat them last year." It hinders progress ignores glaring issues that are pretty evident to everybody not wearing homer glasses. The rockets can't keep doing what they're doing.

Its to be content with "almost wins"

 

so with all that said, apparently there's another model out there that the rockets should follow then. Please let us know when that team exists and shows they are the model group to beat this team as much as houston has

it's extremely easy to say stop doing this, it doesn't work. when you provide no reasonable solution it means nothing

 

Loser mentality?

Because I don’t want to change what clearly works and I’d rather focus on the things that would actually help us win? .....Better players

So Paul getting older and Draymond bending Clint over and going in dry was a system thing?

Right.

I have never and will never claim Harden is the best offensive player ever.

Just because you are unable to see that they still had a sizable talent advantage doesn’t mean that they didn’t.

No GM. Not one would take our roster over theirs, even minus Durant. Curry is in Harden’s same tier. Some would argue better, some worse. Klay or Green would have been far and away our 2nd best player. And they have both. Looney outplayed Clint.

 

Then we have met our goal...

T_Man

 

So how long does it take to get over the hurdle??? We've been at it for 5 plus years...

So how do we get over the hurdle if we keep approaching it the same way? I dunno maybe try a different tacit.. Different approach... Different something....

Again, who cares about the other teams... This discussion is about the Rockets and not any other teams..

If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you get...

T_Man

 

yeah they've been at it for years so what. did they plan on kd joining GS? and yet they still have done what they've done.

apparently you do something completely different even though what you've been doing, has gotten you much closer than anyone else. Yeah you know what the rockets are going to try? that's getting another significant player here. if they strike out, that doesn't mean they're not trying to do something different.

who cares about other teams? of course you would say that because it doesn't help your narrow minded approach. try to stop b****ing for one second and widen that perspective of yours just a bit.

 

Right back at ya...

But the reality of it is... Everyone on this board will be having the same discussion next year, if there are no changes with the culture and the style...

T_Man

 

that made no sense.

also the reality is, no **** sherlock

you know what also is reality, GS will still be the team to beat

 

**** YEAH !

Laying down the truth !

DD

 

I’ve read through the whole analytics system, and while I’m honestly way too lazy to go back and look at every single detail, the open mid range is in fact a horrible shot. They say this because you can shoot that shot, and if you shoot that 100 times versus shooting a contested 3 100 times, the contested 3 still yields more points per possession than the open mid range. Basically the whole mid range argument is if you can shoot a jump shot, you can step back a couple extra feet and get a 3. I don’t disagree. I think lazy people want to associate MDA’s iso system with Morey ball, but when Morey ball is run efficiently and correctly, it’s a fabulous system. We just have to do more than just iso every possession. Like other ppl have said, there have been more talented teams that have fallen way shorter than we have. Our analytics have taken the warriors team further than anyone else ever has outside of LBJ’s stacked Cleveland teams