Defense vs Offense, JVG vs Adelman (with facts for once)

No, it's been mentioned, and it allows us to maintain some hope that he could be successful.

 

I don't even see how FG% indicates how a team "controls tempo," or how points per possession can't account for your ability to "control tempo" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

Points per possession isn't some wacko stat pulled out of nowhere and unrelated to anything else. It essentially is FG%, with consideration for turnovers, rebounding, 3pt shots, and FTs.

It's how well a team scores on each one of its possessions (and the inverse, how well the other team scores on each possession), with a team's total possessions being more or less equal to those of all its opponents (in its games) over the season. By the end of a season, you've played every other team, the fast ones and the slow ones, so how well you do against teams of different speeds is reflected in your efficiency rating.

 

Yes, efficiency is better, because it accounts for the pace of the game. You still don't explain how ppg is better.

It's shallow because it does not account for game pace. Points in a slow game mean more than the same amount of points in a fast game. If you beat a team by 6 points in an extremely slow ass game, that means more than if you beat a team 126-120.

Combining a team's points per possession with its points per possession allowed gives you the same benefits as your praised "point differential," only it takes the analysis a step further.

 

As an extreme and simplified example (for illustrative purposes), assume the following two games are played (not according to regulation rules and shot clock):

Game 1
The two teams do everything to drag out the game, Team A completely shuts Team B down and wins 10 to 4.

Game 2
The two teams run up and down the court, Team C beats Team D 36 to 30.

The raw point differential is the same, but Team A a full 2.5 times as much as its opponent, while Team C only outperformed its opponent by 1.2 times.

The same principles would apply in a real NBA game with shotclock, because teams still play at different speeds.

 

About which teams made the playoffs, I can say the same thing about points per possession.

Team rankings with varioius stats, including expected win %

As you can see, only one team failed to make the playoffs (Clippers) while having a top 16 expected win %.

 

Point differential is the best correlation with winning. This has been proven. But this is not very helpful in terms of analysis because it is just saying scoring more points than the opponents means winning.

The point of this thread is about comparing the importances of offense and defense in terms of winning championship. Point differential doesn't separate the offensive side from the defensive side.

But when you separate the O from the D, PPG is the wrong stat because it doesn't account for pace. That's why efficiency, while not perfect, is the best you can do to measure a team's overall quality in offense and defense separately.

 

Thinking about things and looking at the numbers more, I may have been going a bit far when I said point differential was "shallow." The pace of many teams do not differ that much (for many, it's about a single possession). Still, using offensive and defensive efficiencies gives a slightly better picture, and if you can improve your analysis even by a little bit, why shouldn't you? I just don't like seeing people dismissing efficiency because they don't understand it.

 

However, I still stand by the position that using ppg on one side of the court (to measure either offensive or defensive performance) is pretty bad.

 

Yes I did.

In who's record book?

Points DO incorporate the pace of the game, efficiency does not, in fact, that is exactly what it's adjusting for. Again, we're more concerned with who wins games, and points is the final arbiter.

Why muck up PD by adjusting for 'per possession'? If you have a point differential in a game, you win. Nice and clean.

 

By "account," I mean "remove it as a factor and adjust the numbers so that all teams can be evaluated on an even playing field." By removing pace factor, points per possession can show how effective teams actually are every time they get the ball, without the numbers being skewed by different paces.

So because YOU don't want to put in small bit of extra effort to calculate points per possession (not a hard thing for many people, even easier with things like Excel), point differential is supposed to be better? A metric should be evaluated on its validity, not by how easy it is to calculate.

 

The purpose of this thread was to analyze whether JVG or Adelman was a stronger coach for our team using only off and def efficiency as a basis for a team's strength. Those are helpful, but should in no way be the sole basis for analysis because it does not represent certain aspects of the game.

 

And which parts of the game are those? Are you trying to argue in favor of ppg or FG% (some of the alternatives proposed in this thread) which leave out MORE?

 

adelman is the better coach. why? he teaches both sides of the ball.

there's a reason why JVG always sucks on offense? when we give up 80 pts and lose => blames defense. how is THAT possible? it seems like he ALWAYS blames the defense when we lose. it's NEVER the offense's fault. even when it is, it's not as big as the defense.

case in point => blamed our D after games 1 and 2 in the playoffs.

when u constantly blame ur D and never think that badly our the offense and always thinks if u "make" shots, ur good to go. no. offense is more than making shots. it's about where u take those shots and how u take those shots. JVG does not think about those things.

adelman will be pissed off when we score 80-85 pts. but he'll also be pissed if we give up 100pts.

his kings team got better defensively as they played more. but the offense also got better as they played more.

JVG's teams never see that improvement offensively in ALL of his yrs.

JVG is a good guy, and he's good to coach teams to OVERACHIEVE (knicks team, rox team w/ injuries), but he's not good to coach this team when we're healthy with 2 stars.

 

The comparisons are apples to oranges. I doubt many would say that the rockets or knicks were more talented than the Blazers or Kings and neither of those teams won titles either. Maybe they lost to more talented teams, but considering they themselves were more talented I would consider that a wash to the Rockets teams that also lost to superior teams. Let's face it, Utah was a better team. Not that we COULDN'T beat them, we were a few plays away... But that was mostly due to over achieving, not under achieving. Our team easily could have been swept. Utah's bench rotation would start for us. Boozer outplayed Yao. TMac was average at best by his standards. Head and Howard disappeared. I don't really think the coach had much to do with that.

Adelman should be fine assuming he is the choice, but I consider it a lateral move that basicly leaves us in the same spot we are in now. We are never going to be the Suns with Yao on the team, and the Suns and Warriors are both out of the playoffs now. We have a much better chance of modeling after the Spurs, but we don't have the personnel at the moment and we are fairly unlikely to have it by next year without moving Yao or TMac.


I do find it odd that the Rockets let JVG go because they were "positive about another candidate", yet they haven't hired anyone yet. It also sounds like they handled the firing in a totally unprofessional manner, but in the end if we win it won't matter to the fans. If we lose the fans will continue to complain. Just don't expect a coaching change to improve us without making major additions to the roster.

 

No, JVG is a defense only coach. Adelman is perceived to be an offense only coach. You started a thread about "badnews for you offense lovers" trying to prove that defensive minded teams are better than offensive minded teams. When it comes to the debate about JVG vs Adelman, it's always defense vs offense.

But how can you compare defense against offense with point differential? You can't.

The thread starter here explicitly say that he is tired of all these labeling without factual evidence. He put out an impressive comparison based on off. and def. efficiencies, which imo is the best way available to us for this task. If you cannot understand why def. efficiency is better than PPG as a gauge of how good a defense is, then I don't have enough patience to explain it to you. I think more than one posters have already done that.

The facts posted here shows that JVG is indeed a "defense only" coach, but Adelman is not an "offense only" coach as perceived. It also shows that "defense only" is not good enough to win championships.