[ESPN: Insider] Hollinger Player Profiles: Houston Rockets: 2012-13 roster

All your reps belong to meeeee!

Enjoy Brahs!

DONATAS MOTIEJUNAS, C
Hollinger's 2012-13 Projections
PTS
REB
AST
PER
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Did not play 500 NBA minutes last season | Hollinger player card

Scouting report
+ Skillful, ballhandling big man in Toni Kukoc/Dejan Bodiroga mold. Left-handed.
+ Average shooter and not much of an athlete. Sees floor well; a point forward.
+ Defense a big question. Lacks muscle for 5, but may struggle guarding perimeter.

Analysis
Motiejunas shot well in Europe, but that may be an outlier -- he has a line-drive shot with a low release point and it doesn't always rotate correctly off his hand. The biggest question about him is that he needs the ball in his hands to succeed and take advantage of his superior ballhandling skills for his size. But he may not be good enough to run an NBA offense through.

Defensively, he's going to struggle. He's neither strong, nor athletic, nor tough. He's fairly mobile, however, and that may be able to carry him through as a sixth man, point-forward type if his offense lives up to its billing.

 

Did Hollinger completely misread D-Mo or did I not watch enough of his play in Euroleague?

 

Cris Webber would disagree

 

I think Jones is probably the best suited PF for us among those youngers.

 

I'm sorry but that D Mo report did not sound very accurate to me at all. Ball handling big man? Of course he'll struggle guarding the perimeter, he's a big man!!

 

Cant wait to see how the roster shapes out.

Lin, Delfino, Parsons, Patterson and Asik are guaranteed to to have large roles. Same with Martin unless he gets traded. Lamb and D-Mo's game and skill sets are well defined so thers no question as to what they can do or what position they will play (unlike the tweeners we have). Just a matter of bringing them on slowly.

To me the big questions are :

1. What are we going to do with White, Jones and Morris who are all combo forwards. Where and how will they fit?

2. What happens with Livingston (health), Douglas and Forbes at the back court and wings?

3. Who is going to get cut at the front court with Johnson, Smith and Brockman?

Lin/Livingston/Machado
Martin/Lamb/Douglas
Parsons/Delfino/Forbes
Pat/Jones/White
Asik/D-Mo/?????

 

Amazing stats, Morey must've done back-flips when NY didn't match. Remember, a large chunk of Lin's playing time last year has asterisks next to it: garbage time minutes, chemistry issues with changing line ups, Melo-cancer, coaching change. Extremely excited to see how Lin will develop with a full off-season locked in as a starter. :grin:

 

All I know is Motiejunas looked great in the summer league 'eyeball test'. I have higher hopes for him than Hollinger sees to, but then again I'm a Rockets fan. I think Hollinger did a decent job tempering expectations for all of our guys.

 

Thanks a lot for sharing this!

 

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=6395869#post6395869

Hollinger didn’t even add anything to the player profile he put up last year on D-Mo. He's probably not all that familiar with his game if he didn't even bother updating anything.

 

Hopefully we'll see our shooters drain those shots like Novak.
Btw, I'd love to see Montie at 5. He's 7' tall and has some length. So, Montie, Jones, and White will be a pretty decent front court combo with agility and board. Maybe have Defino and Lin on the court will also help on the mobility of entire unit. Not sure. Can't wait for training camp to start.

 

makes sense. Bodiroga mold? lol... that's like saying that Garnett was a skillful big man in LeBron mold

 

Today at the office, being a Friday, I spent the good last 30mins browsing other NBA news/opinions. I came to a conclusion that outside us Rockets fans, people are not really high on our team. They all foresee us as bottom dwellers on a well stocked west. What's concerning is that they have valid reasons to say so .

 

Thats because we're a 30 win team at best. I don't know too many Rox fans who's that high on how we'll do this year. There are quite a few who likes the upside of our guys, but upside usually means it will take a couple years to develop.

 

John Hollinger was the most accurate NBA forecaster last year among all 30 ESPN analysts tracked:

http://blog.pundittracker.com/nba-pundits-2011-12-report-card/

If you find yourself thinking his projections are "ridiculous" you should check your premises. Check Lin's stats. Check your understanding of what "small sample size" means compared to the number of minutes played and the accuracy of statistical methods on that amount of data. Check that you haven't bought into the anti-hype machine that sprung up around Lin after some of the public experienced overload fatigue. Lin's TO's have been dramatized way more than justified based on his production and comparisons to other top, high usage PGs[1].

Lin will have no problem scoring this year as many, many advanced stats support his scoring ability: high fta/36 (meaning his scoring is consistent), 3rd best shooter off the dribble last year, almost 20 ppg in starts, etc. On this team, 20ppg is well within reach.

But that doesn't mean he's a score-first guard, either, a false dilemma that always accompanies discussions of point guards. He's going to make the best play available, which is exactly what you want from a player who had the 2nd highest fourth quarter PER in the NBA. There's a reasonable chance, barring injury, that Lin is both a high efficiency passer and scorer for the Rockets this season.

Anyway, this analysis I think perfectly demonstrates the weird miasma on this forum surrounding Lin. An unbiased analyst[2], the best one at the most famous sports outlet in the world, projects Lin higher than any poster I've seen in this forum, other than me.

[1] Although he does have a higher percentage of UGLY turnovers than I've ever seen. I expect that to continue this year, and for there to be plenty of whining and hand-wringing about it, even though his aggregate efficiency and effect on winning, the only thing that matters, will remain very high.

[2] And no story line lover either. Right after Linsanity broke, Hollinger had an article which doubted that Lin's performance could last. Linsanity kept on lasting, though, which caused him to reevaluate his opinion in later Insider posts.