How Many Shots are Available to the Rockets Starting Power Forward?

He's old, can't finish, can't score, no real range, slow, and he's effectively retired. But yeah, he was there during Linsanity so we should definitely get him.

And I liked how you slipped the Harden insult in there as well. 11/10, would read again.

 

While I do agree with the "We shouldn't go after volume shooter PF" approach. Our starting PF will have games where he needs to take a lot of shots. Either because the opposing defense chooses to leave him open as a gameplan or the PF's defenser is the opponent's soft spot. But I think D-Mo and TJones will be up to the task. Tjones sooner than D- Mo

 

Yeah let's see who is willing to pay Asik 15 million next season,sorry but I think he has to be moved,Trade Omer Asik for a proven Power Forward. (Ryan Anderson or Ersan Ilyasova, Ilyasova is better, contract wise too) Move Greg Smith to the Center position to backup Dwight Howard and Marcus Camby.

That's how I see it.

 

It appears that the OP's "analysis" is filled with errors and is pretty much meaningless:

1. First, I am not sure where the OP got his FGA/game numbers.

The OP's numbers are as follows:

Dwight Howard 9.91
Jeremy Lin 10.94
Chandler Parsons 11.45
James Harden 16.30

They are different than those posted on NBA.com, ESPN.com, basketball-reference.com, which are:

Howard: 10.7 (35.8 mpg)
Lin: 10.9 (32.2 mpg)
Parsons: 12.4 (36.3 mpg)
Harden: 17.1 (38.3 mpg)

I thought the OP's numbers might be FGA per 33 minutes even though he said they were "per game." So, I did a quick calculation and the per 33 minutes numbers don't match up, either.

2. Also, I am not sure where the OP got the idea that these 4 guys had an average mpg of around 33 last season.

If you you use the 33 mpg assumption and the actual FGA/game numbers, you end up with an absurd result: These 4 guys would average 1.54 FGA per minute, which is greater than the 1.47 FGA/minute that the team average last season, leaving the PF spot with NEGATIVE 2.64 FGA per 33 minutes.

3. By using the FGA numbers the way he did, the OP is ignoring the fact that the numbers were for their seasons overall, not specifically while on the court with the rest of the starters (and in Howard's case he was playing with a whole different set of players on a whole different team).

Lin, for example, likely shot more frequently in the 400+ minutes when he was on the court without Harden and less frequently in the minutes in which he shared the court with Harden. The same thing applies to Parsons.


4. The OP seems to think that the starting 5 would play 33 minutes per game together, which is preposterously high. Lin, Parsons and Harden, for example, only played 1815 minutes together in 73 games, 24.86 minutes per game in these games and less than 50% of the total available minutes for the season. And this is on a remarkably healthy Rockets team with none of Lin, Parsons, Harden and Asik missing significant time.

So, even if the PF won't get many shots while playing next to the other 4 projected starters, the Rockets' PF will get plenty of time playing on a unit that doesn't have at least one of the other "big 4," during which the PF spot may need to carry a higher scoring load-- and those minutes are going to be important in deciding the results of the games, too, since the points scored during those minutes by both teams do count toward the final result.


5. According to 82games.com (http://www.82games.com/1213/1213HOU5.HTM), the Rockets PF spot attempted 16.9 FGA per game, 3 FTA per games, resulting in 19.8 points per game. These numbers may not be entirely accurate because the site subjectively assigns who the PF is-- sometimes it's fairly easy, but when, for example, Delfino and Parsons play the Fs, 82games.com calls Parsons the PF-- but it's probably not a big deal since none of these "positionally ambiguous" guys really had a especially high or low usage rate.

The number of FGA from the PF spot may go down as Howard is a higher usage player than Asik, and may be lower when we only talk about the starting 5, but chances are the PF will still attempt a significant number of FGs.

6. Perhaps the most fundamentally wrong thing about the OP is that FGA (or usage overall if you include TOs and FTAs) are not divided up in some sort of negotiation-- the distribution of FGAs and usage come organically in the course of the game depending on not only what the team runs but also how the opposing team defends. Whether it's a "good thing" for Harden, Howard, Lin and Parsons to take more or less FGA depends on what kind of attempts are available during the season.

Given that these guys are capable scorer, and the guys have PFs (both real ones and converted SF/Cs playing the 4 spot) who are not totally incompetent scorers (like Joel Anthony), I really doubt that the PF on the team will get as few good shots to attempt while playing with all (or some) of these guys as the OP projects with his faulty numbers.

 

Excellent post. I was thinking of writing something similar, but didn't have time, and you write better than I do anyway.

 

but why move Asik at all?...nows the time to go for the trophy...if not now when?
48 minutes of great defense is better then addition of ryan anderson shooting...plus we have a huge backup in case of howard injuries... imagine if we trade asik and howard acquire/renew injury in playoffs... or during RS let say for a month or two... then buy buy the trophy...

 

Did you not see the game the other night, and see how awful the defense was once Howard stepped off the court and Jones played the 5???

That's a pretty good preview of what Greg Smith looks like at the 5 as well... very similar defensive players.

A stretch 4 like Ryan Anderson in the starting lineup serves only a few of the purposes needed. He only stretches the floor.... with the current lineup of Lin/Harden/Parsons/Howard what became extremely evident to me was the need to have the 5th wheel be a very good passer and team defender as well with the offense they were running, and the way they were funneling shooters into the Dwight like the defense that was run in Orlando a few years ago. The most important function of that player is... Do they help Howard and Harden be the dominant force that they should be, or do they take away from that?

There is no need to sacrifice such an important asset to this team winning now for a 5th wheel role player that serves a very important, but smaller function than having a top 5 defensive anchor on the court for 48 minutes a night.

Look at the Harden/OKC trade as a prime example of why you DONT trade Asik this year.

-Yes Harden was going to leave if he didn't get a max contract extension
-Yes Harden was coming off the bench
-Yes OKC already had 2 playmaking wing players in their starting lineup.

However you look back the past two years, and you see what Harden was able to do to SA for OKC coming off the bench that was really the main difference maker in them getting to the finals and beating SA back in 2012.

Presti sacrificed winning now because he didn't want to risk losing Harden for nothing. I personally DO NOT think Morey is going to make that same mistake and realizes that you need to strike while the iron is hot.

I believe Asik being in the game when Howard isn't might be the difference maker in the Rockets going pretty far during the regular season and post season, and is far more important than finding someone to be the 5th wheel at the PF position whose primary role is to play solid team defense, keep the defense honest with a jump shot, and feed the post.

 

How about Markief Morris

 

Absolutely agree with this. Morey made it pretty clear that window sizes are unknown and can be smaller than you think. If the choice is between winning a title now or losing an attractive trade asset in two years, he'll take the title.

 

Yes sir he will. Also keep in mind too that the window for big men to play at a truly elite level is very small. Some bigs can play well past their primes (Duncan/Garnett), but the difference in their effectiveness during their primes and afterwards is like night and day.

What I saw the other night shows me that Dwight is still capable of playing at an elite level THIS season. There are no guarantees next year or the year after.

Keeping Asik the next two years not only helps having maybe the best bench in the NBA besides maybe Brooklyn(think about how many teams in the league truly have a super-sub that affects the game that much off the bench), it preserves usage during the regular season on Dwight to maximize his health for the post season.

 

Duncan was pretty efficient last year. He just can't do it for 82 games, but on per minute basis he was as efficient as ever except his MVP years.

 

I enjoyed the read, however this logic only makes sense, if we sign a FA PF - which will not happen this season. If we go for one, we will have to trade for one, and that trade would probably include one of our core pieces.

And a PF coming in changes things, just as D12 changed things. I don`t think you can just take last seasons numbers. If we get a star at PF, we will have a different gameplan than if we go with our current group. Just with D12 our gameplan has changed. Parsons and Lin will shoot more open 3s and less drives to the basket.

Without changing the team too much, we would just need to add a defensive PF with 3pt range - if we get one that has a killer post up game, we will use that in some capacity.

In the end we just need as many good players out there as possible that fit the gameplan and have a good chemistry with each other.

 

Didn't know we signed contracts to give our players a certain number of shots... I don't give a **** how many shots Lin or Parsons are taking right now.

 

Man, you guys going real deep on this analysis stuff. I don't think any of this matters very much. We just need PFs that can play. They will fit in where they get in. This team will only go as far as Harden and Howard carries them. Parsons, Asik, Lin, Bev, and the rest will play their roles around them. Whomever is playing PF or any other position with Harden and Howard will know they are not the focal point of the offense, but they also know Harden and Howard are willing passers so they will get shots. There is no pre-requisite number of shots they must get. Their shots will come within the flow of the game. We play a uptempo style game so everybody will see shots.

 

Not gonna spend more time covering everything, just a few of notes:

1. The OP's "adjustment for 82 game season" by multiplying the actual FGA per game by # of games played/82 makes zero sense even in the context of his nonsensical method of finding the # of leftover FGAs for the PF and the rest of the nonsensical assumptions in the OP.

If his concern estimating FGA/minute, then why lower that number because a player played less minutes due to missed games? It doesn't change how frequently a player shoots when actually on the floor.

For example, if Harden had missed 41 games out of 82 last season, would you then cut down his FGA per game # by 50% and make that # 8.55 instead of 17.1?

2. A far more relevant stat for evaluating involvement in offense than FGA is Usage %, which looks at the consumption of possessions overall as a % of total -# of possessions. This not only equalizes the pace factor, but also addresses all the ways in which a player can use a possession: a FGA, FTAs, or turnover.

3. The OP assumes that the PF will have to take whatever is leftover from the other 4 starters and it's a bad idea to reduce their usage of FGAs and possessions. Not sure why this would be the case if the PF is taking good available shots that he is capable of making and the shot that he "takes away" from the other guys may have otherwise ended up as contested low % shots.

For example, Harden is very talented and was very efficient last year, but this doesn't mean he didn't take a good number of low value shots that could have been better utilized by another player if he had passed them up. In fact, given how much higher his OKC efficiency #s were in the season before last (his efficiency was very good last year, but was elite the year before), evidence suggests that a lower usage Harden when surrounded by other guys who can also use these extra possessions efficiently would likely increase both Harden's own efficiency and that of his team overall.

 

I repped you before for you graphs, but you have to adjust your attitude to be taken seriously. You're not infallible. Pretending that you are only compounds your dubious claims.

This kind of OP is just begging for refutation: "This post is intended to be instructional as to how to use arithmetic and information readily available from the web to arrive at revealing new insights into the NBA."

Now, you have admitted that you "made an arbitrary decision" in choosing 33 minutes. Even accounting for your (arbitrary) 5% margin of error, Harden, Howard, and Parsons all fell outside of your margin last season. Only Lin's minutes were within your margin of error.

You declared in sentence 1 that you were using "arithmetic and information readily available from the web" in order to instruct us, but 33 minutes is not derived from "arithmetic and information readily available from the web"; it is arbitrary, as you admitted.

Once your minutes figure is shown to be arbitrary, even +/-5%, then your entire argument becomes arbitrary.

 

You could be nicer to jtr, Carl .

 

Doesn't matter, just make the shot when the opportunities present itself.