I'm a stat fiend, so while looking around on the ESPN website I made the following observations: 1. Houston is 4th from last in the league in PPG, however 2. Houston is 5th in the league in PPS <-- one of my favorite stats, which means that... 3. Houston is last place in FGA in the league. 4. Meanwhile, as I suspected, Houston is almost last in Ast/TO ratio, beating out only Miami. There are no other significant categories in which the Rockets suffer. The last five games we've been doing well in these, so I shudder to think of our Rankings before the win streak. These underlying trends must change if we want to be contenders though. Both of these stats point to the obvious -- the offense is labored and not smooth, not enough shots are being created. Obviously TOs take away some of our shots, but we're getting stuck too often in the half court offense, not enough transistion or fastbreak baskets. Solutions?
13-7 is great, but I wonder how many teams make it far into the playoffs last in the league in FGA and Ast/TO? During win streaks we still can't ignore problems.
The relative absence of fast breaks and early offense is probably our biggest offensive difficiency compared to the Spurs, Mavs, Wolves and Kings. In the close to midrange game we are shooting 49% while those teams range from 54% to 59%. That is huge. If we are ever able to elevate to that range we will undoubtedly maintain our lofty position in the standings. Can we do it? Are we able to? I am not sure. First the removal of Posey certainly did not help our chances. Second the rotation being limited to 8 is not a facilitator for more running. Third the priority, despite what JVG says, may have been to improve and solidify the half court game. If the season is divided into games of 5, I would think the last five games gave glimpses of fast breaks or early offense. Because team are shooting a poor % against us and we have good rebounders one would think we have more than enough opportunities to run. I do not see SF as an impediment since there is JJ, Mobes and Mooch and they all have not run as much as they should. I do think that it is an area of the game that is about to show major improvement. However, one of the best stats to determine likelihood of contending is the differential in shooting. When you get a chance you will see that we are close to the best in the league across the board. No matter how difficult or raw you think our offense is, the fact is our defense makes opposing offenses look worse. We are top 3 in the league in pps and top 7 in fg%, so the offense is not as hopeless as you think. So we have been able to get by. Another indicator is the quality of shots we are making. 7% of our shots are dunks and tips and that is almost twice as much as Mavs, Wolves and Kings. Coupled with that we are the best in that group, including Spurs, of limiting tips and dunks.
