Key Players: First 8 games vs. Last 5

I agree, small sample sizes don't sum up to too much. Season to season averages are more comparable. But it is good to know what the short term trends are, even though they may be blips. Studying a series of short term trends can provide some predictive measures for future output, albeit not being very accurate.

Thanks clutch for the stats.

 

It will also be interesting after a few more games to compare the other starters production when Chuck was injured as opposed to what it is now with him back. Though I am thinking the only statistics that will be affected are rebounding and minutes played.

To take this one step furthur, I was watching "Yao in the NBA" last night on the Asian American channel (which consequently I didn't even know I HAD until last night) and they were highlighting the playoff bid with Yao and Steve Francis. Watching Yao in the clips of those games and comparing them to the end of last season and the beginning of this season its sort of amazing to see how he has progressed. He has become the "go to" guy and other than T-mac there is no one on the team who could pick up his numbers if he goes down.

T-mac has become the type of player that I love to watch. Team first, self second. Yeah sure he is capable of scoring huge numbers, but I would much rather see him drive and dish or drive and kick and get the whole team involved. I think all his stats (with the exception of points scored) are increasing becuase he has fully embraced the "playmaker" role.

Aaaah Shane. Did the Rockets fans expect to much of him? Maybe, because he was a lotto swap. Shane's shot may be down because he is gaurding the opposing teams best shooter. This means chasing them around and maybe-perhaps hurting his concentration on the offensive end. Also, someone else said somewhere that the plays being called for Shane don't utilize him enough. I don't think there "are" any plays being set for Shane. If Chuck's the Janitor, Shane is the Custodial Supervisor. He's the one that is supposed to get the job done if no one else can. I have to believe that his numbers will go up against the best teams, when it counts.

Rafer is going to have to adjust to a new role on this team again. He is still going to be the "set up" point guard, but with Tmac playing as the "playmaker" Rafer's on court identity is going to have to change. One of the announcers at some point said, we should go to a last two man assist method, like Hockey does. If you did that, Rafer's assist numbers would skyrocket. He may not be the one making the assist pass, but he is moving the ball to the person who is getting the assist. As for his shooting, he is leveling out, should be fine.

Luther is one of the players (on a team other than KY) I enjoyed watching in college, mainly because he played on a really talented team and just did his job. Didn't try to be more than his teammates, just went out and did the work necessary for his team to win. This is why there was so much "chatter" about his talent or lack there of. Now he is doing the same thing here, doing what is asked of him and not trying to do more than he should. He is a talented guy and will make the shots that he needs to to help his team win.

Thanks for the thought provoking post Clutch. Always nice to see the stats and what people read into them.

 

thanks clutch for the #s. battier needs to stick more in the offense but thinkin his shot is just off at the moment.

lol especially (b)!!! http://van_gundier.justgotowned.com/

 

The problem is you aren't bringing up any contrary points. You just keep saying that the sample size is small, which has been acknowledged over and over again.

 

While your theory of Shane's declining 3pt shooting is possibly correct, I disagree with it. Shane has always played 30+minutes per game of hustle ball. I don't think it's a fatigue factor. I think it's an adjustment problem. Shane is shooting more than twice the number of 3's per game he ever has. He's never been a volume shooter, and so jacking up 4 trey's per game is something he's adjusting to. I really hope his % goes up. Rafer on the other hand has always jacked treys like crazy, which isn't good if you're shooting 35%. Rafer needs to be a minimum 39% if he's going to keep jacking like this. But back to Shane. The Rockets DO RUN PLAYS FOR HIM. Watch the games man, and record every single half court possession. I promise you Shane gets 3 or 4 isos per game. He posts up against smaller players and 1 on 1 drives on slower players. Just because he doesn't always shoot it, doesn't mean he wasn't the go to guy. Sometimes he makes the right pass from the post, and sometimes he gets fouled, but that's any absolutely false statement when you say the Rockets don't run plays for Battier.

 

Clutch, nice work on the stats. Appreciated. Kind of interesting to see some trends.

I think the one trend that is interesting is just Tmac taking over the PG duties in the half court. No problem with that except it puts more emphisis on the role players to make the shots Tmac creates for them. And this also means no one is creating shots for Tmac, except himself.

This of course rolls over into Alston and his shooting. The fact he is shooting so many 3s is interesting. Should Alston be getting those shots over Luther Head?

If all we need our PG to do is:
1) Bring up the ball to give Tmac the ball in the half court offense
2) Hit a 3pt shot
3) Play decent defense against PGs.
4) (if applicable) be able to drive/create/finish [which our PGs can't do sans Vspan]

Doesn't this say we should play Head at the PG spot? Who do we want shooting the 3s that Tmac creates in caving in the defense? Alston or Head? Who do we want defending PGs? Alston or Head.

And this is just internal. If we look external we can "once again" bring Mike James back into the discussion. As he does ALL the things (including #4) that the Rockets would be asking from our PG role.

Those of you worried about Mike James not looking to pass...who cares? That's not what OUR PG does on this team. Not with Tmac being our defacto PG. With Tmac off the floor then, perhaps we hand the ball to Vspan and let him do the creating. And then let guys like Head (and Mike James if we could trade for him) hit bombs away to open things up for Yao.

We need to continue to look into acquiring Mike James. Especially if the Wolves think about blowing up the team and trading Garnett. Get in on the firesale.

 

Maybe because its only 3 or 4 times a game I didn't notice the plays for him. I will have to watch some of the last few games again and focus on Battier in the offense.

 

Yup -- and your feelings about being lectured on sample size!

This forum's been full of mindless, repetitive threads lately. I just want to tip my hat to Clutch for coming in to remind everyone what a thread based on thought and effort looks like. Also a tip of the hat to Van Gundier for a smart and civil debate. We need all points of view, with the exception of Osama bin Laden and, of course, Charley Rosen.

 

I knew I shouldn't have posted. As usual, someone else said what I was attempting to say far better than I did. To steal from Will, a tip of the hat, Deuce!

 

Van Gundier, I hate to pile on but the dismissive overtone in your earlier posts is a bit preposterous.

Sure the sample size is relatively small and the season is still early. Those were so thoroughly acknowledged in the very beginning that they were almost the pretext of the opening post of this thread. I happened to notice you are the guy who has, ever since the season started, frequently cited the stats from 82games.com in various posts of yours to make some arguments, yet you seldom seem to bother to qualify them with the "insufficient sample size" condition. Ironic, isn't it?

The way I see it, this is very similar to a classic temporal clustering problem. Maybe if we came up with a machine-learning algorithm (well, even so, subjective and/or "arbitrary" criteria are very much needed) that does the "automatic" pattern recognition, we might end up with a different split along the time axis. But I seriously doubt it would provide more insightful information than the one Clutch did (intuitively I suppose) such that for every player listed, each has significant "shifts" in several key statistical categories after game #8. To me, the results and analysis given by Clutch are damn impressive, whether those "shifts" are coincidental or by design.

 

They acknowlege the sample is small on one hand, but make erroneous conclusions based on the small sample right after.

If it stopped at "these are the factual observation over the last 13 games," I agree 100%. These are the facts.

When it moved on to "We should question whether Rafer is the right player for this team based Rafer's 11 for 32 from the arc," then I feel like arguing about it repeatedly. Sorry.

I have no problem with making decisions based on small sample size per se, either. 5 games is a sufficient sample for under some circumstances.


For example, if the argument s based on Rafer shooting, say, 2 for 32 over 5 games, or that his shot selection has been horrible over 5 games, or that opposing teams have stopped guarding him on the perimeter, or that the opposing team always goes on runs when he' in the game over the last 5 games, then I'd support replacing Rafer (or any other player giving us such crappy performance).

Also, take Juwan Howard's bad +/- over the first 13 games of the season, by itself it may not be meaningful. But considering that this continues a 2 year trend, it's some evidence that he doesn't fit within our system.

Battier's high +/- is the same way. 13 games of high +/- is not meaningful, but his +/- has been high for the last 3 years and thus I'd take it to mean some thing.

All these arguments based on a 5 game stretch or a 13 game stretch would be completely fine with me. It's all a matter of context.

However, I don't see such changes, qualitatively or quantitatively. Rafer has pretty much looked like the same player to me, and 2 more missed shots or 2 less miss shots over 5 games doesn't change my perception of him, positively or negatively. He's a pretty mediocre player overall, and I have faith in his mediocrity.

As for whether his ball-handling and passing skills are still useful now that TMac plays the point forward role more and Battier does his share of post entry passing... I can't agree that these skills are no longer relevant in the Rockets team play.

You can never have too many guys who can handle the ball and pass. First, it helps with pushing the ball off court on potential fast breaks or semi-fast breaks. Second, it helps with handling defensive pressure on one ball handler. Third, with the "misdirection" post offense that the Rockets run with Yao, often moving him from side to side in the post, looking for the right position to throw him the pass, you need multiple guys who can throw the pass into him at the right moment.

Anyway, this is where I'm coming from. If anyone gets annoyed at my opinion or my attempts on clarifying my position, sorry. I'll stop posting in this thread now.

 

We've seen pretty much the same from Rafer all last year and again this year, I'm not sure how much bigger we need to enlarge the sample.

The fact that it's a happy coincidence that McGrady's scoring has atrophied while his passsing has augmented shouldn't really affect matters and marginalizes Rafer even further, IMO.

 

This is poor reasoning IMO. Our PG needs to be able to shoot. But he should be willing to pass, which is just as important.

Also, I don't want T-Mac to play PG all game long. In fact, I don't want him to do it as often as he does because he is not the type of PG who organizes. He specializes in a drive-n-dish role, which is not the only type of passing we require from our PG. It's an excellent luxury to have two people in the backcourt who can both pass well and both score well, and score in different ways. So if the defense is allowing penetration we go with T-Mac. If it's not, we go with Rafer.

Not to mention Rafer's asst/to ratio continues to improve. Remember, the important thing is the ratio. While Rafer's has dropped a bit but is climbing, T-Mac's is nothing special, same thing he's done his whole career. Sure, he's getting more assists, but he's getting more turnovers as well. Plus, his FG% and 3pt% remain the same - poor - despite him taking less shots and recieving less atention, while his FT%, although improving, has gone down significantly.

If anything, we need a better T-Mac. The only thing he apparently is doing better is passing. What should happen is his passing should get him better %'s all round. Instead, he's gone down everywhere, but stayed the same in asst/to ratio. I'm ecstatic with his mentality, he just needs to be better at doing what he's trying to do. To be fair, he seems to be getting better at it as his last 5 games numbers are much better than early season.

Come playoff time when teams will begin full-court pressure, Head won't be able to handle it, Spanoulis is a rookie, and T-Mac will need to conserve that energy for other stuff.

Rafer's doing great. Now get him a backup.

 

My God, how can you possibly say that? Does anyone else think Rafer over these 13 games has not been better than last year?

Over a 335 game sample, I proved that Rafer is much better than last year's anomaly. This year's small sample shows that he's HEAPS better. What are you basing your statement on?

 

For anybody interested:

According to 82 games, we're still scoring more than the other team when McGrady leaves the court. (Tmac - +4.7 ON, +2.1 OFF) The guy that really hurts us is when Battier leaves the court. Odd, because he's the one guy that isn't really scoring much. Only other players like that are Yao and Chuck that have negative +/- numbers when they're off the court, but it isn't much. Only -0.3 when they leave. Battier is -4.2 OFF court.

 

Luther should start over Alston in a game to see how he does.

 

van gundier, man, stop messin with the boss

 

i dissagree with the idea that using tmac as a primary ball-handler will tire him out. he runs up and down the court anyway. dribbling a little extra won't do much to cause more fatigue.

besides, if rafer was a backup PG he could still spell tmac for 20 minutes a night as the primary ball-handler. i would bet that if rafer played 18-24 MPG off the bench, his APG would be the same as it is right now. so would his shooting %'s. the difference being he does it in less time, which means +EFF.

the problem i have with starting luther for his shooting or billy for his defense and driving ability, is that they turn the ball over too much.

 

-------Left Picture: Rafer's shooting this year.--------------Right Picture: Rafer's shooting last year.--------

I find it fascinating that he's almost completely reversed his good shooting and bad shooting spots. And as I already stated, once he gets his floaters and layups to fall, he'll be perfect for the Rockets system. That corner shot is the only thing holding him back, but it is not needed on this team (in theory) because of the presence of Battier.

-------Left Picture: Battier's shooting this year.-------------Right Picture: Battier's shooting last year.------

This is a problem. Battier shot 45.8% from the corner 3's last year . There were only a handful of people who were more automatic than him from there. Problem is he's only okay from those spots this year (39.5% from the corners) and is currently in a bad shooting slump. The Rockets need Battier to be their corner specialist, and currently he's having a hard time adjusting to being a volume shooter. Thank goodness there's Luther.

------Left Picture: Head's shooting this year.-------------------Right Picture: Head's shooting last year.-------

Head has been able to improve his 3pt weak areas while maintaining his corner strengths. He is key if the Rockets want to be one of the best 3pt shooting teams in the League (which I think is very important). If Head continues his torrid shooting, it will be impossible for Van Gundy to not play him in crunch time. The decision will be whether to play Rafer or Battier, or both of them, along with Luther Head, not instead of Head.