KPjr has more to do with us winning games RIGHT NOW than anyone on the roster

1 shot erases all the other bad performances? Food for thought.

I'm just glad he seems to be learning and evolving. This was good for him and the team. Probably couldn't have happened at a better time.

 

Pat Bev recognizes talent just like Lebron.

DD

 

Kevin Porter has improved defensively. Last year he was one of the 2-3 worst defensive starting guards in the NBA. Now he is just bad, but not horrible.

Porter is not a good offensive player right now either. He is terrible inefficient and makes poor decisions.

Porter has a lot of talent, but that doesn’t mean he is helping the Rockets win games.

Wood gets a lot of **** for his defense, and his effort is poor but he isn’t any worse defensively than Porter and he is better offensively.

Jalen Green is a better offensive player than Porter by a decent margin and defensively he is comparable.

Tate and Gordon are arguably the Rockets best two players with Green and Wood being better from game to game.

Kevin Porter has amazing talent but it’s time for him to put up.

 

Because hes a moody brat Porter has been given a far longer leash than he deserves. Green in a month has shown more growth than Porter has in 3 years.

Most players would have had their minutes reduced if they were as inefficient and erratic as Porter.

 

He is a very talented player and actually has good basketball instincts when he focuses… but he is running out of time, and he isn’t a good NBA player at this point.

I hope he figures it out, he CAN be a lot of fun to watch.

 

To be fair, a lot of these things are just inherent offensive talent and instincts that can't really be developed if they just aren't there. I still recall that it was often a popular choice to draft physically gifted athletes that are very limited offensively, in hopes that they eventually develop the skillsets to match their gifts. Very frequently those offensive gifts just never come.

KPJ's free throw shooting percentage is probably the best indicator of this. Free throw is what a lot of scouts use to determine whether a player can become a good shooter. They may not necessarily convert at a high rate, but if the mechanics are good it'll eventually get there (Sengun is a good example of this, a lot of scouts think he will develop a 3 point shot because he has very good FT mechanics). KPJ has been in the league for 3 years and his FT% has dropped to 61% (hovered at the low 70s before this), so his ability to ever become a good scorer is becoming questionable. If we compare that to Green, who is shooting 82% (up to 87% in his last 15 games). Green will likely establish himself as the much better scorer by the end of this season.

That being said, I don't think this would be an issue if the Rockets stop trying to treat him like Harden or Doncic. KPJ needs to become more specialized in a few areas (defending, rebounding, shooting) and he would easily be a very good player in this league).

 

That’s a bit selling him short.
What KPJ has in common with Doncic and Harden is real: the shiftiness, the hesi-es, the fakes. Look at the game winner, also: straight up in your face, defended as well as. possible, bam! These are extremely valuable skills, but he’s not mastered them consistently. Green doesn’t have that. As @foggy94 wrote, when Green was trying to weave inside the defense he looked terrible, really terrible. What Green has going for him is very good off-ball movement and a blow-by speed. If he can keep it simple and milk these skills, he’ll do very well. But guys like Harden and Doncic that can break down the defense are extremely valuable, and KPJ has shown he has the same potential. He hasn’t harnessed it, though.

 

This sentence does not make sense.

He has been given a longer leash because of his talent, and because of his underlying character, which I believe to be good.

He is a dog, but If he develops he could be our dog. Mother****er is as loyal as they come in a scrap.

 

I think we all hoped that KPJ would be more of a 42-36-75 split sort of guy with intriguing tempo and takeover ability.

Instead, KPJ is a 36-33-60 guy. He needs to take notes from JG and stop overthinking things. He needs to be a one-cut running back, and stop dancing. If he doesn't show improvement as a shooter, he is going to be out of here, and I hate to say that because I really like the kid and want him to succeed.

 

It doesn't matter if KPJ is shifty, or fancy, or can do flips in the middle of the paint. It doesn't matter if he has a million dollar move if he only has a 10 cent finish.

On drives per game in the whole season, Green shoots nearly 49.4% on 9.3 drive attempts, KPJ 41.3% at 9.9 attempts, this is a serious gap. Green's FG% is higher than Harden on drives, and not too far off from someone like Durant (51.1% on 10.6 attempts) or Lebron (52.6% on 8.8 drives).

In fact, if we take a look at stats in the last 1.5 months, near where Green's upward trajectory began, Green is shooting an insane 57.1% on drives on 9.4 attempts (11 games) whereas KPJ drops to 28.1% on drives on 9.6 attempts (10 games).

Green navigates the paint far far better than KPJ, it's honestly not close at the moment, to say he looks terrible weaving inside the defense is just not factually true.

And this isn't hating on KPJ, he's very talented. He just doesn't have the offensive prowess than Green is showing right now, and that's fine because there are other aspects of basketball that he has the tools to excel at.

 

In the last 10 games of the season that he played last year, he was shooting a 43-38-78 split, averaging 19-7-4 with only 3.5 turnovers.

Come on KPJ figure this ish out!

 

No wonder they're such a bad team.

 

Probably (?) one of the stronger arguments for KPJ (minimum 20 mins per game)



"Scoreboard" *shrug (?)

I'll look at some on/off stats etc here soon...

Don't know much about Player Impact Estimate (PIE) but it seems pretty legit -- he doesn't do so well there...

Edit: according to https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/p/porteke02/on-off/2022:

In a COMPARISON of Rockets performance vs opponent performance, when he is on or off the floor -- we improve significantly, as compared to our opponents, with him ON the floor, in shooting, scoring, and rebounding, and are somewhat outperformed in blocks, steals, and assists, and are significantly outperformed in turnovers (big shock). I wish it showed drtg. The turnovers most likely give us a bad enough drtg with him on the floor that it brings his net rating down to only 3rd on the team... It's his biggest weakness, seems like, again big shock. Well, and his shooting...

Will look at other player on/off stats later, for comparison.

Also, this is looking at the whole season, not recent trends...

I'm pro-KPJ, and think he's more helpful than not -- would still vote for EG as contributing the most. Loving Jalen's rapid rise too.

 

...and playing zero defence, and we were losing bigly...
You can see a lot more pressure on him now, but he's not handling it easy.
he's trying harder, but maybe too hard

 

A few more observations:

Don't ask us pro-KPJ guys about stuff like PER, win shares, or value over replacement player. He's close to or at the bottom of the team on all those. (Don't ask me how those are calculated, but one can find those formulas anywhere...).

Sengun does great on all those, in fewer minutes... He's third in win shares, behind Tate and Wood, but in a lot fewer minutes. In ws/48 mins, he's second (behind Nwaba!)

KPJ is solid in defensive win shares, but his offensive win shares are close to or at the bottom of the team.

It would be interesting to compare all these to how he was doing at the end of last year.

 

1 shot does not erase his 9 point game IMHO. The same game.

 

It's like sometimes he's thinking "what would a great point guard do here" and he acts out some misbegotten pg fantasy, hoping for a sick highlight assist, only... Yeah, no.

Maybe if his passing was the icing on the KPJ cake instead of something he pressures himself to do on a constant basis? He could just catch people off guard with it more that way... Dunno. How would y'all say he gets most of his turnovers?

I find him difficult to figure out.

 

IMHO his anger management problem and mental issues cost him a lot of time and development in Cleveland.

 

The 10 Percent Man.

He got a Superpower that he can only use 10x in his life, or to 10-20% every game if he is lucky.

Better than a total scrub but not really good.