Last 5 games: Problem is Offense, not Defense

It's our second unit that's been getting creamed, not the starting lineup. If you move Howard into the starting lineup, our scoring production off the bench will be even more pathetic.

 

Except Hayes defends and rebounds very well, even if he's not scoring.

So you're solution is to move Juwan into the starting lineup and move Hayes to the bench. Now Juwan is playing against better competition and he has to guard Zach Randolph more. That adds up to us winning the game? You need to show me your math, because I'm not getting it.

Rockets' bench not holding its own

Do you beg to differ with the facts as reported in the above story? In the last 4 games, our bench is getting outscored 30.5 to 17.8 per game. That means, if you do the math, our starters are outscoring the other teams starters 83.0 to 72.8. How does moving Juwan into starting lineup address that problem?

 

I notice that you ignored everything I said and made this comment. And I'm not sure what categories you're talking about. Just taking a look at the common box score stats that are collected:

Code:

        Chuck           Juwan
------------------------------
MPG      21.8            20.9
PPG      4.8            *5.4
ORPG    *2.9             1.7
DRPG    *4.1             3.6
APG      0.5            *0.9
TS%     *52.5%           49.8%
BLK     *0.2             0.0
STL     *0.7             0.4
TO       1.1            *1.1
PF        3.5           *2.0
------------------------------
PER     *11.4            10.3

And the above doesn't take into account the defense and all around hustle plays Chuck makes that help the team and aren't on the stat sheet. Fairly consistently, the team does better (in terms of per-minute point differential) with different combinations of players + Chuck Hayes than those combinations + Juwan.

But nevermind that. You specifically said that Juwan should replace Chuck in the starting lineup, apparently because you think our starters are having a tough time scoring. Well, you have it basically backwards. Our starters are doing pretty well compared to the others starters we've faced of late; it's our bench that needs all the scoring it can get. So why would you remove Juwan from the bench, a superior scorer and perhaps our most consistent bench scorer (now that Luther is a starter), and replace him with Chuck Hayes?

 

With Chuck alongside Yao (237 total minutes), Yao averages 31.3 points, 2.9 assists, and 4.9 turnovers per 40 minutes on 60% shooting from the field. With Juwan alongside Yao (233 total minutes), Yao averages 30.5 points, 2.7 assists, and 4.3 turnovers per 40 minutes on 48.5% shooting from the field.

As a team, with Chuck on the court we score 105.4 points per 100 possessions. With Juwan on the court we score, interestingly enough, at exactly the same efficiency. The difference? Defense. With Chuck, we only giving up 89.7 pts/100poss (which is ridiculously low). But with Juwan, we're giving up 107.3 pts/100poss. In other words, per 100 possessions (and we have around 90 possessions per game, fyi) we're allowing nearly 18 more points when Juwan is on the court compared to when Chuck is on the court. And that's the case, despite Juwan playing more minutes against the other team's second unit (typically weaker offensive lineups). That follows the same pattern as last year. We defended insanely well as a team with Chuck on the court, and very poorly with Juwan on the court. NBA.com stats may not show that, but it's something you have to consider.

Why? We're struggling the most when Yao is off the floor. We're outscoring teams when he's on the floow, and getting blown out when he's off. So you're solution is to put Juwan next to him, which may marginally help the offense (though there's absolutely no evidence for that, this season or last season), and let our bench get blown out even more?

I don't know if this is just some spite you have against Chuck Hayes, but whatever you're advocating makes very little sense to me.