Through 6 games, the free throw disparity is as follows: 2 Home Games: Rockets 26 FTA (41.9% of total free throws) Opponents 36 FTA (58.1% of total free throws) 4 Road Games: Rockets 62 FTA (39.7% of total free throws) Opponents 94 FTA (60.3% of total free throws) All 6 Games: Rockets 88 FTA (40.4% of total free throws) Opponents 130 FTA (59.6% of total free throws) What this tells us: 1. The % of road and home free throw attempts are very similar, even though it's a TINY sample size. This dispels the thought that refs are protecting home teams. Only a small percentage of calls are influenced by "home court advantage." * see Utah exception 2. Martin's inability to get to the line this year has a real value on the stat sheet. His shots now seem low percentage and his efficiency is going to take a hit. 3. Our defensive rotations are most likely too slow, putting our players in positions to foul the opposition. I don't know how many quarters we've played in this year where the other team is in the bonus early, but it seems like it's way too often. 4. We aren't forcing defenses to foul us. This is because: a. We are shooting too many jumpers. Even our PFs prefer the jump shot over banging down low. b. Our bigs can't draw fouls or beat double teams, including Scola. c. We don't have a go-to player that can break down defenses off the dribble. T-Will has shown flashes of doing so, but he's very inconsistant in all aspects of the game. Last year we were a net positive FTA team with the rockets averaging 25.4 FTA to their opponent's 23.8 FTA. I don't think the refs are going to start hating us because we lost Chuck Hayes... While we definitely won't see the superstar calls that guys like Derrick Rose, etc get, there shouldn't be any reason we can't break even based on our roster.
