The 02-03 Rockets had good stats on D but were not a good defensive team. Anyone with tapes of the game will tell you that they don't play the PnR very well and they don't rotate well to cover for the player who went to double team. They managed to win 43 games by feasting on teams with lesser talent and/or athletecism. Their record against 02-03 WC playoff teams is something like 12-20. Correspondingly, my hunch is that the defensive stats against the WC top 8 was not nearly as good as their overall stats vs the league for D. IMHO, JVG will get the Rox to play some good team D but we may not see it in the stats as much as the W-L results.
I am happy with our defense in the frontcourt. The problems in the backcourt JVG will fix. It would have been so much easier if they kept Posey. Like I said before I would go with Brown and West over any combo in the Rox orgainization.
You answered your own question: You won't see people talking about defense in a discussion about Rockets problems, because defense isn't a Rockets problem. If you read threads about Rockets proficiency and ability, you'll see references to good defense, well-built plays, and other skillfulness. -- droxford
Guard penetration is a biggie. Makes you wonder why so many people around here want to trade Mobley and replace him with Wesley Person. Like HP insinuated, Griffin and Yao are not close to being great defenders and at times, they are both actually poor defenders despite the rumor that goes around on here. EG seems to be too eager to block every shot that comes near him. Also, for the life of me, I can't understand why a player as young, and light on his feet as Eggie, has such poor lateral movement. Not to mention the fact that he can't stand his ground. By the looks of Yao in all those photos, looks like his added mass will help him hold his position better. I am really hoping that will translate into more rebounds more than anything else. To this day, I still get pissed thinking about all the shots that were made over Yao that he could have or should have at least gotten a fingertip on. EDIT: Good gosh, how can anyone say that Dream wasn't a great one on one defender?????????
You know, from watching the games I didn't see a lot of our guards getting beat off the dribble, despite what the people screaming for lock-down defenders and whining about Franchise's defense say. What I did see a lot of was the opposing team's guards setting up picks to create penetration. Marbury is supposedly this lightning-fast guard, but the majority of his plays that I watched started off with a pick. Maybe some of Steve's apparent defensive lapses had more to do with Rudy's defensive schemes?
We were among the lowest in fg% allowed, and among the lowest in ft attempts allowed. Those two categories combined almost always point to a good disciplined defense. (I'm not using pts allowed because that could be due to the slow pace of their offense and have nothing to do with their defense.) Maybe I'm just using stats. But how did the Rockets do it without good defense?
Easy. Yao and Griffin were in the top 20 in blocks last season, in Yao's 1st season and Griffin's 2nd. So what if they're not in the elite category yet? It's not as if there is NO basis for comparison. Olajuwon himself has been quoted as saying that he thought Griffin would be one of the premier shot blockers in the league, and with a guy who's 7'6", well, look at Bol, Muresan, Bradley- regardless of the lack of everything else in their game, they all had the shot block thing going, they were all over 7'5", so the point is- with Ming's height alone, and a little effort, he can consistently rank in the top 10 in blocks as well as being a major distraction. And I stand by what I said about Olajuwon. No one on this board respects Olajuwon more than me. From 1986 through 2000, I can honestly say I've watched or listened to over 900 Rockets games, and I particularly enjoyed the numerous highlight reels with Olajuwon's defense. When you watch a series of Rockets games back in the 1990's, you'll note that Thorpe and Maxwell played tough man-to-man, body-on-body defense. Olajuwon would've been the same, but he was operating from a "I-have-to-be-prepared-to-help-my-teammates-in-case-someone-slips-through" mentality. Thus, if you watch him and his game closely, he couldn't afford to be a glue-like man-to-man defensive player the way Thorpe and Maxwell could. Nevertheless, I think Olajuwon is THE greatest defensive player of all time. Because I DO think statistics matter. Sorry, but if you have someone in the top 10 in both blocks and steals, how can you say they weren't the best? I think this whole thing of discrediting statistics is stupid. And, as well, you can't just go by the numbers. But if you are going by my signature, and the numbers, how can anyone say the Rockets were not a good (not great, good) defensive team? Golly gee whitakers, let's give a little credit where credit is due. The Rockets were ranked second-to-last in assists and in the lower middle in scoring. Therein lies the problem.
You know, I think the whole problem with defense is that they don't record the statistics for many of its key elements. I think that someone should start to compile and publish these stats: 1. Number of times player bit/didn't bite on a fake 2. Number of times player missed/didn't miss a defensive rotation etc., etc., etc. Bottom line is, I know as much about coaching and setting up an NBA defense as the large majority of people on this board. But it's still interesting to mull over these things. BTW, after viewing some games from the playoffs in 1995, I guess one can say that Dream was a great one-on-one defender in most situations. And when he wasn't, it's because he was having to bail out Smith. Watch the Phoenix series, you'll see what I mean.
I was thinking the same thing. OH and could someone please point me to one of those "profiniecy and abillity" threads. I'm sick of the Rockets suck threads.
The Denver Nuggets gave up .1 (that's POINT ONE) more PPG than the Rox. Does someone want to convince me the Nuggets were a good defensive team? What does the number of opponents FTA's have to do with anything? If I bragged my YMCA league team never put anybody on the line, is that a function of good D or Matador D? The Rox committed fewer PF's than any other team but I don't see that as corelational to good defense in any way. So based upon Opponents FG% the best defensive team in the NBA is.........the SAC Kings. Guess Vlade and Peja are much better defenders than any of us realized. And guess who's in the middle of the pack in this category? The Detroit Pistons at #14. I'm someone who likes stats, but c'mon guys...the differential in Opp's FG% between the Rox at #5 and the Pistons at #14 is a whopping .005...1/2 of 1%. This is justificaction for calling the Rockets a good defensive team? IMO, some of ya'all need to dig a little deeper or watch a llittle harder.
Many coaching staffs keep track of how many times their players get a ball tip. This is a lot more accurate than just recording blocks and steals since it interupts the play and does lots of bad stuff to the offensive team like causing bad passes, or shot clock turnovers. Anyway, you can get burned constantly going for the steal or the block.
Hey, I could care less about the negativity from several on this board. You can look at it however you want. The Rockets were a good defensive team, a mediocre offensive team, and they should have been a little, not a lot, a little, better than last year. ROCKETS RULE! PLAYOFFS IN 2004! EVERYONE'S A YEAR BETTER! NEW COACH, NEW ATTITUDE! (But I still appreciate Rudy) ROCKETS WILL BE THE #6 SEED!!! BOOK IT!!! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCKETS!!!!!!!!!
That's exactly why I didn't think pts allowed was a good measure of defense. Fta allowed by itself doesn't tell much. But together with low fg% allowed shows that they don't play defense just by being recklessly physical. The whole objective of defense is to lower the probability of your opponent from scoring when they have the ball. If you can make your opponents not shoot well without sending them to the line a lot, that's pretty good defense to me. The whole point is that lacking great individual defenders doesn't necessarily mean that the defense as a team is poor. The difference between these teams might not be very big. That just means that the Rockets aren't that much worse than teams like Detroit. Why do people think Detroit is a good defensive team. Are there any objective justifications other than "watching them play"? The question remains: If the Rockets are just a bunch of poor defenders, how were those stats achieved? The pajama uni was too distracting to opponent they couldn't shoot straight?
No..you've missed the entire point. The question is not how those stats were achieved. The question is - if the Rockets were #5 and the Pistons (an EC championship contender with a reputation for defense under Carlisle) are at #14 and there is only 1/2 of 1% difference in their OPP FG% number - Is this statistic worth a s**t when arguing the Rox are an outstanding defensive team. IMO (and I love stats) - hell no! The average NBA team took 80.8 shots per game. The Rockets at 43.3% OpFG% would have allowed 34.98 made shots. The Nuggets (at #18 with 44.3%) would have allowed opponents 35.79 made FG's. Anyone using this stat to support the Rox are a good defensive team is basing it upon less than 1 made basket per game...the difference between fifth and eighteenth. That and they flat out just didn't watch the games closely!
You can have a relatively low FG% allowed when you don't force any 24 seconds violations, give up a tons of FTs, doesn't interupt any plays, doesn't force tos etc... all you have to do is to disrupt the shot and not the offensive flow. We got some shotblockers to disrupt the shots and sometimes Posey and Mobley etc. The point is, a team can give up a lot of points, by either give the opponent more possessions and let their offense run smooth with relatively low FG% allowed. We don't frustrate the other team's offensive flow like the good defensive teams do, and our defensive intensity wasn't consistent.
