I've been thinking, why do Rox fans hate Rafer? I think it's because he's the only 1 in the team, except for TMac, who takes ill-advised shots. Nobody else dares to take a jumper while there are 20 secs left. Bless your heart Rafer, you miss a crap load of them. And when was the last time you saw Rafer make a pulled-up jumpor? 2 months ago? and I dont even wanna start with his floaters. But still, to me hating on Rafer is crazy. Among all the PGs in this League, Rafer ranks #23 in Ast/TO, one of the worst in 2P%. But He also ranks #5 in 3P%, #2 in 3PM. #5 in rebounding, #7 in ST. if you ask me those numbers are stellar, and he comes around 4 sth mil. If I had to rank him I 'd prob say #16. But I wouldnt just swapp him with any one in front. I wouldnt even swapp him with Mike Bibby or T.J Ford. Those 're better players for sure, but Rafer fits us well. Beside, will you look at their salary books? So much Rafer bashing on this board, but I 've not heard more than a handful names thrown out: "you know what, this guy is so much better than Rafer, we should risk breaking our team chemistry go after him". Tell me, enlighten me, who are on your mind ? Nash? Jet Terry? Tony Parker? Deron Williams? Yeah, right... how about Stockton while you at Jazz? I can see where these fans coming from, the big 3 have 3 great PGs, even Utah has a new star in born, but all we have is ... Rafer. I know that suks for us but we have 2 stars in C and SG, we cant afford another one in PG. for all the PGs coming cheap, Rafer is our man. Is there any better choices? except for a few star-in-born PGs in their rookie contract, I cant say any1 will definitely be better for us than Rafer. So here goes my 1st thread in Clutch, Rafer Alston is fine.
the grass is always greener on the other side... I think Rafer is the only one that performs well under full court pressure. I remember last year when Phoenix played full court pressure with us and we constantly turned the ball over. No one is the better ball handler than Rafer on our team, (yes, even T-Mac). Sometimes his shots are questionable but the past 10 games since Yao got back, his numbers have been stellar. I think playing without Yao forced him to be the second option behind T-Mac and his efficiency dropped significanly. He definitely complements Yao the way Yao complements Hayes. With that said, Deron Williams, Jason Kidd, or Steve Nash swapping with Rafer straight up? I'd do it in a heartbeat
I think most would part with Rafer for TJ Ford. Bibby probably aswell, especially if he got back to health.
He is the best we got but we could do better. Lets see how we do in the playoffs, a first round exit would warrant a serious make over for the team and the place to start may be at PG. Bryan Colangelo rebuilt both the Suns and the Rapts by changing the PG and you can't argue with the success he has had.
This Rockets system needs consistency from its PG spot. It needs defense, shooting, and smart decisions. Rafer doesnt bring that. He is the weak link. We are better with him than without, yes he is important. But he is the weak link...
Well, I was going to post the following in another thread. Makes sense to post it here instead. I finally have pulled all the Rockets game by game box-score data so that I can do a closer look on things I have been curious about. I wanted to analyze Rafer's performance trended over the season instead of looking merely at season averages. Here is just a brief statistical look at Rafer with a bit more scrutiny with this in mind. How has Rafer's shooting % faired over the season? IMPORTANT KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING THE GRAPHS: Blue Diamonds - actual box-score stat Yellow Graph - essentially a 7-game moving average of the box-score stat (smooths out the stat so you can see the trend better) Red Graph - linear trend for the season of the box-score stat (gives you an idea of an overall generalized trend for the season) Black Graph - trend of the 7-game moving average At a high level his 3p% has increased overall while his 2p% has decreased slightly. A closer look shows that Alston's 3p% started out strong, fell off but then has slowly climbed back up. His 2p% has pretty much remained the same throughout the season with a slight decrease overall. How has this affected his offensive efficiency? Here's a graph of Alston's offensive efficiency (points per 100 possessions) - In essence eventhough his 3P% has improved, the decrease in his 2P% has offset any major gains in points every possession of the ball he get's a shot from. I also plotted his FGA's as well. Interestingly enough there seem's to be some correlation between his offensive efficiency increasing with decreasing FGA's. How effective at distributing the ball has he been? The following is a graph of the Pure Point Rating (PPR) statistic. This was developed by John Hollinger to replace the Ast/TO ratio. PPR basically converts assists and turnovers into a per possession figure as well as adjusting for the idea that assists do less good than turnovers do more harm. Here's the formula for anyone who's interested: PPR = (league pace / team pace) * ([(assists * 2/3) - turnovers] / minutes) For my graph I just used team pace=league pace since I didn't have easy access to calculate league pace and just skipped using a proxy for it. I've been looking at Rafer's PPR average of the season was curious to see how that's trended. Overall he seems to be improving here. His season avg is now about ~3.8 as per knickerblogger.net. You can see the trend of moderate improvement here. He's still #29 in PPR in the league based on the season avg.
- I'm posting this stuff at 3am because I can't find time to do it any other with a wife and 2 young kids keeping me busy!!!
tango you know you mentioned the FGA you plotted. I assume you can run a stat test on it. Would that be significant in anyway for his efficiency?
Rafer is fine? what you trying to hit onto him now?? sorry i cant help myself by to quote family guy anyways back to topic i hate rafer when he tries to be something he is not , ie tmac but otherwise i am glad he is on our team
Tango - You should put this in some context, I assume but you don't mention it that this is a comparison to all NBA PGs and not both SGs and PGs combined. 29th in PPR sounds pretty bad, 29 out of 32? 29 out of 64? And whats your opinion based on your stat work, is Rafer fine or do we look for another PG this off season.
We might as well get over it with Skip because the Rockets will not change their team before the playoffs. If skip has a good series agains Deron and we advance, he'll be back but if we have another first round exit and he plays lousy, the Rockets brass will search high and low to replace him. He's had his moments this year and we need him to play a steady all-around game in order to be competitive. I think he'll play well down the stretch and in the playoffs. The key player for me is Mac because everybody sort of plays off him and his energy. If he's having a killer series, you know it will be infectious and you know Yao is going to bring it and so will Battier. Skip has to be steady and hit his open shots in order for the defense to honor him.
I've said all along that Stromile was a scrub and got bashed for it. I said Juwan should be upgraded, IF POSSIBLE, but if not then we can still win with him. I've maintained that Rafer is better for the team than Mike James. Having both James and Rafer would be good but if I had to choose I would always pick Rafer over James. The key to the Rockets success if TMac and Yao are playing at a high level TOGETHER. If that happens, our role players are good enough to fill their roles. If TMac and Yao can't get their act together, then the rest of the players on the team are irrelevant. No championship caliber teams ever win if their stars play like crap.
