The easiest way would be to take whatever stats you want post and put code tags around it: Code: ... your stats [/[size=2]code[/size]] Alternatively, you could paste the table into a text editor and replace all spaces with [color=blue]&[size=2]nbsp;[/size][/color]. Then paste all of that back in here, and make the font monospace with [FONT=Courier New] your stats [/[size=2]FONT[/size]]. [quote]I find it odd how Yao's usage % is higher than Hakeem in his prime. I didn't think he had the ball more often than the Dream, but some stats might be flawed. Not too sure about this one.[/QUOTE] Yao averaged 18.2 fga, 9.2 fta, and 3.7 turnovers per 36 minutes in that season. That's a lot of plays. Imagine, the fga and fta would account for about 22.2 shots per 36 minutes, and then add 3.7 turnovers to that and you get a total of 25.9 plays used up per 36 minutes. Let's take Hakeem's prime to be the 94/95 season. That year, he averaged 19.5 fga, 6.8 fta, and 3.0 turnovers per 36 minutes. That would be about 22.5 shots and 3 turnovers, or around 25.5 plays used up per 36 minutes with shots and turnovers. Further, if you take into account that the Rockets back then played at a fast pace, there were [i]more[/i] possessions per minute. So, adjusting for that, the difference between the two is even more. It gives an idea, but you're right its not a perfect measure of how often a player gets the ball in a scoring position. Turnovers aren't necessarily committed with the ball for instance (e.g. moving screens). Also, USG% does not account for passing out of double teams in any way. In an indirect way to take that into account would be to include assists some how.
That's nice and all, but the team needs to know down the stretch that we have to go to Yao. Most times we do. But sometimes we forget that and Yao spends the 24 seconds setting screens up at the top of the key. Down the stretch in a close game, it needs to be Yao more often than not. No one else is dependable enough down the stretch to use extensively in a close game.
Oddly enough, Yao's career usage% is just barely behind Hakeem's career usage% Yao: 26.9 Dream: 27.1 And at this point in their careers (7 years) Yao is probably used more than Hakeem was. Yao already has a 33.5 and 29.9. At the same point in Hakeem's career, his 2 highest were 28.2 and 28.1. He didn't approach 30 until his 10th season.
Thanks as always for the great stats, durvasa. Just for comparison, I went to basketball-reference and got the USG% of Rockets players who are playing meaningful minutes this season (around 20 minutes or more): Code: [B]Player[/B] [B]USG%[/B] Yao Ming 26.7% Ron Artest 24.1% Von Wafer 23.5% Aaron Brooks 23.0% Luis Scola 19.5% Carl Landry 18.2% Kyle Lowry 16.3% Shane Battier 9.5% Tracy McGrady was at 24.5% and Rafer Alston at 19.2%. And since Yao's 2006-07 season came up, here are the numbers for that team: Code: [B]Player[/B] [B]USG%[/B] Tracy McGrady 35.0% Yao Ming 33.5% Bonzi Wells 23.7% Rafer Alston 19.4% Juwan Howard 18.9% Luther Head 18.6% Shane Battier 12.2% Chuck Hayes 11.9% Dikembe Mutombo 8.3% It looks like there's noticeably more balance this season, while the JGV team was pretty skewed toward our two stars.
Well yeah, that's kinda' what happens when your 3rd best options are Rafer Alston and Juwon Howard. Remember those days? LOLs
Didn't we already have a similar discussion on this already? I'm tired of hearing about it. If he's so under used then why are we passing him the ball all the time. This is stupid...
I agree with this article. In general the rockets want Yao to have the ball in crunch time. But there are some difficulties with Yao in crunch time, when the opponents play more agressive. 1: Fronting Yao is an easy way to refuse him the ball. 2: Opponent double Yao when he gets the ball (and sometimes before that), so in that case another rocket player is open, and should have an easy shot. 3: Yao has difficulties with double teams (which results in turnovers). 4: Yao is not great in keeping his man behind him when he gets the ball passed (which results in turnovers). We have been hearing for years we are underutilizing Yao. First Francis and mobley didn't want to pass to Yao, when they got traded T-mac and Alston didn't want to pass the ball to Yao and now Artest and Brooks do not want to pass the ball to Yao. Maybe it is better to look more at Yao. The weakpoints of Yao are especially noticable in the crunchtime when the opponents are more agressive. I believe we should use Yao in the crunch, but when he is double teamed we should be able to use the free space we get because of him.
Surprised nobody posted this up: it's Jerome Solomon's response to that NBA.com article. http://blogs.chron.com/jeromesolomon/2009/03/yao_mings_new_pr_man_says_give.html Some highlights: "Since Moses Malone won an MVP with the Rockets (his second) in 1981-82, six players who played mostly in the post have won MVPs. Here is the percentage of their respective teams' shots they took. (No need to factor free throws and turnovers or offensive rebounds, as each guy led his team in shots.) "Kevin Garnett, Timberwolves (2003-04) ......24.5 percent. Tim Duncan, Spurs (2002-03) ... 22.1 percent. Shaquille O'Neal, Lakers (1999-00) ... 24.3 percent. David Robinson, Spurs (1994-95) ... 22.2 percent. Hakeem Olajuwon, Rockets (1993-94) ... 25.1 percent. Moses Malone, Rockets (1981-82) ... 24.7 percent. "Now, anyone willing to debate whether Yao Ming's 15.8-percent of the total number of shots taken by the Rockets isn't just a little low, it's a lot low?" And: "Yao, the All-Star, best, most unstoppable big man in the game, ranks only 29th in the league in offensive opportunities? And you're bragging that the thought he doesn't get the ball enough is a myth? I should ask for the case to be dismissed right there."
I know I'm stating the obvious here,but we are only going to be able to go as far as Yao Ming can carry us. He is no Dream, but he needs to play at a high level and more aggressively in order for us to make any headway in the playoffs provided if we don't collapse down the stretch. It's on him as well as the the rest of the team to execute on both ends on the floor, especially in the clutch. It's time for him to become the leader on the team. He has the ability to step up, but I don't think he is ready to take up that role yet. Edit: Sorry for putting this in the wrong thread.
For Yao to start putting up MVP-like numbers, the Rockets would have to go back to the "dump it into Yao and let him go to work" mode from the 2006-07 season. From what I know of his coaching tactics, Adelman isn't about to start doing that. OTOH Yao taking 15.8 % of the total shots is not by design, either. It also has to do with lack of efficiency in the offense and the lack of assertiveness of Yao. If Adelman's offense were running properly, I believe Yao would definitely have more of the total shots. But several more percentage points, and not near those of the MVP-winning bigs.
The one thing that really stood out in that list is how much better they are than their teammates. Even Shaq, despite having Kobe, was on teams that generally had role players who could not create shots. Certainly nowhere near the depth that the current Rockets team have. Solomon's big mistake is thinking Yao's at their level of unstoppable-ness. In today's age of zone defense, NO big man can truly dominate the way they used to.
Brooks, Artest, Wafer, Lowry are all guys who can get into the lane and finish. I can also throw in Scola and Landry because both can take their man one on one into the paint and score. When I said "alot" I meant alot relative to past rockets teams. Since Yao has been here I can't recall having a roster with as many scoring options as we have now.
The irony here is he bashes Jason as a PR guy putting up misleading stats, but there are some serious flaws in the stats he's giving us. Those percentages are taking player FGA for the season, and dividing it by team FGA. There are two things wrong with this approach. First, FGA is not an appropriate way of describing "shots". How about shot attempts that result in a shooting foul, but no field goal attempt in the boxscore? Further, and more importantly, your total FGA is a function not only of how often you shot, but also how often you're on the court. Solomon chose player MVP seasons, and by doing so he happened to pick players that were on the court a lot for their respective teams. A quick rundown: player season GmPlyd GmMiss MP team_min %oncourt Moses Malone 81/82 81 1 42.0 3956 86.0% Hakeem Olajuwon 93/94 80 2 41.0 3956 82.9% Kevin Garnett 03/04 82 0 39.4 3951 81.8% Tim Duncan 02/03 81 1 39.3 3966 80.3% Shaquille O'Neal 99/00 79 2 40.0 3961 79.8% David Robinson 94/95 81 1 38.0 3971 77.5% Yao Ming 08/09 67 4 33.3 3433 65.0% Yao has played in 65% of the Rockets minutes thus far. No one else on the list has played in less than 77% of his team's minutes. Obviously the less often you're on the court, the less often you'll shoot as a percentage of your team's total shots. The more accurate metric he should have used is the following: %shots = (1/%oncourt) * (FGA + .44*FTA) /(TmFGA + .44*TmFTA) The .44*FTA term roughly accounts for shooting foul shot attempts that don't register as a field goal attempt. Here are the numbers for this: Player season %oncourt FGA FTA Shots TmFGA TmFTA TmShots %shot Shaquille O'Neal 09/00 79.9% 1665 824 2028 6836 2368 7878 32.2% David Robinson 94/95 77.4% 1487 847 1860 6687 2487 7781 30.9% Hakeem Olajuwon 93/94 82.8% 1694 542 1932 6733 1978 7603 30.7% Moses Malone 81/82 85.9% 1822 827 2186 7366 2225 8345 30.5% Kevin Garnett 03/04 81.8% 1611 465 1816 6571 1743 7338 30.3% Tim Duncan 02/03 80.2% 1392 634 1671 6297 2194 7262 28.7% Yao Ming 08/09 64.9% 894 397 1069 5642 1692 6386 25.8% Yao still trails, but the gap isn't nearly as much as Solomon's numbers would suggest. And we can add on some other factors which Solomon glosses over: 1. The rules have changed to make it much more difficult to feed post players 2. Yao can not step out and face the basket with the ball like all those guys (other than Shaq) 3. Yao is not Shaq <hr> Out of curiosity, I thought I'd show %shot, as calculated above, over Hakeem's and Yao's careers. Hakeem Olajuwon Yao Ming Season Age %oncourt %shot Season Age %oncourt %shot 1984-85 22 73.5% 24.2% 2002-03 22 59.8% 22.0% 1985-86 23 62.4% 26.1% 2003-04 23 67.5% 25.9% 1986-87 24 69.8% 27.3% 2004-05 24 61.6% 26.6% 1987-88 25 71.8% 26.8% 2005-06 25 49.1% 30.7% 1988-89 26 76.2% 29.1% 2006-07 26 40.9% 33.2% 1989-90 27 78.9% 28.4% 2007-08 27 51.8% 26.5% 1990-91 28 51.9% 25.2% 2008-09 28 64.9% 25.8% 1991-92 29 66.3% 26.5% 1992-93 30 82.0% 29.5% 1993-94 31 82.8% 30.7% 1994-95 32 72.3% 33.0% 1995-96 33 70.6% 32.5% 1996-97 34 71.8% 30.7% 1997-98 35 41.2% 23.7% 1998-99 36 73.9% 26.5% 1999-00 37 26.4% 23.4% 2000-01 38 39.0% 22.7%
I don't agree with this statement Shaq: Kobe, Derek Fisher, Glen Rice, Ron Harper Dream: Cassell, Drexler, Maxwell, Duncan: Ginobili, Parker, Robinson, Elliott, Stephen Jackson Garnett: Cassell, Spree, Hudson Moses: Calvin, Rudy, Bobby Joe, Dunleavy, Leavell Lets not make excuses for Yao. All these guys except for Garnett would totally punish teams for single teaming them and often score even when doubled and triple teamed. If Dream or Shaq got the coverage Yao got, he would go off for 40 a night. Yao is just not good enough to carry a team by himself. He is not Shaq, Dream, Duncan or Robinson. He is not even Chris Webber. Yao is a borderline dominant player. He is good enough where you have to double him sometimes, but not good where teams don't have an answer for him. The problem with Yao is that in most nights, there is an answer for him, which is the reason why Adelman is doing the right thing by balancing out the attack. You can't put all you eggs in one basket when the basket can't handle it.
I whole-heartedly agree that the team has to do a better job of getting the ball to Yao, particularly AB and Ron Artest. Too many instances, Yao was opened and was demanding for the ball, the two just ignored him. Of course, once he has the ball, Yao should be confident enough to shoot instead of pass it back to someone else.
Is Yao under utilised? YES. Do I care what haters think? NO. Yao just has to lead his team to some post-season success to shut these haters out. When Yao came into this league, 70% of the people were saying he was going to be bust. Debating with the haters then was like talking to a concrete wall. And that hasn't changed a bit. Yao can go on to win a ring or 6 but these haters will continue to hound him and the sad thing is some of the biggest haters are supposedly rockets supporters. They concentrate on his so called weaknesses and refuse to see his greatness. There is really no point in rolling out statistics when you know Yao could be better utilised and relied more offensively at key moments and you can see that every game. Just keep it simple. Yao has to have that ball in the key moments. Yao has to get more shots for sure and that partly lies on Yao himself (being aggressive). I really believe Rockets will be a better team if they do that.
i see some good discussions going on here, but i don't see no one is seeking excuses for yao. and what you described, yao often does as well. since yao came into the league, the rules have changed to make it more difficult for post players, not the other way around. i actually think if akeem was doubled before he got the ball, it would be more difficult for him. i also think if shaq wasn't allowed to bulldoze his defenders that often, his production would've been lower. just to be fair.
