Rockets Have the Top Two 4-Man Defensive Groups in the NBA

If Trae can be on the list ANYBODY can be on the list....even me! Lol

 

The best trio on the team with over 30mins is Brooks, Thompson and Sengun with an absurd 72.4 over 57mins. That beats the terror trio by 8.2.

The terror trio plus Sengun is +75.8 net rating with a defensive rating of 68, albeit in only 22mins.

 

The 4-man (or any number of man lineup other than 5) stats can be misleading and one always needs to dive into 5 man rotations to understand what is going on.

Rockets starting lineup played 150 minutes together. The next line up played 16 minutes. So any analysis based on these lineups has a lot of noise. But still there seems to be a pattern. Here are the 5 man lineups.

F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. HOU 10 150 112.6 106.3 6.2
D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson HOU 3 16 113.9 65.7 48.2
D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - T. Eason - A. Thompson HOU 5 16 152.9 77.1 75.8
J. Landale - J. Green - T. Eason - A. Thompson - R. Sheppard HOU 5 16 113.9 100.0 13.9
F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - J. Green - A. Sengun - T. Eason HOU 7 15 115.2 123.3 -8.2
F. VanVleet - D. Brooks - J. Green - J. Smith Jr. - A. Thompson HOU 5 14 53.6 100.0 -46.4

Out starting lineup is league leading in defensive rating with 106.3. The 4 man lineups in that tweet has 170 minutes, 150 of which come from this lineup. By looking at these lineups, you can see that the extra 20 minutes from those lineups is mainly played with replacing fvv by amen in the second lineup, and fvv and jabari by amen and tari in the 3rd lineup, both lineups having out of the world defensive ratings.

Curiously the lineup where tari replaces Jabari does not have good defensive rating. Too much of a small sample, but still suggests that replacing jabari is secondary to replacing fvv. Or if you want to replace Bari with Tari, you need to upgrade your guard defense as well. You can't survive with fvv & green on the perimeter and tari at the 4.

Overall, it looks like amen for fvv seems a good idea, as long as we are confident that his handles and playmaking will improve.

 

It's not. The only really surprising outlier is Atl, and that's because they are playing incredible defense aside from Trae. Dyson Daniels should be in the DPOY discussion.

 

God, how can you be so bad at reading any basic stat and spend this much time on basketball. Trae is not on the list, because this is not a list of players. It is a list of group of players, and yes it is a fact that C. Capela - T. Young - J. Johnson - D. Daniels - Z. Risacher has been the 3rd best defensive line-up in the nba so far. These stats are nothing but telling how many points they conceded.

 

Everybody knows Trae does not play defense. None! So, if this metric is saying that ge does.....its flawed.

It's just like someone is telling you the earth is flat but from everything you have seen tells you it's round. You can't believe everything you read.....TRUST WHAT YOU SEE

 

So, you're telling me you do not see TRAE'S name there in black and white?? If he is in a group, that means he is contributing, correct?

And if he is contributing, that means by those STATS he is playing defense, WHICH WE ALL KNOW HE IS NOT! So that means someone else is making up where he is not. Which means it does not make.him a good defender.

Same for Alpi, just because the stats say he is apart of a GROUP that plays good defense, does not mean that HE is a good defender.

STOP MAKING ROBIN INTO BATMAN!

 

It is very funny that people are saying "how many points does the other team score" is a flawed stat as if it's some advanced calculation that has flaws in it. Like how much more basic can you get? That's the entire game of basketball, scoring points. What else can defense be, if it's not "the other team isn't scoring a lot of points"??

 

Okay, I'll explain it to you like I explain it to a 5 year old. The stat (by itself) doesn't say that Trae is a good defender. But it says that as a group of players they had one of the best defenses in the nba. The stat doesn't say why this is happening and that's why the others are presenting evidence that other players are very good defenders (and you come to the same conclusion by your eyes).

In Alpis case, again the group of players plays good defense and by itself it doesn't mean he is a good defender. But with your guards being FVV and Green, you can't really claim Alpi is benefiting from great defense from guards. Or you can't show hustle stats of fvv or green or brooks to prove that they cover up for Alpi (like the case of Trae). In fact Alpi has the best stats in those categories, he is in a position to save others not the other way around. And when you replace fvv and green with good defenders like amen and tari, our defensive rating goes otherworldly good. But you replace Sengun, nothing like that happens, it actually gets worse. So unlike the case with Trae, the conclusion you came to with your eyes (or better with your belief) is not correct and not supported by any facts.

 

Not according to these expert Clutchfan haters.

 

Someone tell Ime Udoka, he acts like we're a bottom 5 defense sometimes.

 

lol way to sh*t on FVV and Green to prop Alpi up.

FVV and Green have been excellent defenders this season and our forwards have been elite. Jalen is the worst defender in this non-Alpi group and everyone is complimenting his defense since end of last season. Come on now. They absolutely deserve the credit. The team's defense is better than before and Alpi is not better. It's definitely the other guys doing that.

Udoka has built this team for the wing and POA defenders to rabidly and aggressively prevent penetration in order to reduce the pressure on Alpi. We're built around Alpi's weakness defensively. There's no shame in that, no need to hide it. This is what a professional team does, they maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses.

No shade on Alpi at all, just odd the double standard you brought to that argument. Hope it wasn't intended. It's exactly like Trae Young. The team hides its weakest defender by playing strong defenders around them.

 

how many four man lineups have we ran this year?

 

This is a really pointless stat. It doesn't say they're good defenders. So it just creates the illusion they're better than you think.

I'd like to like that Green is up there, but choosing the 4 that had the best net/output seems to be a recipe for leaving out the defender who had the hardest job of all. You can't really take from this stat that such and such is a good defender, except if you go back to applying your eye test. In which case, why bother with stats at all.

 

Maybe he'll understand better coming from you. I stated the same thing that as a group the defense is good but it doesn't mean that every player in that group is a good defender, i.e, Alpi and Trae.

And maybe that's why Ime is reluctant to play Alpi in the 4th Qtr, because by his standards, Alpi is not a good defender.

 

Trae Young being a member of any top 4 man defensive team means the other 3 guys are working their asses off.

 

Stupid question. What’s the point of 4-man lineup in BB? Seems not at all applicable.

 

He knows it, he said it himself that the stat doesn't say they're good defenders.

What I don't understand is why he then turned around and decided randomly that for Trae it's all because of his teammates but for Alpi it's more about Alpi. That's not the stats, that's just the subjective analysis.

 

The lineups are what they are but I would strongly dial back the implication that this is some vindication of Alpi as a defensive player just because he is in a lineup that is excellent defensively. After all, the Harden led Rockets had great 4 man offensive lineups that included PJ Tucker who we should all agree was never a good offensive player - but he played a role as a corner 3 specialist and was effective in that role. Houston is trying their best to switch to keep Alpi out of the action but his role in that scheme is while everyone else is chasing people through screens, Sengun has to get those boards and limit possessions - and he is doing it! Udoka's scheme(and Houston's army of switchable defenders) is why Alpi is able to be effective defensively and is also why his rebounds are up because that's his role in the possession. To me this data is just proving Udoka knows how to scheme to limit defensive liabilities that might doom Sengun in another context(like he still gets exposed in PnR coverage).

...also it's hard to make any sweeping conclusion about the effectiveness of our defensive units when 7 of the 11 games we have played so far this year have been against the very worst teams last year. The data is going to be heavily skewed by the early season strong of schedule right now. Let's at least get 1/4 or even 1/3 through the season before we make any sweeping statements.