Just an observation. Check out the FT shooting for each of our guys for last year (2008 for Yao). First, the top 9 rotation guys: Martin - .876 Lee - .869 Yao - .829 Miller - .827 Lowry - .827 Brooks - .822 Scola - .779 Budinger - .770 Battier - .726 Then the ones who'll pick up the rest of the minutes: Patterson - .692 Hill - .676 Jeffries - .625 Hayes - .545 Our top NINE players range from above average to exceptional at shooting FTs. Combine that with the outstanding ability to draw fouls of Martin, Yao and Lowry, and you've got a legitimate HUGE weapon with which to club teams into submission. Sure, it's not as sexy as some other weapons, but late in each quarter when we're in the bonus, the Rox are going to have a decided advantage. Not to mention the fact that racking up fouls might put some key opponent players on the bench by the end of the game.
That's okay. Our guys won't get to the free throw line enough to make a difference anyway. You know how the refs conspire against us.
Career FT% is probably a more stable indicator: Martin - .856 Lee - .854 Brooks - .840 Yao - .832 Miller - .803 Lowry - .770 Budinger - .770 Battier - .749 Scola - .738 Hill - .676 Jeffries - .582 Hayes - .568
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=191419 hahaha clearly i agree! hopefully your thread will get more attention than mine because we truly have a huge advantage over most teams in the league with this. namely that our players who shoot such a high percentage are fantastic at getting to the line.
Ding....ding......ding! With those guys drawing fouls, we'll be in the bonus late in the 4th quarter pretty much every night. Pick your closer... FT% Martin - .856 Lee - .854 Brooks - .840 Yao - .832 Miller - .803 Lowry - .770 Budinger - .770 Battier - .749 Scola - .738
I wouldn't imagine Brooks has a higher FT % than Yao. Interesting. Quick sweep this information under the rug! No one must know!!!
How many free throws do Durant and Lebron get every game? How many free throws did the Lakers get in game 7 against the Celtics? Getting to the line is incredibly important.
Better yet, most of these players got to FT line a lot. Both Yao and Martin got about 5 a games, Brooks about 3-4 a game. They will get the opponents in penalty AND foul trouble pretty quickly.
It's not so much a reliance on the whistle to score. It's more about making the other team really want to avoid fouling us, knowing we'll hit about 80%. This just makes defenses tentative when guarding us. Our guys can be that much more aggressive driving the lane or posting up. This is also one of those advantages that doesn't matter if the other teams know--they can't do anything about our free throw shooting anyway. Actually, it could be more effective if they know that we're really good at getting to the stripe and hitting them since it'd affect their defensive aggressiveness.
this isnt really a secret. morey has said many times that the keys to winning are rebounds, free throws, and turnovers. morey stated that the lowry and even martin acquisitions were partly inspired by both players abilities to get to the line and take advantage of it.
That formula sounds exactly like the one used by this year's NCAA champs. Short on talent, they mastered those three parts of the game and little else. The only elements I would add to that are: -Good 3pt shooting -Great paint defense Looking at this year's Rockets, I would say we have the ability to do all those things above, the primary question to me is rebounding. Will Yao, Miller, Scola, Hayes be athletic enough to grab a decent amount of rebounds offensive and defensive? Probably not. Which is why I'm hoping one of Patterson or Hill really stands out in that regard before the season begins. More likely Patterson than Hill.
I agree w/ you here. It's always good to have an athletic bigman to grab boards and get weakside blocks. Hill showed some real tenacity to go along with his length. If he can do those two things well, I'd like to see him win 10-15 min of PT. Maybe if Patterson does those things better, he can take those minutes.
