:grin: Spoiler I hope you are referencing this commercial. <iframe width="854" height="510" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5p1Gs3vT1vA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As I am also a big baseball analytics fan, so I'm making a baseball analogy here. In baseball, analytics people tend to dismiss hot starts because they reason, "If this hot streak happened anytime BUT the start of the season, would anyone notice?" If the Rockets in game 6 made the run in the 3rd quarter, would anyone think much of it? Clippers made their run in the 3rd, Rockets in the 4th. So the narrative became the Clippers were better, but the Rockets got lucky. Yet if we reverse that, Rockets go on big run, Clippers come back, but fall short, the end result is still the same but the narrative will be different. The whole idea of having a 48 minute game and 7 possible games is to minimize the randomness that always happen within games. Just like 162 game baseball season filter out the hot starts and in-season hot streaks so that the superior teams tend to win at the end. It would be one thing if the Rockets won 4 close games and Clippers won 3 blowouts. That IMO you can at least make some case that Clippers should have won. But the games were basically all 10+ point affairs. The only reasonn there's a narrative is the timing of those scores, not the scores themselves.
In the NBA barring injuries almost every time? If you can't win in a 7 game series then your team isn't better.
If a seven-game series doesn't decide the best team, then NBA championships are meaningless. And football only uses one-game series! What a joke that must be for Zach Slowe.
Don't for get the other division. We played Portland and OKC 3 times. Clippers played Minny and OKC 3 times. So we got to play Minny while they got to play Portland an extra game. Like I said, it's only 4 games out of 82 games, less then 5% of the schedule is different, hardly a significant factor. Conference teams pretty much have identical SoS.
Depth and Defense. That makes us better than the Clippers. I lost a lot of respect for Lowe with his comments. He clearly does no appreciate defense in the NBA. We are hands-down the better defensive team Weird how Soccer and Football fans understand the importance of defense in the definition of "better team", but even media people in the NBA can't grasp it. Instead people say, "Clips are a more cohesive unit." That is only true on offense, when they are at their best. They are NOT more cohesive than we are on defense when we are at our best.
Because it's not based on fact, it's based on opinion. These people cannot deal with reality but worst of all they probably lost a TON of money betting on the game and don't look very smart when they got the answer wrong after beating their chest til they were red in the face about how (Cough-cough PSYCHIC!) I mean right they were before. These people know less about the Rockets than the young kids on Clutchfans but since they probably know 1 thing more than the average non NBA fan, people still look to them for their opinions. They are just a waste of space and time.
Lowe doesn't think we are the better defensive team. He harps all the time about how our defense is bad. He also doesn't like Dwight Howard. On the radio he ripped us for losing Parsons. He has ripped Harden many times. He even complained about us sending gifts to MVP voters like virtually every other team. He knows X's and O's reasonably well but that is about it....
But that is contradictory to the media's (and Lowe's) claim that they ran out of gas. The larger N is favors the Rockets, because we are deeper. What you are trying to say is in a simulator where everyone is always rested and at 100%, that a larger N will likely eliminate emotion, fockass, and hustle. But that is a simulator. In real life, Rockets always win with a larger N, because of depth. Don't be ridiculous.
We had too many regular season injuries to realize our best defense until now. Lowe is only talking about last your and our injury plagued regular season. But us Rockets fans saw too much good defense this year (and what Harden can do when fockassed), and know how good the midseason additions were, to be behind times wrt our defense.. Clips might be a better offensive team, but we are clearly a better playoff, intensity defensive team ... because of both our talent and depth...and we are missing two of our best defensive players.
Good for him; he has an opinion and a stupid Twitter picture. The Rockets are going to the Western Conference Finals, and the Clippers are done until next season. What matters? Winning a series or Zach Lowe's opinion on a podcast?
Let's agree the winner is better. Their stars may be shinier and they may be more talent on paper, but that doesn't consider about mental toughness, playoff is a grinding test, plus their 2, 3 and benches are much weaker than us.
The Rockets are OBVIOUSLY better than the Clippers. Look at which team won more quarters over the course of the series: (Rockets - Clippers) Game 1: 2-2 Game 2: 3-1 Game 3: 1-3 Game 4: 1-3 Game 5: 3-1 Game 6: 2-2 Game 7: 3-1 Totals: 15-13 Houston won more quarters. Apart from a brief spree at home in game , and a big second half in games 1 and 4, and in the first half of game 6, the Clippers were getting routed. Houston never trailed the Clippers in game 7. Game 5 was a procession. Houston was +10 for the series overall. Essentially the Clippers had 2 good games at home, and 2 good half games. Fittingly they won 3. Dunno how that makes them better???
I just listened to the Lowe podcast. What he said wasn't unreasonable, but were I in a podcast with him I would counter with these points. 1. Based on what we just saw, it's certainly ok to claim that LA was the better team, but you would have to add the caveat, "in an ideal situation". As in, if you gave each team infinity days of rest and made them as healthy as reasonably possible with their currently constructed rosters. Over time, it was clear that Paul and Griffin and especially Redick could not maintain their early series quality of play with the minutes they were getting. 2. Having only "6.5 NBA quality players" counts as a knock on the team. Barnes Crawford and Redick losing their shots is not a case of bad luck; it is regression to the mean in a situation where you have to play a bunch of minutes. Again, fatigue is a real factor to consider here. When you lose your legs, your shot is the first thing to go. 3. Shelbourne brought up the good point of "letting the Rockets breathe" when the series went late. But what really happened was that the series went late, period. Perhaps some teams are just better the more times they get to match up against a single team. The Rockets seem like one of those teams. It comes down to composure and mental makeup, kinda like in boxing during the late rounds. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. 4. Let me just put it this way: Blake Griffin does not do well after getting punched in the mouth. You could pin their shortcomings on a variety of reasons, but a recurring theme I've found, both in the San Antonio series and in this one, is that in close games late, Blake Griffin simply fails to show up. Now in the Rockets series there were no close games to test that against, so you just have to look at the late game situations or the critical moments that defined a game which later got out of hand. Who took and missed the most shots during the Game 6 collapse? That's right, the heretofore unstoppable Blake Griffin. And who was it that was wide open with his favorite shot available in the last minute of game 7, looking to dump it off any way possible? Yep. Same guy. I think the reputation will start to build if he keeps this up, that he is someone you can go at and put pressure on when the going gets tough. Because just as JVG said on the radio this morning, the NBA is full of "fake competitors", and right now Blake Griffin is one of them. (P.S. Corey Brewer is a real competitor. Bad efficiency numbers across the board, but who keeps showing up time after time when it's close? Who takes the ball to the rack at his own peril no matter the situation? Brewhound. That's who.)
this really is where the argument finishes.. i don't really give a flying ***** about the media, it's us against the world.
Damn you are on a roll lately. This post is 100% true and an accurate application of statistics to the real world, which is incredibly important when making any sort of analysis.
