APBRmetrics

[tisbee]

The Rockets need 4 players to be a legit contenders:
A PF who can rebound and play D on the West's bigs,
A vet PG to settle team down when other team makes a run,
Bench firepower-someone who can fill it up in a hurry,
Bench playmaker-someone who can create shots for others.
The Scola/Butler steal potentially takes care of the PF spot.
Mike James should handle the bench firepower issue.
The drafting of Brooks will give the Rockets an energy scorer off the bench when James' contract expires.
So far so good. Then Morey committed a massive blunder in signing Francis-I would much rather have seen that money thrown at Eddie Jones. Francis has potential to disrupt team chemistry(coming betwen Yao and T-Mac)and will grind the motion offense to a halt w/his over-dribbling and poor shot selection.
The lack of a PG who will just run the offense instead of jacking up shots as soon as w/in range will cause problems down the road.(Morey wants to use Spurs as a model.Well look at their back-up points-Avery Johnson and Jaques Vaugh. Tough,defensive players who look to run offense,not shoot.)
The Rockets are desperately thin at the wing spots. Their three reserves(Head,Snyder,Wells)are short(6'6" tallest),can't create for others,can't take the ball on the wing and get their own shot and none are defensive stoppers. Wells is being counted on as Sixth man but his past health problems(hasn't player over 70 games in 4 yrs)make it unlikely he will get thru the season,even assuming he shows up in shape this yr. Snyder reportedly had the same problems picking up JVG's system as he did Sloan's,so I doubt he's going to become a fav of Adelman. Head is willing,but most opposing SG's just shoot over him. Francis got run out of NY-and to a degree Orlando-because he was a disaster at SG.

I think Morey made a good start,then stumbled badly w/Francis signing.If he can find a solid rotational wing I'd say he hada heckuva good offseason.

[Mountain]

I agree that Francis is not my ideal lead playmaker for them. Francis would help fill bench scorer role better to me than lead playmaker. I think Adelman is more likely to use him as bench scorer than lead playmaker but we'll see what is tried and what works or doesnt soon enough. Perhaps within Alston/Brooks/Head/James/Francis and bigger wings (Battier, Snyder, Harris, Novak, etc.) Adelman finds enough to fill 3 of the 4 of the roles you outlined. The assignments might not be clearcut and consistently handled, he may have to juggle a lot- and that is not ideal / worrisome.

[anarcholis]

I am not skilled with translating stats from Europe, or adjusting for age or any of that, but I can offer some analysis on what the Rockets players did last year, and what changes to the roster might mean. One more note, all cited data is from last season.

First I'd like to say that Chuck Hayes is vastly underrated in my opinion. People with his skill set are not greatly valued by systems like PER, and his contributions don't show up in the box score really. So how do you quantify what he is doing for his team? He is likely his team's best defender. According to 82games.com, the Rockets allow 96 points/100poss while he is on the floor (the best in the league for any player over 103 minutes) and a whopping 105 when he is off the floor. Ok, so his replacement was Juwan Howard, that might have made him look good. Well lets see how the Rockets did while other players were on/off the floor:

Hayes 96/105
McGrady 101/101
Ming 100/102
Battier 100/104
Alston 100/104
Howard 105/97
Mutumbo 99/102
Head 104/97

We can see from this that Chuck had the biggest effect of anyone on team D for one of the best defensive teams in the league. When he was off the floor, Houston was at its worst.

I'm not sure what Scola can do, but one can presume that if he just takes Howard's minutes, he won't be hurting the team's defensive abilities too much since Howard was pretty bad. As long as Hayes still gets the same playing time (along with Battier and Alston) the Rockets should be solid on D again.

Furthermore, in defense of Chuck, lets look at his offense. If we define uses as shots taken, shooting fouls, and turnovers lost (this is just a simple metric, lets keep in mind), then the average points/use in the league last year was 0.944 (242871 points / 257359 shots taken+shooting fours+turnovers lost). Lets look at Houston's offensive figures:

Hayes 1.009
McGrady 0.916
Ming 1.031
Battier 1.082
Alston 0.882
Howard 0.922
Mutumbo 1.022
Head 1.001

We can see from this that Chuck isn't really hurting the Rockets that much offensively. Granted he doesn't generate many shots, but on the other hand, thats not really his job. He was 9th in the league in offensive rebounding rate, and 22nd overall (for players with 500 minutes) from the power forward spot. He has the best defensive on-court points/possession. What else exactly do the Rockets want from a power forward? He's a perfect bit piece on a championship team.

We can see, however, that Howard was dragging them down both offensively with inefficient shooting and defensively as well. Replacing him with just more Chuck would likely improve the Rockets a little bit. If Scola turns out to be a decent scoring option, then having him split minutes with an excellent rebounder/defender like Hayes will give the Rockets alot more from the PF position (Howard played 53% of the minutes there last year).

So if they're not looking to improve the power forward position, what are they trying to improve? Well their offense. From the looks of that points per Use data, it appears that the real problem is that the two people that Houston expects to make plays are both greatly inefficient: McGrady and Alston. McGrady, I think, was greatly overrated last year. He was not only below league average in points/use, but he was way behind other star wings (data calculated from doug's stats):

McGrady .916
Manu Ginobli 1.073
Kobe Bryant 1.054
Paul Pierce 1.027
Vince Carter 1.018
Carmelo Anthony .992
LeBron James .975

I conclude that the problem with the Rockets offense is that it revolves around a very inefficient player. I don't think an argument can be made that McGrady's inefficiency is a result of poor teammates when a.) he has Yao Ming on his team, b.) Kobe, LeBron and Pierce don't have second options who are nearly as prolific or efficient scorers as Yao is (Jefferson isn't that good, neither are Big Z or Odom), and c.) McGrady is significantly worse than any of these other stars.

An ancillary problem with the Rockets is that their other play-making option (Rafer Alston) is even worse than McGrady. But there are replacements on the way in for Alston, lets see how their last seasons stacked up in the two stats we were looking at:

Alston 100/104 .882
Mike James 109/107 .924
Steve Francis 109/110 .922

We can see that both these point guards were significantly better offensively than Alston, and better than McGrady to boot. Defensively, both players were on fairly putrid teams, so their numbers are much worse. But neither player saw their team get significantly better when they got off the floor, so there is no statistical indication that they are horrible defenders (more on that later).

Lets dig a little deeper, comparing the rebound and usage rate of these players:

Alston 5.3 18.9
Mike James 4.7 19.7
Steve Francis 7.5 19.4

Its pretty much a wash here, except for Francis' good rebounding numbers. So the indication is that playing either of these two new acquisitions in Alston's time will improve the Rockets offensively. In a more subjective analysis, I think that Francis has the potential to be really good for the Rockets. He's a perfect candidate for a Randy Moss like rebirth: there is nothing like the embarrassment of being bought out and cut as if he were completely useless to motivate a player who still has some significant athletic gifts. If he can accept being a third offensive option, he could also probably become a great defender at either guard spot.

Furthermore, another hidden benefit of having both Francis and James on the roster is that Luther Head can find his way to the bench. Sitting will improve the Rockets by subtraction: Head provides nothing except three point shooting, and he isn't even that efficient at that (compare his 1.001 points/use with Battier's 1.082). His defense is atrocious, pairing with Howard to be the only soft spots in an otherwise rock-solid Rockets D. If Francis played at 2, this would help counteract the reduced defensive ability of having James or Scola in the game (assuming Scola is a bad defender...I'm just assuming he is really).

So whats the outlook for Houston? Their offense should be improved by replacing inefficient Howard and Alston with more efficient James, Francis, and (hopefully) Scola. Removing Head and Howard should improve their defense and at least counteract reduced playing time for the defensively efficient Alston. I'd say the GM has improved this team across the board.

But as for Houston's long term hopes, they can only go so far as their star offensive weapons take them. McGrady is an inefficient scorer, but at least he can distribute the ball some: This is crucial, because Yao is only as good as the position he gets the ball in. Some 67% of his shots were assisted (according to 82games.com) and I can anecdotally confirm that without McGrady getting him the ball in the series against Utah, Yao would not have been effective at all. Even Mehmet Okur was pushing him away from the rim with physical D, and Yao doesn't seem to have much of a jump shooting game from 12 feet. Hopefully, James and Francis will try to dig up some point guard skills to take some of the burden off of McGrady's shoulders and make Yao a more effective weapon.

Unless McGrady becomes a more efficient scorer and Francis and James can feed Yao more effectively than Alston could, I don't see Houston having the offensive firepower to take on the elite of the West. In a deep conference like we should see again this year, the Rockets could be headed for another first round exit.

Wow that was long...what just happened to the last hour?

[thref23]

[thref23]

[Special K]

[deepak_e]

[John Hollinger]

Hayes's PER was 13.95 last year and 18.07 the year before, so I don't think it's missing too much ...

T-Mac was so inefficient because he had to jack up so many bad shots with 2 on the clock. That was because nobody else (besides Yao) could create shots. Watch that Utah Game 7 again -- they were leaving Rafer and Hayes wide open the whole game. McGrady led the league in Usage Rate ... that should never, ever happen.

[bchaikin]

T-Mac is good, but if he's leading the league in Usage Rate something is very wrong.

T-Mac was so inefficient because he had to jack up so many bad shots.... McGrady led the league in Usage Rate ... that should never, ever happen.

here is mcgrady's career overall shooting prior to 06-07, and his 06-07 shooting:

ScFG%--eFG%--2pFG%--3pFG%--FT%
--.517----.475----.464-----.344----.758-----97-98 thru 05-06
--.507----.474----.466-----.331----.707-----06-07

i don't see a whole lot of difference here, except for perhaps his FT shooting which was the worst its been in 7 seasons. his effective FG% in 06-07 was virtually identical to his career eFG% coming into the season, so i don't see how this is inefficient, unless you compare his eFG% to the league average eFG% in 06-07 which was 49.6%, or over 2% better. mcgrady's touches/min were a career high in 06-07, but his 2nd highest touches/min came in 02-03 when he had his best season shooting, and his career best eFG%, so i don't see any correlation between higher touches/min and poorer shooting here...

lebron james and mcgrady are similar players. james had his highest touches/min in 05-06, and also shot the ball at a career best rate. why would you want to take the ball out of the hands of a player like mcgrady? his rate of turnovers per touch has been lower than that of the league average PG for the past 8 seasons, and in 06-07 was similar to that of PGs like steve nash and jason kidd. were there better overall shooters on the rockets in 06-07 than mcgrady? sure - but the numbers also show mcgrady passing more than he ever had in his career last season...

[Mike G]

[Mountain]

deepak_e

PostPosted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:11 pm

"...John Hollinger gave the following projections in an ESPN Insider column posted June 29, 2007 (source):

Luis Scola (17.1 pts/40. 10.2 reb/40, 50.4 FG percent, 16.27 PER)

And if his highly touted "intangibles" translate as well, that looks pretty good to me.

I'd be more concerned about his defense than the rebounding. Persistent foul trouble will probably be an issue (for both him and Chuck Hayes)."

Where does Scola stand right now? Pt/40- close to 20 Rebs/40 close to 10. FG% 54%. PER 15.5.

I'd say that was pretty close and pretty good for John Hollinger.

On fouls he fouls a bit more than once every 8 minutes, slightly ahead of Hayes. That was a good call be deepak.

On defense Scola himself has done pretty well.

I previously discussed what it would take to make him worth his full cost all things considered and there is room to debate return on investment but Scola has been a pretty good pick-up.