Rockets' "Young Talent" Revealed

Like I said, teams that win a lot have more wins to parcel out, so it’s possible that players on those teams are being overrated while players on bad teams are being underrated.

Specific, on-court situations are harder to pin down. Win Shares tends to be pretty consistent for most players, and when it’s not it usually demonstrates a big change in the player. So, for instance, Z-Bo went from being a total stiff on the court (according to B-Ref and everyone but Isiah Thomas) in ‘09 to being an all-star caliber player in 2010 and 2011. Why is that? Win shares basically sees his improved efficiency and sees a much-improved player. That’s not much different from the conventional answer, which is that he’s working harder, being smarter, and shooting more accurately.

Conversely, you can look at Ariza and see a huge decline. When he left LA for Houston (and now NOLA), we saw a big decline in offensive production. Most people would say that was because he was surrounded by Kobe, Gasol, and Odom in LA, while in Houston he was surrounded by Brooks, Scola, and Battier (and then Martin). But if I recall, most people predicted that he was going to drop off in three point shooting, but that has actually stayed pretty consistent since that last year in LA. What’s different is that he is shooting more in the midrange and isn’t getting to the rim as effectively, so his overall efficiency has declined enormously. Is that moving from LA to two worse teams? Maybe, but he was arguably even worse in NOLA than he was with the Rockets, and there he had the best point guard in the world helping him out. I think whatever is wrong with Trevor lately has a lot more to do with him than the teams around him. It’s possible that he needed Kobe to spread the floor for him to get to the rim at all, but he didn’t need that while he was in Orlando.

Nene’s situation complex, too. As you point out, Melo was on the Nuggets, and so were guys like Tyson Chandler and Chauncey Billups. Those were teams that won between 50 and 54 games for the last three seasons. So there’s more wins there than on, say, a team like the Nets. But it’s interesting to note that Melo isn’t regarded by Win Shares as the best player on those teams. For the ‘09 Nuggets, that’s Billups, and for the ‘10 and ’11 Nuggets it was Nene (Melo only spent part of the year with the team, but his per-game Win Shares numbers wouldn’t have made up for Nene’s advantage).

Melo isn’t really loved by the various advanced metrics out there. +/- systems are different about that, but +/- is also highly variable from year to year and while it’s clear that teams use the info (one of the more prominent internet proponents of them was actually hired by the Rockets a few years ago, for instance), it’s not clear how the teams’ proprietary info differs from ours.

Anyways, Melo isn’t liked by either Win Shares or WP48. He’s a very one-dimensional, relatively inefficient scorer. Conventional eyes look at him and see someone you can rely upon to put up big numbers and lead your team in scoring, but efficiency numbers look at him and show a guy who dominates the ball and doesn’t justify it. The arguments about usage (how often a player uses a team’s possessions) vs. efficiency are pretty roundabout at this point. We’ve seen that you can’t just throw a bunch of high-efficiency types out on the court and expect them to win, but we also know that Melo isn’t the player that Kobe, Lebron, Wade, or Paul is.

Were Nene’s numbers affected by Melo’s presence? Of course. They had to be. The question is whether or not that diminishes his value significantly. I think Nene was a big enough presence on those teams that it wouldn’t have mattered significantly. Nene’s production didn’t bottom out after Melo left, and he still lead the league in effective field goal percentage. I think Nene’s numbers are for real.

I know WP48 is remarkably consistent — Dave Berri (who is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University) has at least one article showing that it’s more consistent over time than baseball’s WARP systems. But the question with WP48 is really whether or not it identifies good players or not.

If you’re interested in +/- systems (if you’re unfamiliar, they basically just look at the difference between a team’s production when a player is on vs. off the court), 82games.net is a good place to start. BasketballValue.com also does good work. If you’re concerned about how stats are affected by the other players on the court, advanced plus-minus systems work to isolate that. Like I said, it doesn’t seem to be very consistent from year to year, but it’s interesting.

Basically, what we know about basketball advanced stats is probably nothing compared to what teams like the Rockets are doing. We know they look a lot at individual matchups and video to try to isolate a player’s value, for instance, which is something amateurs (or even academics like Berri) can’t really do. I’m pretty confident in the Rockets’ front office’s ability to figure this shit out. If they think Nene is worth a big contract, I think they’re probably right. If they don’t think Jordan is worth a big contract right now, I think they’re probably right on that, too.

State taxes are deductible on the federal income tax bill too, so that certainly helps offset any benefit the Rockets offer through being in Texas.

We’ve got a med student, some law students, a lawyer, an economist, a soldier, and a nice complement of other goons. I like this group as much as I insult y’all.

is when you’re dealing with some of these young superstars in question, you’re dealing with some of the most unrealistic personalities you could ever encounter. They do not see things with the practicalitiy and rationality we do. Money is incredibly important, but it is more about fulfilling the need to do as little as possible while maximizing your benefits.

If you ever get the chance read “Achievement motivation across training and competition in individual and team sports” by van de Pol. It really does an excellent job at examining the motivations that are different based on generation and even sport type.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-jock-tax/

He won’t extend in Houston and has made his destinations pretty well known through his agent. I’m not about to send out Lowry (A committed multi-year starter) 2 picks (Potentially worthwhile) and Scola (Can be packaged with a disgruntled Martin for someone on a multi-year who doesn’t get to shaft us at year’s end) for a guy who is just going to leave my franchise because I was hoping he might kind of sort of like my team. Houston isn’t a sexy city and judging by players wanting to go to California and New York, I don’t think they care about tax rates (Two of the most heavily taxed states in the US).

At this point if the Marc Gasol attempt comes up empty I say see if you can’t swing for Josh Smith and a Center somewhere (Sign Sammy D) and go “all in” with that and whatever FA pick ups you can land. If not, ship Martin to Minny for Johnson and a pick and see who Scola lands you.

But would give up about 130 with Paul being your only defensive player. We shit canned Adelman because we clearly wanted to play D and you can’t win it all with a run and gun.

Although I think Alexander is one of the best owners out there.

all players we hailed as the next great thing

Anyone saying Taylor, Ish, Anderson, or Dorsey was the “next great thing” needed a slap in the face. If I said that at any point I needed a slap in the face.

To his credit, hes been able to make people forget about his mistakes by sending them away.

I think Morey has made one big mistake during his time here: the Ariza signing. That was a signing I defended the hell out of at the time, because I thought it was a great move for a team without much room to maneuver in that offseason.

And Morey’s reaction to Ariza’s problems showcased how good of a GM he is. He was able to move that contract by basically exchanging him for Courtney Lee. That’s a big upgrade, if you ask me, and a great move to get out from under a reasonable-but-underperforming contract.

Morey has set this team up extraordinarily well. We basically have no bad contracts on the books. If you’re one of those people who thinks we need to “blow up” the team (there is very little to “blow up”) that’s very, very easy to do with these contracts. He has fought to make sure the Rockets don’t fuck up their cap situation and only pay real money to players who deserve it.

Xiane put it best a few days ago: How many stars get traded? How many leave in free agency? Morey has done a great job while putting us in a position to take advantage of those relatively rare events, it just hasn’t worked out.

I think the strongest criticism you can make of him is the “trading chip” thing. He’s possibly way too hard-line in his negotiations. But, at this point, he has to be. We can’t afford to get lovey-dovey until we have a real base to build around again.

Was that Hill kept missing those point-blank shots. It was like he was me all of a sudden.

could mean landing Nene. Longshot, but possible

Sigh.

The league could make the Hornets back out of the deal without the Commissioner actually invoking his authority to deny trades, because the league owns the team right now.

But what it really gets down to is the fact that the cadre of small-market owners (and, of course, Mark Cuban) were really vocal about letting Paul go to the Lakers specifically. They didn’t want the Lakers to come out of the lockout and immediately trade for a small market’s star. Moreover, Paul was basically choosing where he wanted to go, and the lockout was all about reducing the players’ ability to move around the league.

In other words, this whole thing was about power. It was a repeat of the battles fought during the lockout: small-market vs. big-market; owners vs. players. The league’s stated reasons for voiding the trade just don’t hold much water.

As for this vs. the original Pau trade, the circumstances were different there, too. That was ridiculous because everyone knew the Grizz were getting robbed for no real reason (maybe not in hindsight, but at the time…). Nobody is really outraged about this because, well, we all know why each side did the trade and it’s not so bad.

The funny thing is if the trade were to go through in that incarnation of the deal they’re actually breaking even/worse than where they were before.

gets better with age