Random Thoughts on the Houston Rockets

With the lockout dragging on and on as David Stern makes every NBA city feel like Seattle for a couple months, news is getting slow around here. Free Agency can't start, Trades can't go through, and Summer League didn't even go down this year. The plus side of this lockout? Well, uh, I'm not sure. I'll tell you when I find it. Till then, I'll just continue to babble on about random thoughts pertaining to the Houston Rockets, the NBA, and any movies I may have seen this summer (No? Ok.). 

- Looking at the stats for the 2010-2011 Rockets, I'm paying attention to the combined PER for each position. (What is PER?) Take note that the average PER set by John Hollinger is 15.0, and the league highest last year was 27.34 by Lebron James. The combined PER of our Point Guards is 15.6, our Shooting Guards come in at 18.7, our Small Forwards at 14.8, our Power Forwards at 18.5, and our Centers at 16.8. Now, that's pretty good. Aside from our Small Forwards, all our players were considered above-average according to the mathematic formula set out by Hollinger. A few things pop out to me here,

 

•  Despite perceptively poor play from our Centers, they actually ranked above average in the PER system. In my opinion, this is a direct effect from the Adelman system, and nothing more. I don't expect to see the same type of production from that position next year, but I am hoping to see an improvement in the defensive PER of not only the Centers, but every position.
• Speaking of Defensive PER, let me list that out for you. Our Point Guards gave up 16.4 (-0.8 net value), our Shooting Guards gave up 14.3 (+4.4 net value), our Small Forwards gave up 15.1 (-.03 net value), our Power Forwards gave up 19.0 (-0.4 net value), and our Centers gave up 18.1 (-1.3 net value). Now, if you were asking me the question, "Why didn't we do better if all our players were above average PER-wise?" There's your answer. The defense that we put on last year was well below average, especially from the Power Forward and Center spots. The lack of a shotblocker is evident in the stats. You don't need an ESPN SportsScience segment to tell you what was wrong with the Rockets last year. You can see that our shooting guard position is actually very good both offensively and defensively. This was a combination of Kevin Martin playing great offense, and Courtney Lee playing great defense while Martin switched over to the Small Forward spot. Still, an addition of a shotblocker would decrease the PER of opponents significantly at all positions.
• Don't trade away Courtney Lee. Please.

 

- The Rockets, as a team, played 30 games against  "Good" teams last year (the top ten teams) racking up a 14-16 record, 29 against "Average" teams (teams ranked 11-20, the Rockets are an "Average" team") racking up a 14-15 record, and 23 games against "Bad" teams (teams ranked 21-30) racking up a 15-8 record. Obviously, not the best schedule in the NBA, and it doesn't look to improve next year. The Rockets play in a division in which all 5 teams are looking to make the playoffs next year. I'd like to see the Rockets maybe take care off the bad teams the same way they did this year (hopefully even better), and improve their record against average teams. I think it's tough to compete against elite teams and although the Rockets give it 100% every night a 14-16 record against the top ten teams in the League is nothing to be mad about.

- Kyle Lowry is undoubtedly the key to the success of this team. When Lowry is on the court, the Rockets have a +6 rating (we usually outscore opponents by 6). When he's off court? The Rockets pull in a -5. We only got to judge Dragic by a small sample size last year (he only played 9% of the total minutes of the season, while Lowry logged in 64%). His last couple of games were extremely impressive, and I think he'll be a great fit for this team but I'd also like to see him play the 2 guard a lot more. Having both him and Lowry on the court at the same team could be a wonderful combination, especially considering that Dragic has been seen as more of a combo guard rather than a pure point guard.

-The Rockets only had three lineups last year that held their opponents under 1 point per possession, and it's not a coincidence that these three lineups were all net gains (successful lineups). Lowry-Lee-Budinger-Scola-Hill is the first lineup, holding opponents to 0.97 points per possession. Sadly, this is a pretty small sample size as they only played about 30 minutes together in the full season. The next lineup would be Lowry-Martin-Budinger-Hayes-Hill. Again, not the biggest sample size as they played about 50 minutes together in the full season, holding their opponents to 0.95 points per possession. Still, this lineup was both effective offensively and defensively, although it was only the 13th most frequented lineup for the Rockets. The Rockets best defensive lineup consists of Lowry-Martin-Budinger-Patterson-Hayes, who held their opponents to 0.88 points per possession. This lineup was the 9th most frequented one of the season. According to ESPN, the best defensive team stats-wise was Boston last year. Although Boston has many more better defensive lineups than the Rockets do, their best lineup that has over 30 minutes together is Robinson-Allen-Pierce-Garnett-S.O'Neal who held their opponents to 0.90 points per possession. What I'm trying to say is that, the Rockets do have some potential defensively with players such as Kyle Lowry and Patrick Patterson.

- Putting Courtney Lee on bigger point guards might be a good idea. As a Point Guard last year, Courtney Lee posted a PER of 8.5, which is pretty terrible, but held his opponents to 8.5 PER as well. Now that the Rockets have acquired 6'4 Goran Dragic, they can make adjustments like putting Dragic on a less important 2-Guard while Courtney takes someone like Russell Westbrook or Derrick Rose. Dragic posted almost a 20 PER as a starting point guard for us last year, so keeping him for running the offense while Courtney takes his load on defense could be very beneficial for us next year. (Lowry put up a 16 PER as point, and 18 as a SG, so having both him and Dragic on the court at the same time would be great).

That's all that's on my mind at the moment. Anything here that will spark some sort of discussion? I hope so.

In other news, I'm almost 16. Which means I can drive to Rockets games soon. Which means I will never miss another home game ever.