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Found this blog interesting, it analyzes one of the Rockets plays, one that Adelman has obviously implemented. With an apparent abundance of people on the boards who don't really understand what Adelman is trying to implement this might give you an idea.

http://coachingbetterbball.blogspot.com ... -play.html

To further this a bit more, note that most of the time Yao is in the high post he looks for this pass (generally for Bonzi or T-Mac). If the screener's defender sees it and falls back to deny the pass then a guard will curl back and Yao will dribble handoff for a basic PnR with the option of drive or dish. Another option is to take advantage of the now mismatch they have with a PG on Bonzi or T-Mac. Smart teams will immediately double this scenario.

Anyway, this is why if you don't cut hard and pass crisp and be decisive with your actions the offense really bogs down vs active defenses because it allows them to recover. The team's tentativeness from their JVG's days (or perhaps the inability of the personel to adapt) is probably the main hinderance so far this season.

Notice how the blogger also notes that we still use a lot of traditional PnR's and iso's (much like last year) which we do probably because the team has been slow to adapt to the new offense. This is what I've been saying and also why I believe there is still a lot of offensive potential with this team. If the team falls on its face this season I can guarantee there will be quite a shakeup of personel this offseason.

This play has Yao in the high post, we know he sucks there. The pass he threw was into traffic and very nearly could have been intercepted, he got lucky and bailed out by Bonzi's good hands. I don't want to see this play much at all. Maybe 1-2 times a game. For one of these nice passes that Yao makes in this high-post set how many times do we just see Yao hand it off to Rafer so he can brick it, or Yao throws a pass into traffic and turns it over, or jacks up a jumper from 18 feet that goes in at a ~30% clip? We need to see LESS of this set, not more.

Yao needs to stay in the paint and in the low post, and this month he has mostly done that, which is why his January splits are 25.3/11/2.4 ast/2.3 blk on 56% shooting instead of his putrid December and November numbers. He has cut down greatly on the silly perimeter and high post garbage and it's made him play better. The REASON he is dominating in January is that the offense has gone away from sets where Yao stands around the perimeter.

This was merely an informational post. But I just wanted to point out that Yao doesn't shoot in this play because his man is still on him. Yao only shoots from penetration kick-outs mostly.

BaYBaller wrote:This was merely an informational post. But I just wanted to point out that Yao doesn't shoot in this play because his man is still on him. Yao only shoots from penetration kick-outs mostly.

Yao has a reputation of being an excellent shooter, but when word gets out that he can't hit a shot from 18 feet, teams will start having Yao's man backing into the lane when Yao gets the ball out high, like Yao does with opposing scrub centers. I've seen it happen already a few times, but if Yao can't hit that shot teams will just back off of him consistently and dare him to shoot.

Personally I'd rather him never take a midrange jumper ever, like last year. Even if he is making it at a decent clip he will shoot a higher percentage on post-up shots anyway.

compucomp wrote:This play has Yao in the high post, we know he sucks there. The pass he threw was into traffic and very nearly could have been intercepted, he got lucky and bailed out by Bonzi's good hands. I don't want to see this play much at all. Maybe 1-2 times a game. For one of these nice passes that Yao makes in this high-post set how many times do we just see Yao hand it off to Rafer so he can brick it, or Yao throws a pass into traffic and turns it over, or jacks up a jumper from 18 feet that goes in at a ~30% clip? We need to see LESS of this set, not more.

Yao needs to stay in the paint and in the low post, and this month he has mostly done that, which is why his January splits are 25.3/11/2.4 ast/2.3 blk on 56% shooting instead of his putrid December and November numbers. He has cut down greatly on the silly perimeter and high post garbage and it's made him play better. The REASON he is dominating in January is that the offense has gone away from sets where Yao stands around the perimeter.

How in the world are you still under the impression that Rafer is bricking shots this year. Do statistics mean NOTHING to you? He's shooting 46% from 2p range and 32.5% from 3p range (which translates to being closer to 42-44% - which is still a good 2p % for Rafer AND a lot of other starting NBA point guards - and 37-40% over the last month or two)

Other than that I agree with you. Pulling a low post powerhouse out of his best area negates your greatest strength. It's never good to focus on trying to improve your weaknesses vs. exploiting your opponents weaknesses and emphasizing your own strengths.

The only reason you'd ever want to pull Yao out, and the reason that it's nice that he can do so reasonably well, is because him being down low makes getting into the lane harder with all the double teams he pulls. Pulling him out does open the lane up. Still, I think we've all seen that the benefits from that don't outweigh the costs. Not only do you lower Yao's percentages, but you lower our chances of getting an offensive rebound.

After looking over some stats - and I'm tempted to do some serious in-depth research on it - I almost think that each offensive rebound a player can average per game might be worth about 3-10% added to any given player's shooting percentages. Not functionally, of course, but effectively. This would mean that a player like Yao who can shoot 52% AND average 3 ORPG is effectively closer to shooting 55-62%. It would also mean that if you move him out, you're not only dropping his functional fg%, but his effective fg%, possibly as low as to 45%. That would be a 25% loss in offensive efficiency, at least as far as Yao goes. The question then would be if you gain that 25% back over the rest of the team with penetration to the lane.

Anyway, just a very untested theory...

moofs wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



How in the world are you still under the impression that Rafer is bricking shots this year. Do statistics mean NOTHING to you? He's shooting 46% from 2p range and 32.5% from 3p range (which translates to being closer to 42-44% - which is still a good 2p % for Rafer AND a lot of other starting NBA point guards - and 37-40% over the last month or two)

He's still shooting sub 40%. Last year was arguably better since he was at least hitting on 37% of his trey attempts. If we're going to run that handoff play like Sacramento did I'd expect the point guard to shoot somewhere close to how Mike Bibby shot it; Rafer isn't close to that.

compucomp wrote:He's still shooting sub 40%. Last year was arguably better since he was at least hitting on 37% of his trey attempts. If we're going to run that handoff play like Sacramento did I'd expect the point guard to shoot somewhere close to how Mike Bibby shot it; Rafer isn't close to that.

Right, but as I've pointed out, a LOT, he's shooting 40% on his 2p and 3p shots combined (also known as FG%) while taking half his shots from 3p range. This skews his FG% a lot. His fg% is .398 ONLY because he's shooting 32.5% on 3's. I've made at least 4, probably upwards of 10 or more posts this season concerning the difference between 2p percentage (on which he is shooting 46%) and fg% (which is highly skewed for players that shoot a large percentage of their shots from behind the arc). I've also pointed out two other things

- That his 3p% for the first 15+ games of the season was under 25%, which means that in the 15-20 games since then he's been shooting approximately as much over 32.5% as he was shooting under it (in other words, the 37-40% that I named earlier and that you cited him as shooting last year, which means he IS capable of doing what you just said)

- That his 2p% has gone down recently into the 42-44% range (even though his season average on 2p shooting is still around 46%), which I also pointed out in the previous post, but hadn't noticed until today. Basically, while he did start out really, really, REALLY hot on 2p% (right at 50% for quite a while), he's cooled back down to closer to his career averages (around 40%), but is still having a great year from 2p range for him (46%, with 42-44% apparently being a trend over the last few weeks)

Basically... don't ever look at fg% to gauge the 2p accuracy of a 3 point shooter. That said, I still wouldn't want him shooting a bunch of Sam Cassell midrange jumpers off a pick and roll.

Please keep those stats and how they were figured in mind the next time you want to knock his shooting percentages. I get tired of constantly calculating them to show people that they're absolutely wrong about Rafer being a clank-artist this year (although all the recent bandwagoning has lowered how often I've had to do that), then having them ignored.


you will remember what I just said, you will remember what i just said, you will remember what I just said, you will FINALLY remember what i just said

compucomp



I love the sig...I agree 100%