Shams : Houston Rockets guard Fred VanVleet intends to sign a two-year, $50 million contract

[Agimat]

Good deal

They can make some noise next season:

PG Fred VanVleet
SG Amen Thompson
SF Jabari Smith Jr.
PF Kevin Durant
C Alperen Sengun

[vini_vidi_vici]

Statistically, last year was pretty bad for him, arguably worst year of his career, but he might've been able to squeeze out more from a worse team.

He shot 34.5 from 3, 49.5% in the restricted area (league avg is 66.4%). He got to the line at a career worst 18.1% of the time (FTr). His 51.5 TS% was 243 among 271 players that avgd over 20 MPG. Even his USG was only 7th highest among rotational guys. He was a good facilitator and takes care fo the ball, but thats about it.

I mean 15.5% of your cap isnt much, TO at 15.3%, but hes playing like a bench guy right now and his defense while it has slipped isnt enough to justify playing him 35+ mins per game. Just with the dearth of Gs on HOU, I guess they wanted to keep him.

He's someone that sparks the debate on stats/efficiency vs impact/intangibles. 51.5 TS% from a 6 ft guard sounds like someone that's unplayable, but somehow he is consistently posting excellent advanced metrics. 9 years in the league with a positive on court per 100 and 8 out of 9 with a positive on/off per 100. Even with the massive drop off last year in production and efficiency, he still posted a +5.7 on court per 100 and +3.1 on/off per 100.

Well on court +/- isnt reliant on one player. His +/- was 6.2 on, good for 7th highest per nba.com on the Rockets, without him it was still a very good +2.9 (which would be a 11th in team NetRTGs vs the L). Houston was just a good team, and im not using that to diminish his impact.

The thing is, he had inflated numbers playing with the bench (in limited mins), and had very good numbers with the SL, albeit lesser +/-.

I do agree, he provides gravity, which is important, and his defense is good, I think his impact is mitigated by the low USG% combined with the low eFG% (career worst, outside his rook yr, 239 of 271 players with >= 20 MPG).

Look, parsing out an impact is tough because gravity is tough to define, esp if youve shot as poorly as he has from 3 the past 3 of 5 seasons (even those 2 good ones were not elite).

His defense wasnt great by most metrics. His DFG% was a -0.1, but it was buoyed by -3.9% form 3, and who knows how much effect he had on those shots. He got lit up in the POs but thats an extremely small sample, Curry cooked him. He guards alot of 2nd USG% Gs, hes not versatile a defender. Even vs Gs, its not that great.

Spoiler:

I think for a 4th option on offense, second tier defender, you could do better, but I mean its only 15% of the cap, hes a vet, and they have few Gs until Sheppard develops. Sometimes it helps when the team around you is so good, it picks you up in areas you dont excel. I thought FVV got an unfair rep here, but despite the good +/- stats (and its inherent flaws evaluating a individual), theres not much advocating for him being good last yr (he was good shooting in the POs despite SSS last yr tho).

[vini_vidi_vici]

I tend to think TS% isn’t as important when talking about volume 3pt shooters like Fred. Over half his FGA come from 3 and he absolutely has to be guarded out there. That type of spacing brings a lot of value to an offense even if his inside the arc game is bad. Combine that with defensive versatility and ability to be a secondary creator and that’s still a valuable stater imo. FVV’s flaws don’t really hurt that much because the volume of bad shots isn’t all that high. You really only run into trouble with FVV if he’s your 1st or 2nd option (he’ll probably be HOU 4th option this upcoming season).

Thats fair I guess.

But he had a terrible eFG% too.

He shot 1.5% worse than league avg from 3.

AMong 197 guys who took >= 200 3PTAs , he was 138th in 3PT%. Thats not good.

He shot 22.6 3PT% with a defender 2-4 ft away. He shot 36 3PT% open 4+ ft. Not good.

I agree, as a 4th option, secondary/tertiary defender, hes fine. Hes only making 15% of the cap, but id rather get a better 3+D, than float his extra facilitating, if I was HOU.

[PushDaRock]

He shot 34.5 from 3, 49.5% in the restricted area (league avg is 66.4%). He got to the line at a career worst 18.1% of the time (FTr). His 51.5 TS% was 243 among 271 players that avgd over 20 MPG. Even his USG was only 7th highest among rotational guys. He was a good facilitator and takes care fo the ball, but thats about it.

I mean 15.5% of your cap isnt much, TO at 15.3%, but hes playing like a bench guy right now and his defense while it has slipped isnt enough to justify playing him 35+ mins per game. Just with the dearth of Gs on HOU, I guess they wanted to keep him.

He's someone that sparks the debate on stats/efficiency vs impact/intangibles. 51.5 TS% from a 6 ft guard sounds like someone that's unplayable, but somehow he is consistently posting excellent advanced metrics. 9 years in the league with a positive on court per 100 and 8 out of 9 with a positive on/off per 100. Even with the massive drop off last year in production and efficiency, he still posted a +5.7 on court per 100 and +3.1 on/off per 100.

Well on court +/- isnt reliant on one player. His +/- was 6.2 on, good for 7th highest per nba.com on the Rockets, without him it was still a very good +2.9 (which would be a 11th in team NetRTGs vs the L). Houston was just a good team, and im not using that to diminish his impact.

The thing is, he had inflated numbers playing with the bench (in limited mins), and had very good numbers with the SL, albeit lesser +/-.

I do agree, he provides gravity, which is important, and his defense is good, I think his impact is mitigated by the low USG% combined with the low eFG% (career worst, outside his rook yr, 239 of 271 players with >= 20 MPG).

Look, parsing out an impact is tough because gravity is tough to define, esp if youve shot as poorly as he has from 3 the past 3 of 5 seasons (even those 2 good ones were not elite).

His defense wasnt great by most metrics. His DFG% was a -0.1, but it was buoyed by -3.9% form 3, and who knows how much effect he had on those shots. He got lit up in the POs but thats an extremely small sample, Curry cooked him. He guards alot of 2nd USG% Gs, hes not versatile a defender. Even vs Gs, its not that great.

Spoiler:

I think for a 4th option on offense, second tier defender, you could do better, but I mean its only 15% of the cap, hes a vet, and they have few Gs until Sheppard develops. Sometimes it helps when the team around you is so good, it picks you up in areas you dont excel. I thought FVV got an unfair rep here, but despite the good +/- stats (and its inherent flaws evaluating a individual), theres not much advocating for him being good last yr (he was good shooting in the POs despite SSS last yr tho).

I do agree there is a lot of factors that go into advanced stats but ultimately it is a team game and the objective is to score more points than the other team and if the team performs better with you on the court than off it and wins your minutes out on the floor, that's a big positive.

But, we also can't just write off the numbers to being on good teams though because he's played on some bad to mediocre Raptor teams as well and his advanced stats were still really good. 20/21 we went 27-45 and he still managed a +3.1 in on court per 100 and +8.5 in on/off per 100.

I think in general that Siakam/OG/FVV core is a bit underrated because those guys were consistently winning their minutes out on the floor together, we just never got that big piece to put them in the proper hierarchy or surrounded them with enough depth to help overcome their shortcomings.

[ConSarnit]

I tend to think TS% isn’t as important when talking about volume 3pt shooters like Fred. Over half his FGA come from 3 and he absolutely has to be guarded out there. That type of spacing brings a lot of value to an offense even if his inside the arc game is bad. Combine that with defensive versatility and ability to be a secondary creator and that’s still a valuable stater imo. FVV’s flaws don’t really hurt that much because the volume of bad shots isn’t all that high. You really only run into trouble with FVV if he’s your 1st or 2nd option (he’ll probably be HOU 4th option this upcoming season).

Thats fair I guess.

But he had a terrible eFG% too.

He shot 1.5% worse than league avg from 3.

AMong 197 guys who took >= 200 3PTAs , he was 138th in 3PT%. Thats not good.

He shot 22.6 3PT% with a defender 2-4 ft away. He shot 36 3PT% open 4+ ft. Not good.

I agree, as a 4th option, secondary/tertiary defender, hes fine. Hes only making 15% of the cap, but id rather get a better 3+D, than float his extra facilitating, if I was HOU.

I would guess his 3pt shooting will improve next year. Over half his 3pt attempts were pull up 3’s (31% fg, pretty much a career low). He shot 38% on C&S 3’s. He should be in a place where he’s required to create less for himself as Thompson continues to ramp up his playmaking usage and KD garners more defensive attention than Green.

[VanWest82]

The FVV criticisms are fair though it's interesting to me he was still 39th overall in EPM despite the poor shooting efficiency, and he was +18.9 net on-off in that Warriors series (albeit with hot shooting). Someone will argue that's because of lack of quality back up and basically dismiss his impact all the way back to post-Lowry for the same reason. I'm not so sure. Fred has always been an impact darling. There are things he's doing on the court that aren't being picked up in the box score, and it's why guys like Nurse and Ime lean so heavily on him to the point of overuse which tanks his shooting efficiency. Calling him a back up doesn't make sense considering it seems like every year he's elevating line ups as appose to being elevated by them.