dhsilv2 wrote:thekdog34 wrote:dhsilv2 wrote:
The team got better around him, he had better bench guys to come in for him. The fact that they continue to use him like this and have increased the role tells me the coach sees that value. And remember the real plus numbers are already "wrong". They are range based, so we as analysts of the game have to figure out if they are over or under stated as they always are a bit off. That's the nature of statistics after all. I think he was under valued last year based on what I saw. I'm open to alternatives, but I'm using the points and assists as my basis for believing the impact numbers under valued him along with having a better bench.
Be interested if you have a good case for me being wrong. I certainly wish I'd seen more rockets games last year, so I admit to a small sample size for my review.
His highest impact year was 2014-15. That team was good and made the WCF. I believe he was top 5 in RPM and top 10ish in RAPM.
He played some defense, had much fewer turnovers (particularly live ball), got to the rim more, shot a higher % from 3, and moved off the ball some. He also got more steals.
Then he had his out of shape year, and he has played slow ever since. He's set the turnover record two years in a row and his 3pt percentage has been declining as has his rate of taking shots at the rim.
Given those stats, I'm not surprised at all that his impact numbers are down despite higher box score numbers in D'Antoni's system.
The problem is in part that his role completely changed. You can use RAPM but when a role changes it is just harder to use that. Throw in that his team massively out paced expectations last year at the same time his stats went WOW level.
Except that his RAPM tanked in 2015-16 when almost the exact same team was brought back and his role didn't change at all. And his RAPM was pretty good in okc and first years on the rockets (pre- slow Harden).
His 2016-17 season impact-wise was much closer to the disaster 15-16 season than the prior years.
That his role changed is a bit overrated. He just went from being on the ball 85% of the time to being on the ball 100% of the time.
The system did change dramatically though. He could get an assist simply by walking the ball up (using all 8 seconds) and making a single pass to Gordon, Anderson, Ariza, or Beverley would would often immediately shoot it.
