I looked at Rose's stats from 1/1/2016 (he started coming around at the beginning of the year, this was like a week after mask coming off) to 3/29/2016 (elbow injury).
Passing:
When I was watching the games this past year, I noticed (like I am sure many others did) that Rose's main aim seemed to be to score. He wasn't doing it efficiently but I liked the aggression he showed compared to the year before. When he did pass however, he did seem to increase his teammates level of play; all of the FG% of the people he passed to was higher with one notable exception: Jimmy Butler.
Jimmy was the 2nd highest % that Rose passed to, and received passes from (1st being Pau for both players).
On passes received from Rose however, Jimmy shot a putrid 10% from deep! His 2p% also saw a slight dip from Rose's passing.
However, it was different when Jimmy passed Rose the ball. When Rose received the ball from Jimmy, he shot it at 45.5% from deep (highest from anyone) and 50% from 2p% (which is about near the same as other rotation players)
For some reason, Jimmy's game really declines (especially his outside shot) when the ball is passed to him from Rose...
For perspective, in the portion of season I looked at, Rose shot 35% from deep which I think if he gets his 3point shot to next year, that is respectable.
Deeper into the passing stats:
Pau Gasol was the recipient of the most passes on the bulls. The top 5 people to pass to him highest to least: Rose, Jimmy, Etwaun, Brooks, Dunleavy. His shooting respectively: 49.1, 45.6, 48.4, 46.9,46.2. He shot overall 47.8%
So Pau shot his best percentages off of Rose's passes.
For Jimmy, The top 5 were: Rose, Pau, Niko, Taj, Brooks
His shooting (2pt/3pt): 46/11,59/43,44/43,30/17,41/57
overall: 48/30
so JImmy shot really well off of passes from Pau, decently off of Nikoe, Okay off of Brooks and then terrible from Rose & Taj
Next is Taj, Top 5: Rose, Jimmy, Moore, Gasol, Dunleavy
shooting: 52, 55, 46,65, 53
overall: 53.7
Here is Niko: Jimmy, Rose, Brooks, Gasol, Moore
shooting: 39/46,18/58, 42/56, 64/36, 40/29
Overall: 40.4/41.5
This is interesting. It seems like since both Jimmy & Rose clog the paint, Niko sucks at 2pt%, but shoots the 3 well. The opposite happened with Gasol
so outside of Niko's 2point shooting and Jimmy's overall shooting, Rose's passes helped his teammate not hurt them
Roses passers: Gasol, Taj, Jimmy, Niko, Bobby.
Shooting: 47/36, 52/44, 51/46, 62/33, 43/0
Overall: 48/35
Another thing to note is most of the passes between our players were between Rose/Pau/Jimmy which we all know but I think it emphasizes how stagnant our offense was still. Each of them had a frequency of 20%+ with each other and our role players had less than 10% usually.
Defense:
Okay, let me start this by saying yes Rose's defense was putrid last season. Opposing players shot 2.3% higher than they did on average against him. Here again, I found yet another interesting stat: On shots less than 6ft from the hoop, Rose's man shot a whopping 9% higher!. I am not sure how NBA tracks this defense (is it only shots Rose is contesting at/near the rim or does this include shots that is after a player blows by him?) but that's a substantial difference.
I would maybe take this stat with a grain of salt because I looked up Aaron Brooks numbers for comparison and it said Brooks is an overall positive defender and causes players to shoot 3% less than the average.
Shooting:
Lastly, 3pt shooting. Rose's % early in the shot clock (15s+) was around ~13%, late in the clock (<4s) was at 20%, However, in the middle was at or above 40% shooting! His catch and shoot rate was also 40%! For perspective, overall he shot 35% from range.
I think Rose can be a decent enough set shooter if he waits for the play to develop and takes his shot in rhythm. Take out the early clock pullups and late clock heaves and I think his percentage can be respectable.
It sounds a bit better when its 19 points on 46%/36%. TS is not the best stat to look at when Rose is getting no respect from the refs (also a bit due to his play style). he had literally half the FTAs compared to 2010-2012. His EFG% was 48.2% would is his best since his MVP season and in his MVP season he was at 48.5%. He was taking shots and making them at a rate that was the same as his MVP season, just without the free throws.
This is infinitely better than the 16 points on 43/29 that the overall season stats would lead you to believe.
You might not think that number isn't that impressive, but let's hope by some miracle that Rose is perfectly healthy last year and put up that statline. so 21.8pp36 on 46% FG, 36% 3pt. Let's see how many guards can match or exceed the criteria of 21 on 45/35 last season. Only 2: Curry and Thompson albeit they did it at higher efficiencies. Make it 20pp36 and take out the 35% from range crieteria and still only 3 more players get added to the list: Jimmy butler, Westbrook, and Bledsoe
I actually want to put the final blow on this point one more time. Let's say Rose stays at the EXACT same VOLUME & EFFICIENCY. However, he refines his game just a tiny tweak & and the refs respect him just a tiny bit more and he gets 1 more call in his favor.
This results in: A) 1 less 2PTA and B) 2 more FTA. What is his scoring/TS% now?
FG%: 46->49
2PT%:47.6->51
PPG:19->20.4
TS%:51.5->56.95
From just one call, Rose goes from meh to elite. Is that not an indicator of where he is at right now?
If you look at TOV%, it is about the same as his preinjury career rate. I already acknowledged that Rose had tunnel vision last season which can be seen by his AST% dipping about 10%. Hopefully now that he had a scoring rhythm going, he can incorporate making his teammates better this upcoming year. Go ahead and look at last years playoffs numbers. His AST% and TOV% is about in line with his preinjury career rate. I think Rose CAN return to that level.
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Well that's all I have! nothing major
. Obviously this all depends on if Rose can stay healthy....
