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Rockets notes: Ariza shakes off rust, gets in rhythm | NBA Basketball | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
Asked if he would be all right if Rick Adelman continues to bring him off the bench, Ariza said, "If we’re winning, I don’t mind, but that’s not up to me.
If he’s relegated to the bench, it would mean that Ariza turned down the defending champs–familiar surroundings–for a lesser role on a lottery team, for similar pay. I think a permanent demotion would too greatly affect his psyche – I can’t see him handling it well.
At the same time, starting Battier is the right decision. He’s this team’s leader, the anchor of its defense, and even the quarterback of its offense. Despite his limitations, the offense always flows more freely with Shane in the game.
My hunch is that Shane will continue to start until Trevor fully recovers from his injury. With the season lost, Trevor will then regain his starting role with Battier moving to the bench; a consummate professional like Shane won’t give two thoughts over such an unjustified demotion.
The team’s long term vision is likely to start Martin and Ariza at the wings. With the value in his expiring contract, Shane could be out of the picture quite soon. In combination with the previously mentioned factors, it only makes sense for Ariza to return to the starting lineup. I thought he looked better last night, taking what the defense gave him. Let’s hope that continues.
This could have also been titled Jordan Hill’s Big Night Part 2. The rookie forward/(center??) scored 11 points and grabbed 8 boards in his 26 minutes of play, making an immediate impact off the bench.
Within six minutes, he had already scored 9 points and grabbed 5 boards, garnering raves from the Wizards broadcast crew. After picking up a foul, they exclaimed, “that might be the only thing that can slow him down,” gushing over his relentlessness.
I realized why I’m so intrigued by Hill. It suddenly hit me during the game that he is the first rookie lottery pick that we have had the pleasure of watching since Yao Ming’s debut at the start of the last decade. More than mere escapism from a lost season, previously acclaimed prospects enable the imagination, allowing it to envisage a savior at the position, sans fear of inhibition of unreasonable odds; because he was the 8th pick, we actually don’t have to feel silly discussing Jordan Hill’s upside.
I had planned to highlight the relationship between Aaron Brooks and Kevin Martin during last night’s game. That was before Jordan Hill decided to show a pulse. The rookie forward had career highs across the board, scoring 12 points and grabbing 8 boards in his 23 minutes of play.
This week, Durvasa and I sat down to discuss the impact of advanced statistics on basketball analysis, league-wide crunch time tendencies, and the on-court impact of Shane Battier. Check back a little later today for a full review of Jordan Hill’s big night, replete with game clips.
Does height matter? The answer, to anyone who has followed the Rockets closely this season, has to be yes. The Rockets have utilized the shortest front-court in the league, by a fair margin, this season, as depicted in the chart below:
From above, we see that the relationship between height and team defensive efficiency is not so clear, indicating that there are many other variables (team philosophy, experience) to be considered. The Rockets, as poorly as they’ve defended of late, are actually not too far below league average (though note that the data for the chart above was from before the trade). Still, they have clearly slipped, and the absence of an interior shot-blocking presence has to be the considered the primary reason. But there are others: many new players added to the team is a factor, as well as the Rockets playing more younger players.
Here is another look at this relationship, showing individual front-court players (who’ve played at least 500 minutes ).
It was bittersweet last night seeing Carl Landry in a Kings jersey. While the memories of his time with the Rockets are still fresh in my mind, I stopped to marvel at just how far he has come in his career, starting as a little-known second round pick and now being featured as the primary frontcourt threat on an impressive up-and-coming Kings team.
The concerns regarding our defensive vulnerabilities since the trade reflect what has been a sudden onset of collective identity crisis. Apart from a brief interval at the tail end of the 90’s, for nearly two decades the very phrase Houston Rockets has connoted smash-mouth defensive ruggedness. It was in this manner that the first title was won so long before Jeff Van Gundy reinstilled the same principles, embedding a culture which stayed rooted into the present day.
HoopNumbers has recently updated its adjusted +/- statistics for the current season (for games up to February 25th). Details on their method, called Regularized Adjusted +/- or RAPM, as well as links to statistics for each of the past 4 seasons, can be found on the site’s commentary page. The numbers they provide are interesting because they use a special technique to significantly reduce standard errors and they provide adjusted +/- for both the offensive and defensive end. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of their results for the entire league, and also specific to the Rockets this season.
So I was very upset last night. I had merely assumed Chris Bosh would be in uniform, looking forward to building upon my very superficial earlier assessment of his abilities. Of course that was not the case as he has been out with injury. I will just need to catch a Raptors game on League Pass upon his return.
As a supplement to the blog, Durvasa and I will begin recording a weekly podcast to discuss some of the broader themes pertaining to the team. This week, we focus on the Brooks/Martin backcourt, the Rockets’ fading defensive identity, and offseason possibilities.
