Comments on: Rockets Daily: Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

By: Blake

Blake — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:25:11 +0000

I'm a fan of the WP method, but Steele's article isn't compelling to me. His minute allocations are quite terrible. He says that both Lowry's and Budinger's minutes will drop significantly. He uses WP48 numbers only from last year for most players. Last time Scola played alongside Yao, his WP48 was higher. Kevin Martin historically produces more as well, and it sounds he will be playing this year without old injury problems (new injuries are always a possibility). He doesn't even account any minutes for Patrick Patterson. All in all, it's a poorly researched and poorly thought-out article.

By: luislandry

luislandry — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:37:07 +0000

Ooof, no response to Ziller's dis of Landry by suggesting Casspi/Greene are somehow the third best players/prospects on the Kings?

By: Chest Rockwell

Chest Rockwell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:03:03 +0000

dude im getting burned out on the whole melo bullshit honestly. seems like another media whore, and what is up with that whole kat stacks thing??? how funny and immature is it to even be linked to something like that. im gonna go ahead and just dance with who brung us, and hope that Morey can make a good assessment during the season and make a move if needed. I take offense to Steele calling our 4 position 'middling' … luis scola is a legit power forward in the NBA, he's absolutely killing it right now in the FIBA championships and i expect that confidence to carry over into the season, he and yao will make a great tandem since both like to take turns on the block and from around 15, taking turns on different sets, and how refreshing is it to have these so called professional analysts/sportswriters keep regurgitating the same tired injury excuse and history. Last time I checked the ROX are all going INTO the season fully healthy, i'm sure Morey and Rick are going to sit down and discuss how to keep these so-named injury concerns in limited roles to ensure a full campaign. I think that yao is going to provide a presence that is going to make it easier and more fun for the guys to play and in turn with the great chemistry i dont see these pesky “damnit we're losing and my ankle kinda hurts' injury bugs strike the team.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:29:42 +0000

Looking at his numbers and assuming Ariza and Landry would have been given credit for 12 wins,his WP for the Rockets last yr would have been @ 36 wins-w/out McGrady. Part of diff would be the play of Bud and Andersen and the new guys,but sometimes the sum is better than the individual parts.
An issue is how do you account for rookies and second yr players? There is very little statistical record to go on. The Rockets have 3 second yr players in Bud,Hill and Taylor,a rookie in Patterson. If any of them have a big jump then the preseason WPs go in the toilet.
Interesting that he doesn't like Jeffries and his WP,whereas Jeffries has had outstanding plus/minus,adjusted plus/minus numbers.

The Yao/Tracy combo won over two-thirds of the games they played together(reg season of course ). Can Martin/Yao duplicate that w/a better roster? If so and they play some 50 games together that's 33 or so wins and if the team plays .500 like last season,that works out to @ 49-50 wins.

By: rex

rex — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:40:43 +0000

It's amusing to read Rockets blogs and all their fantasies, .. er projections of upcoming success this season.

It's kind of like listening to America's wishful delusions about how its cleaned up that Gulf oil disaster thingie. Lol.

By: rahat_huq

rahat_huq — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:11:28 +0000

If the analysis is taking injury probability into account, I don’t have any problem with Steele’s estimation. Except for the renewed optimism (delusions?) that accompany each new year, is there really any reason to think anything will be different for Yao this season? In fact, I think Steele is spot on as he concedes that the Rockets could be near the top if healthy. I’m not saying Yao will necessarily go down again, but no reasonable person would expect/predict that he stays healthy.

By: RL

RL — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:02:07 +0000

I find the article from Greg Steele somewhat ludicrous. In the past 4 years after Yao had become a dominate low post force, whenever he was able to play a significant portion of the season, Rockets had always finished with more than 50 wins. In his projection, Rockets can only win 42 games or so even with Yao playing at least 57 games. That's a bit strange. Greg need to read pass the stats a bit.

By: CarlHerrera

CarlHerrera — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:21:54 +0000

Rahat,

Maybe I missed something, but the Greg Steele article is marked as “Opinion by Dave Berri” at the top, but indicates the author was Greg Steele at the bottom. Weird.

Anyhow, to the extent that the article is based on Dave Berri’s formula, it should be pointed out that most of the other “stat heads” don’t think much of Berri’s book or his method so I highly doubt that any of the other stat heads (the kind that hang out on the APBR discussion board), would agree with the conclusion in an article based on Berri’s methods.

As far as I can tell, the Berri method doesn’t value Brooks much and finds Landry to be more valuable than both Kevin Martin (for whom he was traded) and Luis Scola (who took on many of his minutes).

We’ll see if Berri is right, but I doubt Daryl Morey’s method agrees with his since Morey traded Landry for Martin at a much higher salary and then signed Scola to a long term deal.