The Rockets Pick & Roll is one of the worst if not the worst in the league. None of the Rockets set good screens. This is a big reason the rockets offense is so unreliable and uncoordinated. Most of the players can't get good shots on their own or help others get good looks. Setting a pick is a fundamental basketball technique. Instead of setting a solid pick, screeners are lazy, don't get into position, don't get fully set, or don't have a solid base. Many times they move illegally, lean or stick their legs out, or fail to make contact altogether. Most of the times their poor picks don't free up the ball handler and don't give them a chance to roll to the basket drawing their defender or to force a switch. The ball handlers are no better and either don't wait until the screener is in position, don't utilize the screen properly, or don't pass to the roll man when he gets open. The ballhandler often ends up getting trapped or losing/picking up the dribble. There are no mismatches made or space created for the ball handler. Some of this is on the coaching and some is on player effort. Either way there are no easy buckets, no go to plays, no two-man game, and our best players often don't interact well on offense. Amen, Sengun, and Jabari would all benefit from being able to set a solid screen and roll to the basket. Jabari should be a threat to roll to the basket or fade for a 3. Even Durant would benefit from an effective pick and roll. Instead, we go on long droughts filled with turnovers without even getting a shot up. Pick and roll is even more vital for a team whose players struggle to create their own shots and doesn't have any set plays. If not corrected, I believe these bad habits will limit the success of the Rockets. If corrected, the Rockets could be real contenders. Here are some of the stats: Ball Handler Turnover %: Sengun one of the 50 worst players in the league, Eason & Durant bottom 100, no top 50 players Scoring% and Points per poss: Tari worst 10 , Jabari worst 20, no top 50 players EFG% & FG%: Jabari 20.7% and Tari 21.4% both in the 10 worst players in the league, no top 50 players Roll Man Turnover%: Amen, Sengun and Durant worst 50 players, no top 50 Scoring%: Reed 8th worst, Durant worst 50 players, no top 50 PPP: Reed 8th worst, Durant, & Sengun bottom 100, no top 50 FG%: Reed bottom 10 18.9%, Sengun bottom 100, no top 50 EFG% Reed bottom 10 21.2%, KD & Jabari bottom 100, no top 50
I agree. It is so annyoing how nobody makes contact when setting a screen. And also how the ball handler always goes to soon before the pick is set. They just hope for a blitz. Bit that is the only thing they try to get out of the p&r. It is a pet peeve of mine.
Christian Wood's ghost still lingers in the Rockets locker room. The Rockets have very sloppy offensive execution. I wonder if they ever practice these kinds of things.
PnR's are pointless for a team like this. If you have two non-shooters, no lob threat or stretch 5 at C, and no elite PnR navigator... you're proper-****ed as Tommy says. What are we even getting out of these other than the exact shot that was available 3 seconds before we started the PnR? A Sengun/Amen/Sheppard middy which they're hitting at 30-40%? A KD middy which he could have achieved by walking into the paint and jumping straight up?
I don't know why where Sengun, Jabari and Tari rank as PnR ball handlers and why where Reed ranks as a roll man should matter much. The frequency that those players are put in those positions is miniscule: This is from NBA.con PnR ball handler stats for Rockets players: If you remove the filter for just the Rockets, and go with all NBA players who have played at least 35 games and run the pnr as a ball handler at least 25% of the time Reed ranks in the 20's for percentile right around these guys: Not bad company. I do think screening is an issue, but I also think the guy who is clearly best suited for running the PNR (Reed) doesn't get the minutes and also when he's in there's too many wasted possessions doing other stuff. Right now, Reed's freq% should be closer to 40% at the least... meaning when he's in the game about 40% of the offensive possessions should be Reed as the ball handler in the pnr. Right now for the minutes he plays vs other Rocket players, BY FAR, a larger percentage of his time is spent running the pnr as a ball handler. Which is another reason I still don't understand why some people think he's not a pg. Now if you take that same list and sort it by frequency here is where Reed Ranks: Third Column is frequency% and last column is the percentile the player ranks in as a pnr ball handler. So of the guys who are spending the same percentage of their time running the PnR, only Keyonte George and Tre Jones are in a higher percentile. But on top of that, the only player on this list that is younger than Reed is Fears...Whom Reed is blowing out of the water as a pnr ball handler. To wrap it up...Reed is out best pnr ball handler. The eye test tells me this and the stats back it up. The Rockets don't have enough Reed Sheppard pnr plays during games. Not only is he the best right now, but he projects to grow and be the best on the team in the future out of all the guys here right now. There isn't a reason they should be leaning into this more since it's what's best for right now and for the future of the team. ALSO, While we are at it...Here are where the Rockets ranked as PNR ball handlers last season: Nevermind Sengun and Tari...There frequency of running pnr as the ball handler is super low.... Aside from that, You can see that Jalen ran the PNR more than Fred last year. Also he was more successful at it. The only think Fred did better than Jalen last season as a pnr ball handler was not turn it over as much...But not by a lot. Reed, in getting his first real NBA minutes is already better than both of them were last year as PnR ball handlers overall. He does turn it over slightly more than Jalen did...But again, on the whole he's been better in that area. I think people freak out when turnovers happen (understandably), but as a 21 year old getting his first real minutes these are the things he needs to grow from. But even still...he's just BARELY turning it over more than Jalen did last season in the pnr so if people could stomach that I'm not sure why they can't stomach it from Reed. And also, on this team he's less turnover prone than both Amen and KD when he is the pnr ball handler (See first Graphic). Either way...In the specific area of the PnR as a ball handler...Both Jalen and Reed were better than consummate professional PG, PnR extraordinaire Fred VanVleet.
I am surprised Jalen did this well. I did remember him being intentional at making the pass when he's doing PnR, much better than when he did ISO where he either chucked up some bad pull up or drove into a crowd.
Im actually surprised that Holiday is as good as hes been at it. Basically Highest percentile two years in a row. Not super high volume but not basically nothing like Sengun, Tari...
Reading that post was like reading my own thoughts .... top to bottom. I went thru those numbers last year and was pretty shocked to see Holiday so good statistically, mainly because he doesn't appear capable of "running the offense" as a point guard. I suppose much of that is organizing on the fly, getting everyone in their spots. When I looked at last years numbers, Reed and Amen were .8 and .81 with FVV at .84 at the time, pretty bad. Amen is still in that range .... Looks like Reed has made progress in that aspect (his full season numbers from last year were .7?!) - That's good to see, gives me some hope that he can be part of the solution. I've said countless times they should run these plays with Reed and have him stop deferring to KD in isolation .... especially with Amen on the court because it's asking for trouble when his defender ignores him and Durant is easily doubled. I wonder how much of this is a philosophical issue, playing so much isolation Vs PnR or how much it is Ime wanting results Right Now and going with the veterans over Reed running the PnR.
Both Sengun and Amen can be good roller in PnR. They are a threat (in different ways) receiving the ball in the paint going downhill. Reed's shooting gravity would force the defense to either switch or go over the screen. And if Reed gets inside the arc, his pull up midrange can be effective or passing to the corner shooters. It opens up a lot of options.
Watched a video earlier from Locked on Rockets and he brought up some interesting points. We obviously know Ime leans defense, but I hadn't really thought about what that fully encompasses. Ime would rather win a game 95-90 than 125-110. He just puts way too much value on the def at the expense of the offense and one of the things that leads to easy points and not being able to get your def set is turnovers. Then he mentioned that when Ime was in Boston he refused to play Pritchard...I knew this .. but I didnt know that it got so bad that he requested a trade. Also, he talked about how Ime would play Marcus Smart over Derrick White because Smart was the better defender. Ime so far, has been a great floor raiser but unless he brings in some guys on his staff that can bring offensive balance then winning a ring with him may not be possible. He had Mazzulla and Hardy in Boston. Needs a guy or two like that on his staff here.
The only play that works is Durant to Sengun on a short roll. This draws defenders and opens up the offense with Sengun shoot drive or pass option. With no traditional point there’s no real pnr and often times Durant gets trapped off pnr. I was also wondering why we haven’t done Spain action much if at all this year. But because of a lack of true point or speedy combo guard we can’t run that usually.
Mazzulla and Hardy? Haha it's way more than that. He had arguably one of the best coaching staffs in the past 20 years along with a great basketball mind at the GM position. The problem here is not just the lack of staff, but the fact that there are no other basketball minds to challenge his ideas. Stone? Patrick or Tillman? They don't have the ability to call out stupid basketball ideas like "duhhh what if we add 3 rebounders to the best rebounding team and leave no money to improve the shot making that's leading to the need for rebounds in the first place?"
NBA.com ball handler stats link: Players Pick & Roll Ball Handler | Stats | NBA.com The Rockets numbers were posted in the thread earlier. No rocket has over 1 ppp, which would make the top 50 Maybe has to do with eligibility requirements. NBA.com is minimum 10 min per game and 10 plays.
I agree that frequency is important, but it does matter when you are one of the very worst players in the league at something, even if it is only 5% of your possessions. I do think Reed is our 3rd best PnR ball handler, but he is middle of the pack in my opinion. His ranking varies depending on the filters, but his PPP is 48 out of 96 of guys who run PnR at least 3 times a game (he is runs it 4). I don't think PPP is a great way to judge skill as a PnR ballhandler, but it does give some efficiency insight. PPP only counts when the possession ends with your shot, free-throw or turnover not when you pass the ball off or the team gets an offensive rebound. Since Reed Shoots so many 3's his PPP is higher; this is the reason his scoring frequency is so low. However, his PPP is not as high as it is for other plays, since he gets about 1.1 point per shot normally. .9 PPP is about a 45-50% efg where he normally has 54%. I do think he would benefit if the team was better at setting screens, but either way Reed is not a starter and Reed as a PnR ball handler is not a commonly ran play, as it is only 4 possessions per game only 3 more possessions per game than Tari and Jabari!
Yep. Moreyball math. Threes are worth more than 2's. I dont see this as a negative for a guy shooting ~40% from three. Right, that was one of my points that they dont run Reed PnR enough.
