Legal Commentary

Checking in on the Rockets at the halfway point

By Tom Kirkendall

The football season still has two weeks to go and the NBA season is already at the halfway point?

The always interesting Dave Berri posted his wins produced/productivity stats for each NBA player through mid-season yesterday. As usual, the statistics reveal some interesting developments:

• Unsurprisingly, LeBron James is the most productive NBA player so far this season. Surprisingly, Gerald Wallace of Charlotte is the second-most productive player.
• So far this season, there are no super teams, but a bunch of really good ones. The top teams in the NBA in terms of Wins Produced and efficiency differential are the Lakers, Cavaliers, Celtics, Hawks, and Spurs, each of which posted a Wins Produced mark of more than 27.5, which means that each such team is halfway to 55 wins.  Denver, Orlando, Portland, and Utah are halfway to 50 wins.
•  The Rockets are over-achieving a bit, having generated 23 wins out of a Wins Produced and efficiency differential score of 21. Blue-collar PF Luis Scola is the most productive Rocket at 5 Wins Produced, while flashy PG Aaron Brooks ? who the Chronicle sports page christened the new Rockets star last week ? is the least productive Rocket player in the regular rotation at 0.9 Wins Produced.
• The most productive player at each position so far this season are as follows: SF James (13.8 Wins Produced); PF: Marcus Camby (11.8 Wins Produced), C: Dwight Howard (10.0 Wins Produced), PG: Chris Paul (9.8 Wins Produced), and SG: the 76er?s Andre Iguodala (8.0 Wins Produced).

This season?s edition of the Rockets is an entertaining mix of good complementary players who move the ball very well offensively and generally play hard-nosed defense.

But they don?t shoot particularly well as a team and the lack of an inside presence defensively hurts the Rockets. Barring a major injury, the Rockets might make it to 45 wins, but my sense is that breaking even (i.e., 41 wins) would be a good performance by this club given its personnel limitations at this point in time.

With the Tracy McGrady contract expiring after this season, look for the Rockets GM Daryl Morey to make a deal for a go-to player either at some point during the remainder of this season or in the off-season. Thus, despite their gritty play so far this season, I would not be surprised if the Rockets? nucleus looks substantially different going into next season.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on January 26, 2010 (boomark / email).