The Rockets Shoot From Outer Space

[corbe]

The Rockets Shoot From Outer Space

Houston has changed the NBA by finding a way to take more 3-pointers: take longer 3-pointers.

 By Ben Cohen
Updated April 30, 2017 3:37 p.m. ET

HOUSTON—The original idea to defy basketball doctrine came from James Harden. Not long after the Houston Rockets traded for him, they learned that Harden was an iconoclast. He liked shooting 3-pointers. Very long 3-pointers.

“What do you think?” he said to Houston general manager Daryl Morey.

 He picked the right person to ask. Morey understood the importance of studying data before making decisions, and what he saw when he examined the numbers was surprising: Harden’s shooting percentage didn’t suffer on 3-pointers taken two feet or more behind the line. Most executives would’ve thought Harden was nuts. Morey thought he was onto something.

 It took five years for the Rockets to embrace his strategy by signing better shooters to surround Harden and entrusting their offense to perhaps the sport’s most innovative coach. But this was finally the season Houston colonized basketball’s next frontier.

 The Rockets made the most 3-pointers in NBA history because they realized there was one way they could shoot more threes: shoot longer threes.

“That line doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore,” Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said.

“Well, you get three instead of two,” Morey said. “Other than that.”

The 3-point line extends as far as 23 feet, 9 inches from the basket, and for as long as it’s been on the court, NBA teams got as close to that line as they could. The Rockets went the opposite way.

 They were the only team to hit more of those threes this season from outside 25 feet than inside 25 feet. They also depended on those shots. The league attempted 11% of its field goals from beyond 25 feet. That number for the Rockets was an NBA-record 23%.

 Houston’s complete disregard for the exact location of the 3-point line resulted in one of the greatest offenses the league has ever seen. That offense is why the Rockets are still playing in the Western Conference semifinals, and the high variance of a team built this way makes Houston a threat to upset the Golden State Warriors and dethrone the Cleveland Cavaliers for the NBA championship.

 The Rockets made it their priority to chase the sport’s best shots in the deep paint and behind the arc. These shots have expected values higher than one point—a magic number in basketball.

 Brittni Donaldson, a data analyst for Stats LLC, analyzed more than 200,000 field-goal attempts from this NBA season using the company’s SportVU technology, which revealed two parts of the court that produced shots yielding more than one point of expected value: between 0 and 6 feet and between 22 and 27 feet.

 As a general rule, the farther teams get from the basket, the farther they get from that expected value. Their shots are worth more once they’re behind the 3-point line—but only to a certain extent. Even the return on investing in 3-pointers diminishes with distance.

 Except for the Rockets. That’s why their strategy worked.

 Houston’s expected value from threes exceeded one point all the way out to 30 feet, according to the SportVU data. Their reliance on such extremely deep shooting was staggering. The Rockets almost led the league in shots from less than two feet—layups and slam dunks—and yet they still took more shots from 25 to 26 feet.

 That willingness to shoot from previously uninhabitable parts of the court was the engine powering the Rockets’ offense. By setting high screens for Harden and positioning shooters far away from the hoop—and far behind the line—Houston created room for his drives and freed Ryan Anderson, Trevor Ariza and Eric Gordon for cleaner looks.

 The spacing of Houston’s offense caused problems for a simple reason: It’s harder to play defense when there’s more to defend. They didn’t even have to shoot to be effective. The Rockets would’ve been useful way behind the arc even if all they did out there was drink kombucha. “The more space I can bring, the better,” Anderson said.

 Over the course of the season, they slowly recognized that range no longer seemed to matter, and their coach started encouraging the Rockets to ignore the 3-point line and launch from remote areas.

 So they backed up—and then backed up again.

“It doesn’t bother their shot at all,” D’Antoni said. “They might even shoot better longer. I don’t know. I think we have stats on it.”

D’Antoni was right. The stats prove the improbable: They do shoot better longer.

 Houston shot 35.8% on threes inside 25 feet, excluding the shorter corner three, but 36.2% between 26 and 30 feet. The rest of the NBA shot 37.6% on close threes and 33.6% on deep threes. The Rockets also took 14% more threes than the league average inside 25 feet—and 122% more outside 25 feet.

 The result was a style of play so deeply weird that it often looked almost like a different sport altogether.

 One local fan named Chris Cassidy had enough perspective to notice the strange aesthetics. When he goes to Rockets games, Cassidy sits with Morey. But he can’t watch every Rockets game. He has a day job that keeps him busy at night—and sometimes takes him off the planet entirely. Cassidy is NASA’s chief astronaut.

 NASA, like every NBA team, is obsessed with efficiency. That means searching for small risks with big rewards, Cassidy said. The basketball equivalent of a small risk with a big reward is a longer 3-pointer.

“On a different scale,” Cassidy said, “I can see exactly how that relates to what the Rockets are doing.”

The Rockets found that playing farther away than anyone imagined was an inefficiency they could exploit. Other teams are trying deeper threes, too, and Houston’s shooting percentage suggests the NBA hasn’t reached basketball’s extreme limits yet. There are some radicals who dream of a future when plays start at half-court, shooters take their positions 15 feet behind the arc and offenses have more room than ever to maneuver. They believe the NBA court is essentially getting bigger.

 But the Rockets have already stretched its dimensions. They were the first team to flee the mid-range because they recognized that shots between the paint and arc were mathematically stupid. What they showed this year was that shooting any three from any location was smarter than shooting most twos.

“Plus,” Morey said, “you don’t have the risk of stepping over it.”

Before this season, the first of D’Antoni and Morey’s basketball marriage, they made a decision to bet on 3-pointers. But the plan to experiment with longer 3-pointers came from the players themselves. And even they’re not quite sure why. “It just kind of happened,” Anderson said.

 It turned out to be easy for the Rockets to take advantage of serendipity. All they had to do was keep shooting—no matter where they were.

Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com​

more charts, video, and photos at the link

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-houston-rockets-shoot-long-3-pointers-from-outer-space-1493563578

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php?threads/wall-street-journal-the-rockets-shoot-from-outer-space.282369/

[geronl]

Sounds like the sport is evolving.

[corbe]

  It has evolved for millennia @geronl   
  The Rockets just think they have perfected the latest incarnation of it.
  In spite of this guy being a Wall Street Journal Reporter, I think even he's drinking a little to much RED koolaid, in predicting we'll get past GSW and challenge LeBron and his Cavaliers.
  Popovich and his Spurs are gonna be a Hugh problem, but solvable, IMHO.

The Aztec ball game



The ring used for the Aztec ball game, Ullamaliztli


Ullamaliztli, the famous Aztec ball game, was played on a tlachtli ball court (the game is sometimes referred to as Tlachtli).  The ball court was one of the first things built when the Aztecs settled a new area, making it the most important of the ancient Aztec games.  It was a very difficult game played with a large rubber ball (the name of the game comes from the word ulli, or rubber).  The game was not just important for entertainment, but also politics and religion.

[goatprairie]

When the league first instituted the three ball back in the '79-'80 season most teams treated it like a real odd shot. The great majority of teams only took a few three shots a game.  Some of the best teams, like the Lakers, almost totally shunned it despite having a designated three ball shooter in Michael Cooper.
Despite having and excellent three ball shooter in Larry Bird, the Celtics mostly disdained the shot. 
Even after ten years many teams didn't realize the strategic possibilities of the shot.
By the new century though teams were taking a lot more of them and acquiring players just on their ability to hit  the shot.
Well now we have teams like Houston and Golden State shooting them at every opportunity. Houston took 40 a game and GS and some others over 30.
But is this what we want to watch....teams just running down the court to fire up threes or the odd shot in the lane?
I think the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the shot.  I don't want to see the shot banned or the line moved or restricted. I like the shot, but I'd like to see incentives for teams to take more shots closer to the basket.  They could do this by rewarding shooting fouls in the lane with three foul shots instead of two after a certain number of fouls is reached. And to prevent teams from fouling lousy foul shooters, any player on the court can take the foul shots instead of the player fouled.
Hopefully, this would encourage teams to plan strategies other than firing up a three ball shot at the first opportunity.

[corbe]

   Good points @goatprairie Teams like GSW and the Rockets are taking advantage of the existing rules through sheer talent (and being healthy). 
   The league is ever evolving, there is always a better mouse trap than the one you have.

[goatprairie]

   Good points @goatprairie Teams like GSW and the Rockets are taking advantage of the existing rules through sheer talent (and being healthy). 
   The league is ever evolving, there is always a better mouse trap than the one you have.

Although I don't understand a lot of it, I'm well aware analytics has taken over bb like it has a lot of other sports. Nothing wrong with that...it's simply trying to find the most efficient way to use talent.
But you get on some bb boards and some of the people know all the jargon about "wins above replacement" "PER" and a lot of other analytics jargon. I confess to being too old (or too stodgy) to get too involved in that.
What I find interesting is the time lag between when the shot was instituted and when teams began using it effectively.
 Why wasn't there one team, shortly after the shot was legalized,  that figured out shooting a lot of threes was a great strategy?  Looking at the numbers of threes taken, teams like the Lakers, the greatest team of the eighties, rarely used the shot in winning multiple titles.
Even after ten years of legalization many teams only used the shot occasionally.
Now it seems with teams like Houston it's mostly threes and layups. Can't blame them....if that allows them the best chance to win, it's what they should do.