The Houston Rockets are not getting deoptimized

May 14, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Houston Rockets guard Jason Terry (31) shoots over Los Angeles Clippers guard Chris Paul (3) in game six of the second round of the NBA Playoffs at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

Sometimes you have to admit that things are not going as you predicted it. Before the Playoffs started, I was sure that the Rockets would have to pay some kind of price for taking ‘Morey Ball’ to ever new heights.

My reasoning was simple: While focusing solely on three-pointers and attempts at the rim means that you take the shots with the highest expected value, you also take away a huge degree of freedom in your actions. Consider the offensive philosophy of the Spurs or Clippers. They run plays that try to get them to the basket, but if you take this option away, they have two further options. Either an open spot-up three pointer (by a token role player that is not a center) or their best players getting a good mid-range shot.

The Rockets simply ignore that this last option exists. So, my conclusion was: In a playoffs series, where the other team has all the time in the world to prepare for your strategy, it either takes your typical shot options away or it makes your shots much harder. Thanks to SportVU, we can look at both assumptions, using the information about shot distance and shot frequency.

For the defender distance, we can see that there has been no negative impact for them.

On the contrary, against the Clippers they have around one more feet of freedom from the corner than average teams had during the regular season. And Dallas’ defense was the opposite of stifling.
So, what about shot frequency? Are they at least forced to take some more mid-range jumpers?

The answer is a clear no. Against Dallas they simply substituted three-pointers with close range shots, but other-wise their shot distribution is the same as always[1. Note: The reason that the light blue fields from 9 to 15 feet are not dark blue is that all teams take less than 5% of their shots from there. That range is too far to lay up and to close to spot up. So it is simply impossible to be more than one or two percent below the average for that distance.] Of course, neither the Mavericks or Clippers are elite defenses and two rounds of playoffs are far away from anything where I would draw a final conclusion.

But at least it doesn’t seem like the reduced dimensionality of Morey Ball is an insurmountable flaw come playoff-time. So maybe we don’t have to revert to the triangle offense…