The Single Game Illusion

I went 0-1 on Thursday night missing the only play of Houston-Dallas under 190.5.  And I missed it by alot as the two teams combined for 214 points.  This is a perfect example of placing too much emphasis on the results of a single prior game.

Houston held Memphis to 71 points in a game played at an extremely slow pace of 87.1 on Wednesday night only to turn around and play Dallas at a pace of 94.5, scoring 112 points.   Although much of the pickup in pace was due to Dallas’ gameplan, Houston made no attempt to slow the game.   Surely Dallas is better on defense than Memphis, but the stats don’t show that.  Houston put up an offensive rating of 118.5 against Dallas after a poor 94.1 rating against a weak Memphis team.  Go figure.

Many of the points in this game came from the free throw line.  Houston shot 29-31 for a 93.5 percentage while Dallas shot 28-34 for an 82.4 percentage.  Any time you get 65 free throws in the game with the teams hitting 57 of them, the under has very little chance of succeeding.   Free throw rates for the two teams were Houston 36.7 and Dallas 33.3.  Both of those numbers are way higher than the league average of 23.1.  And the clock stands still while the points pile up.

The other takeaway from this game is the point guard postion for Houston.   Aaron Brooks looks alot better than Rafer Alston.  Alston simply stood outside the 3 point line for the whole game doing nothing while Brooks isn’t scared to take it to the basket.  I’m guessing Brooks gets more and more minutes as the season progresses as Houston looked like a better team with him in the game.