Houston Rockets: Analyzing Ryan Anderson’s start to the season
Ryan Anderson is often criticized for being overpaid and producing in limited ways. Let’s look at his start to the season for the Houston Rockets.
An offseason full of trade rumors involving Ryan Anderson led to him being unfairly criticized due to his large (and for the time being, unmovable) contract. However, as I wrote before the season started, he is still incredibly valuable for the Houston Rockets as one of, if not the best floor-spacing wings in the league.
For a team that relies on 3-point shooting and space for their elite guards to drive to the rim, Anderson is more valuable to the Rockets than nearly every other team in the league.
So far this season, Anderson is contributing in more ways than his shooting. Although he is averaging just 12.1 points per game on 9.0 shot attempts per game (both his lowest averages since the 2010-11 season), Anderson has increased his rebounding to 5.7 per game and is playing much better defense, especially in isolation.
As Kyle Chilek notes for Red Nation Hoops, Anderson has defended 43 isolations (more than any other player this season), but has allowed just 24 total points and 23.7 percent shooting. Those numbers have him allowing just 0.56 points per possession on isolation, which puts him in the top 10 percent of isolation defenders this season.
For someone with Anderson’s defensive reputation and limited physical skills, that is extremely impressive and valuable for the Rockets’ much improved defense. Anderson is also posting the lowest defensive box plus-minus (-1.3) since the 2011-12 season, and his defensive real plus-minus of -0.23 is very impressive, all factors considered.
Finally, Anderson is also helping the Rockets’ defense by increasing his defensive rebounding, as he is now grabbing 15.4 percent of available rebounds on the defensive end compared to just 11.2 percent last season.
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Of course, Anderson doesn’t provide most of his value on the defensive end. Rather, it’s his elite shooting that plays a key role in Houston’s incredible offensive attack.
This season Anderson is shooting 39 percent from beyond the arc on a career-high 7.2 attempts per game. He has continued his elite shooting on corner threes, hitting 53.8 percent of them so far this season. Another underrated aspect of Anderson’s offensive game is his ability to post up smaller defenders and get off a Dirk-like one-legged fadeaway. Anderson is shooting 75 percent on shots within 10-16 feet of the rim and 84.6 percent on shots 16 feet to the 3-point line.
While Anderson has been playing (and shooting) well so far this season, there is room for improvement, mainly due to the return of Chris Paul. With Paul back, Anderson will play all of his minutes with either the “Point God” or the MVP frontrunner James Harden, which means that Anderson will receive quality look after quality look.
In fact, in Paul’s first game back against the Phoenix Suns, he found Anderson several times for open 3-pointers, as seen below at the 1:05, 1:50, 2:04, 2:37 and 3:22 marks of this video:
If that game was any indication of how things are going to be throughout the rest of the season, Anderson will surely get back to hitting over 40 percent of his 3-pointers, which boosts his value even more to this high-powered Rockets offense.
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By improving his defense and rebounding, Anderson is providing more value in other areas of the game besides his shooting. However, when it comes down to it, Anderson’s bread-and-butter is his floor-spacing, which will only improve as he gets acclimated and integrated with Chris Paul.