People wore tin hats on their heads to prevent mind control less than a century ago. People were worried the Houston Rockets’ offense might actually be bad because they were last in the league in three-point percentage less than 10 days ago.

I, for one, would call these equally crazy theories.

Small sample sizes can trick the mind into thinking something is real when, in reality, it isn’t. Half a month of NBA stats are not representative of undeniable truths around the league. But analyzing that half-month of stats is definitely one thing: remarkably fun.

Everyone, enter the building in a single-file line. Grab your programs and take your seats. The show is about to start here at the Small Sample Size Theatre.

Welcome to Tin Hat Stats, a new monthly series for NBA Math. For Act 1, we’ll be focusing on fun stats that occurred in the abbreviated month of October.

Nikola Vucevic is a Superstar

Since 2000, how many centers have posted a game in which they scored over 40 points while attempting two or fewer free throws? Just one: Nikola Vucevic. In fact, only eight such performances have occurred over that span from anyone, regardless of position.

These stats seem relatively arbitrary, but they should tell you how good Vucevic’s showing was against the Brooklyn Nets. He shot 22 times and made 17 of them, and the attempts came from all over the court.  He was hitting threes:

He was connecting n the paint:

He even found success in the mid-range game:

These clips—and this game in general—serve as a great summation of his season to date.

Per Basketball-Reference, Vucevic is shooting a career high from three feet and in, three to 10 feet, 16 to 22 feet and three-point range. In short: everywhere except for 10 to 16 feet. That scoring has boosted him up to 16th in the league in NBA Math’s TPA metric, ahead of guys like Kevin Durant (No. 21) and Rudy Gobert (No. 22). If you were making All-NBA teams up to this point, based solely on TPA, Vucevic would fall just shy of Third Team inclusion, behind DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Drummond and Steven Adams.

The sustainability of his play is yet to be seen. But at this point, he looks like a star on a red-hot Orlando Magic team.

Given that his career-high true shooting percentage is 54.8 percent, and he is currently at 62.4 percent, regression can be expected. But for now, he’s cemented his position as a top-five center in the NBA…for the first half-month.

The Rockets are a Terrible 3-Point-Shooting team

As mentioned in the introduction, the Rockets have not been the high-powered offense they were last year, which has much to do with their lack of three-point shooting in October. Seriously, they can’t hit a dang three. They lead the league in misses per game as of this Halloween with 30.5 per game. The second-closest team, the Toronto Raptors, is missing just 23 per game. Houston is more than seven misses per game worse than any other squad.

League average from deep so far this season is 35.6 percent. The Rockets are at 30.7 percent on 43.6 attempts per contest.

If Houston were draining its long-range shots at just an average clip, it would be making 2.16 more treys every game. Given that two of their three losses came by eight points, six-point additions could have altered those games in a meaningful way.

Some of James Harden’s magic creating space for others has been missing. When he draws the double here, he’s able to find Trevor Ariza, but Ariza is immediately swarmed by Ben Simmons, and he clunks it off the side of the backboard:

Regression to the mean will happen, and the Rockets will start to make more of these shots as the season goes along. But in the present, the looks just aren’t falling—and in a significant capacity.

Fortunately, it hasn’t all been bad. Some of their attempts have been wide open and just won’t go down.

They actually lead the league in wide-open three-point attempts per game with 19.4 but are 18th in shooting percentage on those shots, hitting just 36.8 percent. For reference, they also paced the NBA in wide-open three-point attempts last year but knocked them down 38.4 percent of the time.

Eric Gordon, notably, has been great this season, but not as much from the outside, which should change:

Gordon‘s effective field-goal percentage was 52.7 percent last season, but so far it’s only 50.8 percent in 2017-18. For Ariza, that number has fallen from 52.8 to 31.1. Though these players may be experiencing small amounts of age-related regressions, those figures should still improve. Houston’s offense currently sits at 15th in the league, but it’s just two points per 100 possessions behind eighth place.

Once all this poor shooting becomes a thing of the past, the Rockets will once again be humming like last season.

Andre Drummond can Shoot Free Throws

My eyes no longer burn at the sight of an Andre Drummond free-throw attempt!

The career 38.4 percent shooter from the charity stripe went 14-of-20 in the month of October. His form looks significantly better, with the shooting stroke taking place further out in front of his body. And it might just be sustainable.

Here’s how it used to look:

And here is how it looks now:

The change in form means Drummond may well be an improved free-throw shooter.

However, he’s boosted his percentage by 31.4 percent over last season, and that number is unsustainably high. While we can applaud Drummond for becoming competent and less eye-gouging to watch at this aspect of the game, let’s wait and see how he trends throughout the rest of the year.

Jay Triano is an Elite Head Coach

The smallest sample size of them all merits a hilarious result.

The Phoenix Suns fired head coach Earl Watson after an 0-3 start, and their team looked like a circus after the Eric Bledsoe Twitter fiasco. Jay Triano stepped in as the interim head coach, and the team sent its best player home. Finding success seemed an impossible task for the replacement signal-caller.

And yet, he went 3-1 in October, including competent wins against the Utah Jazz and Brooklyn Nets.

Under Watson, the Suns were giving up 128.7 points per game. In Triano’s four games, that number has shot all the way down at 107.8, and the Suns are seeing the fruits of their defensive labor.

They are forcing more misses, and that has created rebounding opportunities for everyone; they are up to fifth in the league in rebounds per game. Phoenix is switching more under Triano, and its young bigs are able to stay with more athletic wings for just long enough to make things difficult. Alex Len, for example, gets stuck guarding Rodney Hood here, but he does a great job with the contest and forces the miss:

Oh, and they grabbed the rebound at the end of the clip.

It’s been all about the stops for Triano to date, and that’s the best explanation for how he’s kept the Sun’s afloat. To get the offense going on the other end, meanwhile, he’s counted on an unknown player who is quickly making a name for himself in the league.

Mike James is on a two-way contract, but he should get an NBA deal any second now. He has started four games at point guard (every game since Bledsoe was sent home) and is making the most of his opportunity under Triano. With Watson at the helm, James was averaging 11.7 points, 1.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game. Under the interim head coach, those stats are 14.0, 3.0, and 4.5, respectively. Triano has him attacking the rim, and the aggression is helping everyone play more favorably.

So far, his biggest strength has been his ability to read the pick-and-roll. With Kosta Koufos switched onto him here, James attacks the rim and hits a sweet finger-roll:

And here, he reads the double team perfectly and lobs one up to Tyson Chandler for an easy dunk:

Triano is putting the rookie point guard in many of these screen actions, and James is making the most of it. He ranks 49th in the entire league in offensive points added, and he has been one of the top overall rookies so far. NBA.com’s John Schumann even thinks he is better than D’Angelo Russell!

The coaching change has this team looking adept and talented, and it’s helped James look like a seasoned veteran.

Can the Suns keep it up? Probably not. But in four games, they have looked somewhat skilled and cohesive, and that’s a massive step in the right direction.

We hope you all enjoyed the show at the Small Sample Size Theatre today. Please file out one row at a time, starting from the front. Then join us next month for Act II of Tin Hat Stats, with more fun NBA trends and analysis.

Follow Tony on Twitter @TEastNBA.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math, Basketball Reference or NBA.com and are accurate heading into games on November 1.