To reiterate my stance at the time of the trade, Gay is not an elite wing defender, nor is he a poor one. He is, however, slightly above-average and also immediately becomes the Raptors’ best wing defender.

In Memphis, Tony Allen and Marc Gasol get a great deal of attention for their defensive contributions, but Gay played a “stay-at-home” kind of role, playing tight man defense on the opposing team’s best wing player. This allowed Allen more freedom to freelance off the ball, an area where he excels. Now, Allen is still a better wing defender than Gay, but the sum of Gay-on-ball + Allen-freelance was greater than Gay-freelance + Allen-on-ball. At least this is what I gather from the video I’ve looked at and from applying logic to having Gay on the opposition’s best weapon if Allen is, in fact, the better defender. Gay got the toughest assignment, in particular, at the end of games, which will be a key role for him in Toronto.

The Raptors don’t have a big as strong defensively as Gasol or another wing defender as strong as Allen, so Gay’s defense becomes even more important here in Toronto (I know Amir is a great help defender, but Gasol is getting Defensive Player of the Year love, so chill). Before we get into some situation-specific information, let’s compare Gay’s defensive metrics with other Raptors. Now, advanced defensive statistics can be flawed, but if we look at enough of them over a large enough sample, we might be able to paint a clear picture. (Note: This table is color-scaled to this group, not to league average.)

The first thing to note is that Gay is 14th in the NBA this year in Defensive Win Shares. Part of this is due to Memphis’ strong defense and Gay’s heavy minutes load, but it’s still extremely impressive.

It really doesn’t take a “stats geek” to see that using these two advanced metrics, Gay is head and shoulders above his new teammates. Again though, these are general stats, and some people may not love the methodology the sites use to determine them.

Let’s look to Synergy, then, to identify particular situations.
A few caveats are necessary here, mainly that we’re dealing with a relatively small sample of games and I can’t go back any further than this year (because Synergy STILL doesn’t have registration open, so I just get the “basics”). Perhaps most importantly, though, is that these stats don’t control for the quality of the opponent being guarded. In addition, the logging/tracking of defenders and plays is somewhat in question, and a lot of “stats people” I trust don’t love it outside of post-ups and isolations, where the primary defender is obvious.

We can still see some interesting things though, such as the fact that all the Raptor wings seem to be better handling the pick-and-roll than Gay. This could be a scheme-dependent anomaly, I’m not really sure. In addition we see that DeRozan has done better than Anderson and Gay in isolation, which we can all agree is DEFINITELY because of quality of opposing players. We also see that Terrence Ross, likely because of his length and quickness, is excellent guarding spot-up shooters.

If you’ve ever accused me of cherry-picking stats to prove my point, hopefully the fact that Gay’s overall opponent point per possession here is the worst of the bunch puts that to rest. I am almost positive this is because Gay guards tougher players than any one particular Raptor has been tasked with, in concert with some curious classification by Synergy for non one-on-one situations.

To try and dig deeper, Jared Dubin, a true O.G. from HoopChalk, Hardwood Paroxysm and more, pulled Gay’s 2011-12 numbers for me.
Now, beyond all of these stats, I wanted to clip some video to show as well. Of course, that would be cherry-picking, but so would any videos showing him as a poor defender. I also didn’t want to take any Synergy video, and am not exactly tech-savvy in terms of creating videos (please trust me that I watched a bunch of Grizzlies end-game situations via my League Pass account in the past week, and I’m not blowing smoke up your butts).

Below, however, is a good example of Gay’s isolation defense. Amir Johnson is coming to help but never needs to, as Gay manages to force James wide and elevates for a block. You can see he’s quick laterally, but James probably could have driven by him into help if he so chose. Still, the lateral quickness and quick elevation allow him to stay with James and block the shot.

Again, that’s just one example. There are more out there, but people tend not to put “siiiiick defensive play” on YouTube too often.

If you prefer more basic “blocks” and “steals” as your defensive stat of choice (I recommend against this, though they certainly matter), Gay is also 14th in the NBA in steals since he entered the league with 644 in 481 games. Of the top-20 players in that span in terms of steals, he is fourth in blocks with 422. Only 38 players have ever tallied 600 steals and 400 blocks in their first seven seasons, and Gay has done it in fewer games than all but seven of them. He’s fairly elite when it comes to those two stats. Further to more “normal” box score stats, he’s roughly an average defensive rebounder for his position.

Anecdotally, his athleticism and quickness also allow him to recover quickly. Matt Moore from CBS has watched more Grizz video than probably anyone, and he directed me to the November 14 game between Oklahoma City and Memphis. I watched the full game on League Pass again last night and came away impressed, not just at Gay’s defense but how relatively unnoticed it goes. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Gay’s reputation hasn’t caught up with his ability on that end since, as Matt put it to me, “He’s the “stable” defender on Memphis. So while Tony’s reaching and gambling, and Marc’s extending to attack, Rudy’s staying home.” I also noticed a couple of times where, when he did make a mistake, he was vocal about it and took accountability with his teammates, which is important, I think, in cultivating a strong defensive culture, which is obviously a Coach Casey goal.

I’m not telling you to accept my word, accept the stats, or even accept Matt’s word. If you have Synergy or League Pass access, go watch some of Gay’s work with the Grizzlies, specifically against elite players and at the end of games. If you don’t have access to these resources, just keep an eye on it in the coming games. Gay is likely to draw the tough assignments with the Raptors, and while nobody on earth can help keep LeBron James in check for a full game, Gay has shown the ability to be a key cog in a highly effective defensive system.

In basketball, especially on defense, reputations are sometimes slow to catch up to reality. Hopefully this article and the coming weeks will help to highlight Rudy Gay as more than just a one-way player. Again, he’s not elite, but he appears to be average at worst and potentially very good in the right environment. Hopefully he can carry that over from the league’s second best defensive team to its 26th best.

A few people have asked me on Twitter and in Daily Dime Live of late, “what is wrong with DeMar Deozan?” After all, he started the season out pretty strong, quieting those who were down on his contract extension.

Lately, however, DeRozan has seemingly regressed. Take a look at the raw numbers:

That’s a pretty dramatic drop off from the early part of the season to the past month. Basically, DeRozan had made incremental improvements across the board, but then fell off in a serious way. If we look at more advanced stats, the story is the same:

So what’s the answer? Two potential reasons I could think of were fatigue from the heavy minutes load early in the season and mental fatigue from frequently not getting calls on attacks to the rim. The former is likely a small part of it, but given his age and ability to handle a similar workload last season with a more condensed schedule, I doubt it’s a major factor. The latter is potentially just homerism, but if true, counter-intuitive, since the only way to start getting those borderline calls is to continue to establish yourself as an attacking presence.

Whatever the reason behind it, DeRozan is very clearly making poor decisions in the past month, at least in terms of where he decides to take his shots from:

Regardless of why he’s doing this, there’s your reason as to why his efficiency and output has decreased. Fewer shots at the rim, more shots from the mid-range and fewer free throw attempts. That’s a recipe for inefficient scoring.

Since DeRozan only has enough of a three-point shot to threaten the defense when wide-open (he is shooting just 25.5% on threes above the break and 26.3% on corner threes), most of his points need to come at the line unless he can manage to shoot an insane percentage on mid-range shots. Since he hits just a hair over 40% from the mid-range, it means you’re expecting about 0.81 points per possession where DeRozan fires up a mid-range jumper. Mid-range jumpers are, of course, also far less likely to result in a trip to the free throw line than are shots at the rim (where, for the record, DeRozan hits about 58% of his attempts).

Going to the rim means a higher percentage of makes and a greater rate of free throw attempts, so why is DeRozan shying away from them? It’s difficult to say, really.

According to Synergy, DeRozan is one of the league’s best offensive players in isolations, post-ups, hand-offs and as the pick-and-roll ball handler. That’s an impressive offensive profile, to rank in the top-32 in all of those areas, plus 55th off screens.

However, even with all of those great strengths, he’s just 163rd overall in terms of points per possession, meaning he’s not using his possessions optimally, it would seem. For one, pick-and-roll ball handlers and players shooting off of screens and hand-offs generally produce fewer points per possession, so part of the drop in rank is just due to him being a wing player. I’m not sure what the remedy is here, as the only real difference between DeRozan at 163 and, say, Gordon Hayward at 118 is Hayward’s three-point shooting (and the fact that Hayward somehow has 14 And-1s to DeRozan’s 12, ouch).

As it is, DeRozan ranks just 25th in PER among shooting guards, erasing pretty much all of his early-season progress. If Win Shares is your thing (it’s not mine), he has made no noticeable improvement on a per-48 minute basis over the past two years, still falling short of his rookie campaign. If you’re real nerdy (like me) and Adjusted Statistical Plus-Minus is more your bag, DeRozan has been a slight negative at both ends of the floor, providing more or less the same value as last year (above replacement-level, below-average).

I don’t have the solution. I know that this isn’t it:

And neither are these:

Those are his last three games. I also know that this one, from back on November against the Nets, in a game where he also took 10 free throw attempts, is more like it:

I don’t have the solution. If it’s mental, then show him the stats and the shot charts and the video. He showed in November that he knows getting to the stripe is the best way to be an above-average wing scorer, if you don’t have the three-pointer in your arsenal. If it’s fatigue, shorten his minutes for a handful of games until he gets his legs back. If it’s mental fatigue, tell him to call Ramon Sessions, who gets to the line more often and certainly isn’t getting superstar whistles.

Again, I don’t have the solution. But the shot distribution from the past month is the reason he’s not putting up points, and not putting them up efficiently when he does.

Dig deep and find that early-season, “prove-Hollinger-wrong” aggression, and start heading to the rim again. It might hurt physically, but it’s going to be a lot more rewarding than hoisting 18-foot jumpers with a 40% success rate.

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“Take these broken wings and learn to fly.” – The Beatles / Joe Budden

Coach Dwane Casey’s wing rotation has been curious of late. It seems he’s had some difficulty deciding who to play when now that all the bodies are healthy. It hasn’t helped that the big rotation has been thinned out, providing opportunities to play small with a wing at the four.

Still, the minute allocation seems suboptimal relative to the franchise’s goals. I thought I should pull some numbers to see if there was something in the advanced data I was missing.

In my mind, it makes the most sense to start DeMar DeRozan and Landry Fields and use Terrence Ross as the first wing off the bench. All three of these players are young and a big part of the future, so it makes sense to give them every opportunity to learn and grow in what is a developmental season for the team. See the chart below for a basic explanation of why I think these three should be getting the bulk of the minutes.

Note: All Fields stats basically have to be taken with a giant grain of salt given his long layoff and recent return. We probably don’t know what we have with him yet.

But maybe Alan Anderson, Linas Kleiza and Mickael Pietrus are doing some things I’m not noticing when watching the games. After all, Anderson scores a lot, Kleiza has ducked to the four and Pietrus has a reputation as a solid defender, so perhaps these elements in isolation don’t appeal to me but are “working.” Plus they’re all savvy veterans!

Nope, not at a basic statistical level, anyway. Using Per-36 stats to judge, Anderson is scoring the most but not in the most efficient way, basically scoring via volume rather than any apparent skill at putting the ball in the hoop. Kleiza and Pietrus really aren’t doing anything offensively well, with even Ross and Fields, who both had horrific starts to the year in percentage terms, outperforming them there.

Now, let’s get to where I really like to look, in the advanced stats. We should be dealing with a large enough sample now that these stats reflect the real story to a degree, though they’re still not anywhere close to gospel (ever, really). Maybe the veteran savvy and defense are showing through in advanced metrics?

Nope. Again, Kleiza and Pietrus are otherworldly-bad, as are Ross and Fields. I’ll again direct your attention to the first table, displaying the ages of the players, and let you decide who you’d rather see on the floor.

At this point, Kleiza is a sunk cost with his $4.5M player option for next year that I doubt he’ll decline (unless some European team saves us and gives him a big offer to head home). Pietrus was signed due to depth issues but should probably be thrown back on the scrap heap.

Anderson has been good, especially on the defensive end, and at least has the stones to take the big shots. Still, he’s shooting A LOT, and those are shots and minutes that could be learning opportunities for the other wings. There’s certainly a place for Anderson, especially on his team-friendly contract, but he’s unlikely to be a part of the future since he’ll command a pay raise in the offseason. He’s probably better served as the ninth man in the rotation.

No, Ross hasn’t blown us away despite a few big games and plenty of highlights. He hasn’t learned to utilize his length and athleticism defensively except in transition, but there are very clear signs that the potential is there. He just needs reps. And that shooting stroke is so damn pretty that it’s not a leap of faith to project him as a good three-point shooter in the near future.

Fields basically needs to be given a do-over on the year so far. I do believe his wrist troubles probably effected his shot and then his confidence, and he’s looked better (albeit reluctant offensively) since returning. With the contract he received, it’s in the team’s best interest to let him figure it out on the floor and get acclimated with the team and his role here.

DeRozan has improved, though he’s still not quite a scratch player in the advanced metrics, likely because his defense is yet to catch up to his offense. But for a guy in his fourth year, he’s still very young and still possesses very obvious potential to improve, something you can’t say for all fourth-years. He could probably use his minutes scaled back, but that’s more because he’s played such a heavy amount than because he hasn’t been good.

My Rotation
I’d start DeRozan and Fields for a nice offense-defense balance and hope that Fields finds his stroke so there’s some floor spacing on the first unit. Ross would then be my first wing off the bench, playing the three with DeRozan or the two when Anderson checks in as the fourth wing. I’d probably be playing DeRozan 35 minutes, Fields 25-30, Ross 25 and then Anderson six plus whatever minutes are left over from he and Fields playing the four (say, another eight minutes, giving him 14-19).

This article is all a way of saying play the young guys. Let’s see what Ross has and if he can improve with more game action, and let’s give Fields a mulligan and see if there’s value to be mined from that contract still. Anderson can stick around because he’s decent and is by all accounts a great guy.

Kleiza, Pietrus…well, you can get out.

Follow @BlakeMurphyODC

Yeah, that happened last time.

The Raptors continue their road trip by heading into Salt Lake City to face the Jazz tonight.

Normally, this is where there would be some input from a fellow True Hoop Network site to give us some insight on the Jazz, but we weren’t able to work that out this time around. Instead, I’ll do something different just to get you all riled up.

Blind Taste Test – Raptor Bigs

I’ve included a plethora of different statistics here so that, no matter your preference, you can draw a relatively similar conclusion. Obviously the MPG category gives it away here, but if you ignore that, which two bigs would you want to play and why? I think it’s pretty damn obvious, but let’s have a look.

Basic Stats – Player B had the best True Shooting Percentage, the best Rebound Rate, and the best Player Efficiency Rating. Player C is the worst of the four bigs in each of those categories. So when it comes to scoring and rebounding, Player B is the team’s best big so far, while Player C is the worst. Players A and D are very similar and relatively average. In terms of opponent PER, Player C comes out the strongest, while Players A and B are weaker despite being the best shot-blockers.

Complex Stats – Using Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and Adjusted Statistical Plus-Minus (which I love in huge samples since it controls for quality of teammates, quality of competition and more, but is still relatively fickle this early in the season), we see a similar picture. Player B has been the team’s best contributor on both ends of the floor. Player D has been of equal value defensively and still a net positive on offense. Player C has been atrocious on both ends, while Player A has been a slight negative at both ends.

Fancy Pants Stats – Using Net Rating (NBA Advanced Stats) when On versus Off the court, we see that Player D has had the biggest positive impact on the team, while Player A has had the worst (I accidentally highlighted the wrong cells here). Players B and C have had relatively little impact on the team’s overall performance. Using ASPM, however, Player B again rockets to the top while Player C is the worst. Using Simple Rating (82Games), again we see Player D being a huge positive, Player A being a negative, and Players B and C being of no impact. Finally, based on Win Shares per 48 Minutes (B-Ref), Players B and D have been the best, Player a is pretty decent, and Player C should be in the D-League.

The Reveal
A: Jonas Valanciunas
B: Ed Davis
C: Andrea Bargnani
D: Amir Johnson

So why is it that the two players with the most consistently positive scores have the fewest minutes? Because of a contract and a perceived need to have Bargnani in the game, of course. You can justify Jonas’ minutes since he is a rookie learning on the fly who needs time to develop, but for the other three the bizarre inverse relationship between performance and minutes is sickening.

The Solution?
To send Jonas to the bench for Amir, of course! At least, so the team thinks. Really, you could have argued switching both starters for both bench players. And while Davis has been the best big in my opinion, there’s certainly a statistical base to justify Amir’s promotion, while anecdotally he also complements Bargnani very well throughout their time together.

Pairings?
Out of curiosity, I pulled NBA Advanced Stats lineup data to see how the different pairs of bigs have performed together. Perhaps Jonas and Ed are playing well as a pair, as are Amir and Andrea, justifying this switch since Dwane Casey tends to roll out subs together?

Alas, that is the case to some degree. In fact, the team has only played well when Bargnani’s on the floor if Amir accompanies him, while Bargs combinations with Davis and Jonas have been net negatives for the team. However, Ed and Jonas have appeared to be horrible complementary pieces. If we could look at ASPM data for lineups, we might see a different picture, since you’ll recall that Amir scored very highly using NBA’s advanced stats, which these are based on. Regardless, we can at least see that the team may be thinking “Hey, Andrea plays better with Amir, maybe we can get him going.”

Whether or not you should have to get a $10M “star” player going with lineup shifts is an entirely different philosophical discussion.

Alas, there is also a game tonight.

Tale of the Tape
Offensive Rating: Utah 104.8 (11th), Toronto 102.8 (19th)
Defensive Rating: Utah 106.4 (21st), Toronto 108.1 (25th)
Pace: Toronto 92.0 (16th), Utah 91.4 (21st)
Strength: Utah O-Reb (4th), Toronto Ball Control (3rd)
Utah D-Reb (27th), Toronto Defensive 3FG% (26th)

Last time around the Raptors went to Triple Overtime with the Jazz only to lose in the end. Hopefully they are kind enough to end it in regulation with a fourth quarter buzzer beater this time around.

No positional breakdown today, my apologies. I’m a little tied up.

Important News
Derrick Favors, Mo Williams and Al Jefferson are all game-time decisions. Obviously there would be huge implications from any of them missing time, though in our reality right now that probably just means it would be Enes Kanter and Earl Watson crushing our spirits instead of Jefferson or Williams.

The Pick
Being “negative” in Raptor-land now means picking narrow losses instead of blowout losses. With that in Mind, I’ll go Jazz by 2 on a game-winning shot by Gordon Hayward, making you all sing CARRY ON MY HAYWARD SON on loop in your heads for the weekend.

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Deep breath, Bargs. Now hear me out.

Alrighty, let me preface this article by saying this: I know it’s becoming borderline cliché to hate on Andrea around here, and I don’t want to fall into that trap. Clearly, the guy is a useful player, a starter on a good percentage of teams around the league and a guy who would get minutes wherever he played – hell, if they had the All Star game after the first 10 games of the year last season you’re looking at the East’s starting power forward.

That said, for Andrea, the start of this season has been… inconsistent, to say the least. Despite some flashes of offensive brilliance, Bargs has been, for the most part, ineffective on that end – shooting 36% from the field, which is the worst percentage of his career, by far – he hasn’t gone below 43% since 2008. As Blake’s pointed out a few times, he’s averaging just barely a point per FGA, his Hollinger PER is the lowest it’s ever been, etc, etc.

Basically, the statistics back up the eye test. For anyone watching the Raptors this year, it’s more or less impossible to argue that it’s been a strong start this year for Andrea on the offensive end, to say nothing about his… let’s say, occasional effort when it comes to rebounding that has become a bit of a Bargnani staple. This is something the team brass expected (players don’t suddenly become incredible rebounders in year seven) and have taken steps to remedy (surrounding him with a true center, an excellent rebounding point guard in Lowry, and what looks like a better-than-we-all-expected rebounding shooting guard in DeMar). The offensive woes, though, are a huge issue – even with all the changes, you’d have to believe that this team and its fans expected big things from Bargs on that end.

All of this preamble is likely old hat to most of the Republic faithful, who’ve been watching the same games I have this year. We all know Bargnani’s been struggling. So, let’s get to the idea posed so eloquently in the headline:

Is it time for Andrea to go to the bench?

There are a few obvious pros to this idea, as well as a couple of not so obvious ones. For the team as a whole, bench scoring has been difficult to come by. The Raps are currently ranked 16th in the league in bench scoring – a number that doesn’t seem too bad when taken on its own, but that becomes more problematic in regards to the Raptors, specifically. This is a team who’s hallmark coming into the season was supposed to be its deep bench, but, as we’ve seen through the first eight games of the year, through no fault of a specific player (as well as some injuries), the bench doesn’t really have anyone besides Jose who can create his own shot, save for the hot-and-cold Linas Kleiza. Adding Bargs to the bench rotation would immediately stabilize the scoring on that end, giving the team a number one option for the second unit it doesn’t have right now.

Secondly, becoming the number one option of a unit should invigorate Andrea’s game. It’s been stated by my fellow Republic writers this season that Bargs needs a couple of quick touches to get into a game and get motivated (the fact that we’re having this discussion about a guy making $10 million a year is another column altogether). To the extent they can, the stats back that up over his career – Andrea’s best two seasons in terms of Hollinger PER (reasonably effective in measuring offensive efficiency), and the only two seasons when he was above the league average, had his usage rate above 25% (it’s closer to 21 this year). With a scoring point guard in Lowry, an emerging DeRozan, and a player in Jonas who’s role in the offense will only be increased as the season rolls along, it’s hard to believe Bargs’ usage rates will ever come back to that level with the way the starting lineup is currently constructed.

Essentially, the more often Bargnani has the ball, the more effective he is – a trait that’s great for players who are true number one scoring options, but seriously problematic for players who aren’t talented enough to assume that role on a successful team. In a bench role, he’d immediately become the alpha dog of the second unit, getting more touches, and, assuming the stats hold, the requisite efficiency boost that comes with that. There’d be a bit of a minutes drop, of course, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too drastic – there’s no reason he couldn’t play in crunch time and given the way Casey plays his bigs (and the way the bigs get in foul trouble) it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Bargs couldn’t get 30 minutes a game as the team’s first scorer off the bench (he’s currently averaging 34.5).

Clearly, a move to the bench would improve the second unit’s scoring punch, and, if you can accept my premise that it’d improve Andrea’s effectiveness as well, there’s a case to be made for moving the big Italian to the bench. Now, what about the case against it?

Well, for starters – who’d replace him in the starting lineup? Common logic would suggest it’d be Amir (also finally uniting a very intriguing big combo with JV that Casey seems loathe to use, for some reason), but I’d guess that the team would settle on Ed Davis, if only because a Davis/Bargs frontline of the team’s second unit is softer than Andrea’s favourite Primo pasta after 20 minutes in the pot. Davis is a solid rebounder who arguably deserves more minutes than he’s been getting this season, but the drop-off in offence is a precipitous one in this scenario – you’d go from one of the team’s top scoring options to a guy who, to borrow a crude expression, couldn’t catch a cold.

Assuming the defensive switch from Andrea to ED is more or less a wash, given Davis’ stronger rebounding tendencies and Bargs’ slightly better on-ball defence, the crux of this proposed switch comes to the offensive side – basically, can Lowry (once healthy) and DeMar take on enough of the first and third offense to offset Bargnani moving to the bench? The answer to that question is one that likely depends on who you’re asking and when  - anecdotally, I’d say yes, but I don’t have stats to back that one up.

So, what’s the answer here? Do the potential advantages from moving AB to the bench outweigh the additional offensive strain it puts on the starters? Can ED and/or Amir handle the additional minutes such a move would entail (even if it was a non-traditional minutes distribution)? How would Andrea take the idea of a move to the bench in from a motivational standpoint? Does it even matter, really?

As you can see, I’ve got plenty of questions but am short on answers. My thoughts: if Bargs continues his slow start to the season I’d like to see Casey consider it on a short term basis, if only to put some fire under Andrea’s ass. That said, we’re not exactly overflowing with strong big men, and “he might not be perfect, but he’s the best we’ve got” is a refrain Raptors fans have heard far too often.

What do you think? Is this a move worth trying? Will this column, at the very least, inspire Andrea the way my DeMar extension reaction clearly motivated DeMar to make me eat my words? Comment below or tweet at me  @GarrettHinchey.

It’s no secret that over the past few seasons, Jose Calderon and Amir Johnson have been thought of as an awesome tag-team combination for the Toronto Raptors. While each player individually has had his ups and downs, the one constant has seemed to be their ability to play well together.

And it makes sense intuitively – Amir sets good screens, dives to the rim hard, and is a capable enough mid-range shooter, while Calderon is excellent at setting up teammates from the pick-and-roll. Additionally, Amir is a strong help defender who could conceivably provide a bail-out when Calderon is beat by quicker guards.

Johnson with Calderon
This was on display in Wednesday’s game against Dallas, as Amir had a season-best performance of 18 points, 11 rebounds, and three assists, with Kyle Lowry out of the lineup and Calderon playing 33 minutes. This isn’t anything new, as through five games, Amir is shooting 58.3% when Jose is on the floor with him and just 37.5% when Calderon sits. His Net Rating (the difference in points scored per 100 possessions and points allowed per 100 possessions) is also 16.4-points better with Calderon than without, a huge margin of difference.

This is a small sample, of course, so I went back to last year as well. Last year, Johnson shot the same overall percentage (57.6%) with or without Calderon on the floor. While this doesn’t back up what we seem to believe, what is of note is that with Calderon on the floor, Johnson took 59.3% of his shots at the rim, compared to just 54.8% when Calderon was off. Basically, Amir settles for mid-range shots with a greater frequency when he’s not playing with Calderon. In addition, Amir’s Offensive Rating was much better (102.8 to 96.2) with Jose on the floor than without, and his Net Rating (1.2 to -0.3) was better as well. For whatever reason, Amir rebounds more and turns the ball over less when Jose accompanies him. One possible explanation is that Calderon gets him closer to the basket where offensive boards are easier to grab, and gets him the ball in situations where he has to handle it less, causing fewer turnovers.

When I looked back to 2010-11, this trend didn’t hold, as Johnson shot better and closer to the rim with Calderon out of the game and had roughly the same Net Rating with or without him (he was actually worse offensively with him but significantly better defensively, reversing last year’s trend). In 2009-10, Johnson shot better (63.8%) with Calderon than without (60.8%) and took slightly more shots at the rim, while having a much better rating at both ends of the floor.

So overall it does seem like Johnson plays better with Calderon. With the exception of 2010-11, his Net Rating is generally stronger with Calderon accompanying him.

Calderon with Johnson
I also thought I’d switch the analysis to see if Calderon performed any better with Amir on the floor with him. My assumption here would be that Amir’s success offensively could both improve Calderon’s assist rate while also improving his mid-range shooting, as Amir would, in theory, open up more space on the pick-and-roll. In addition, the help Amir can provide on defense could hide some of Calderon’s shortcomings at that end.

So far this season, Jose’s assist ratio has been 5.3% higher with Johnson on the floor, while his Net Rating has been an astounding 37.6-points better. Jose’s shooting from all areas has also been better, but we’re again dealing with a tiny, 114-minute sample, so let’s look at previous years.

Last season, Calderon was a ludicrous 10.6-points better in terms of Net Rating with Amir by his side, showing a drastic improvement on both ends of the floor. His assist rate shot from an elite 39.4% to an otherworldly 46.3% when Amir joined him, and his shooting percentage increased for shots at the rim, shots from 15-19 feet and three-pointers (it decreased for 20-24 footers).

In 2010-11, the year where Johnson didn’t seem to need Calderon, Jose still needed Amir. His Net Rating was seven points better playing with Johnson, the gain being entirely from the defensive side of things, though his assist ratio was no different and the changes in his shooting percentages were negligible. In 2009-10, Calderon was a ridiculous 14.4-points of Net Rating better with Amir, once again almost entirely from the defensive side.

In total, it seems that Jose is equally capable offensively with or without Johnson. However, the drastic improvement to Calderon’s Defensive Rating with Johnson on the floor with him is both consistent and significant. Whether Amir is just a strong help defender or the other bigs Calderon has played with were especially weak is unclear, but the evidence is stark that Calderon generally needs Johnson so be part of an effective defensive unit.

The Team
So, it means nothing if Amir is better offensively with Jose and Jose is better defensively with Amir if it doesn’t change anything at the team level. So using NBA’s Advanced Stats Tool, I looked at the Amir-Jose two-man combination compared to the team norms for the past few years. The table below shows the differences.

Here we see that for every single season, Amir-Jose lineups have outperformed the team as a whole. They’ve also been better at both ends of the floor.

So far this season, Jose and Amir have played 67 minutes together, while Jose has played 47 without Amir and Amir has played 28 minutes without Jose. It seems drastic to pair two players together exclusively, but the evidence seems to show that these two should be deployed together whenever possible. In particular, the trio of Jose, Amir and Andrea Bargnani has been especially productive on the offensive end this season (Offensive Rating of 136.4) and that trio was also successful last season with a Net Rating of 6.2 as well.

There’s no official word yet on if Kyle Lowry will be good to go for Saturday’s home game against his hometown Philadelphia 76ers. If he’s not, there’s evidence here to suggest Amir Johnson should be in for a big chunk of minutes with Calderon manning the controls. And if, Shuttlesworth willing, Lowry is able to play Saturday, rest assured we have a very capable duo at the ready off the bench.

Oh, what’s that Alan Anderson?…You’re just going to take the ball and take all the shots? Well then…nevermind.

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The namesake, Russ Schoene.

I know there are some in the Republic that will groan at yet another statistically based article, and for that I apologize. I understand that statistical analysis is not for everyone, and there are a good number of people who feel that, because basketball is such a complex game with so many moving parts, that observation is the only reliable way to analyze.

At the same time, I’m of the opinion that any information you can add to your analysis can provide value. No single statistic or system is going to give you an accurate portrait of a player, offense, or team; basketball is too complex for that, and it is difficult even for a sport like baseball that is a series of one on one batter-pitcher events. But it’s the preseason, which is the time for analysis and predictions. Since I’ve only been able to see one of the three preseason games so far, I don’t have much actual game content to go off of yet, so I’ve leaned on the statistical analysis of others like Hollinger, Wages of Wins, and Basketball Prospectus of late.

If you’ll recall from the past two years, once games get going I tend not to do a tonne of statistical analysis in-season (both because of the small samples apparent in-season and because there is so much actual basketball to analyze). So, for those of you who don’t enjoy this type of analysis, I apologize, but I do ask that you accept it as a legitimate means of adding information to our analysis of basketball as a whole, especially when we don’t have games to analyze yet (and please lay off the homophobic remarks in the comments…this hurts the site, the writers, and other commenters by making us all look like Neanderthals).

SCHOENE 2012-13
With that self-serving diatribe over, let me move on to today’s topic – Basketball Prospectus has released their 2012-13 SCHOENE projections.

SCHOENE is a system that uses 13 different factors to create a similarity score for players (how similar they are to others), and it uses these similarities to help project future performance. They also adjust for projected playing time and additions/subtractions to the team (e.g. changing Usage Rates so that they equal 100% for a team). These are very similar in nature to baseball’s PECOTA forecast system, which has historically been pretty successful. For basketball, obviously, it’s not as simple and there are a lot of assumptions that drive this type of analysis that some may not agree with. But it’s interesting nonetheless. If you want to read more about what goes into SCHOENE, check this explanatory article out.

Because the projections are behind a pay wall ($8 and super useful for fantasy basketball purposes, so check it out), I can’t provide too much info, but BP has given me the okay to provide a comparable player and one or two key stats for the Raptors. For reference, a similarity score of 100 would be perfect, 95 is considered strong, and it starts to weaken around 90.

2012-13 Raptors Projections and Comparables
Kyle Lowry
Top Comparable: David Wesley (98.7/100)
Key Stat: 13.5 PPG
Reaction: I was shocked to see Lowry’s numbers decline across the board in the projection system. At the same age, David Wesley was still a couple of years from his peak, so at least that’s encouraging. Still, a switch to being the primary point guard and what I would suspect to be an uptick in Usage Rate leads me to anticipate increasing counting statistics, especially scoring numbers, not decreasing ones.

Andrea Bargnani
Top Comparable: LaPhonso Ellis (97.2/100)
Key Stat: 35% 3FG%
Reaction: Did anyone realize that Bargs shot just 29.6% from long range last year? This seems to be something that slid through the cracks in my other preseason analysis, but SCHOENE at least anticipates it ticking back up to a league average rate (though not matching the sharpshooter reputation he has in some pockets of the internet). Ellis, by the way, was a poor rebounding 6’8” forward in the late 90’s who peaked at 26 and fell off the face of the earth shortly after.

DeMar DeRozan
Top Comparable: Ron Mercer (98.7/100)
Key Stat: 5.1 FTA/game
Reaction: While 63% of players DeRozan’s age improved, SCHOENE doesn’t see an uptick in the key area we normally evaluate DeRozan in, free throw attempts. They don’t see his three point shooting improving either, by the way, even though they expect him to fire up a few more than last year. Mercer, you may remember, had a relatively successful but short career as a scoring-only type of wingman who also played little defense. (For the record, he didn’t come up as a comparable when I did my DeRozan analysis because he didn’t meet my arbitrary 3PA/FTA criteria often.)

Amir Johnson
Top Comparable: Tony Battie (97.4/100)
Key Stat: 6% Breakout Potential (only 6% of player’s similar to him “broke out” at this age)
Reaction: SCHOENE basically sees Amir as having peaked, and most of his rate and counting stats stay steady. The comparables all line him up as an offensively challenged pseudo-center with decent efficiency. Pretty disappointing to see that based on historical comparisons, Amir doesn’t seem to have much chance to take a “leap,” though we have probably all accepted this by now.

Jonas Valanciunas aka The Lethaluanian
Top Comparable: Dwight Howard (94.3/100)
Key Stat: 7.5PPG + 6.7RPG
Reaction: That’s a pretty favourable projection for a young rookie European, although I’m sure the model doesn’t have much to base it off of, considering his top comparable isn’t exactly a strong one. The projections like Jonas to be an efficient scorer, capable rebounder, and impressive shot blocker, with the points and rebounds falling fairly in line with the predictions I’ve been seeing among the Republic comments.

Landry Fields
Top Comparable: Josh Childress (97.5/100)
Key Stat: 33.5% 3FG%
Reaction: SCHOENE splits the difference between his two seasons from long range, though they don’t expect his role to increase at all. It answers one question about Fields, although we all seem to be on the same page that a lot of his value will come from non-boxscore items (although my recent piece may have overemphasized the importance of his stroke).

Ed Davis
Top Comparable: Tony Battie (98.2/100)
Key Stat: 54% FG%
Reaction: SCHOENE likes Ed’s scoring and shooting to tick back up closer to his rookie levels, though they don’t really see his rebounding or shot blocking moving the needle. It’s interesting though not entirely surprising to note that Davis has very similar comparables to Amir Johnson, although surprisingly at 24 he has even less of a chance (5%) than Johnson to “break out.”

Terrence Ross
Top Comparable: Antoine Wright (97.8/100)
Key Stat: 31.2% 3FG%, 1.1 FTA/game
Reaction: SCHOENE doesn’t like Ross to be a sharpshooter from long range right away, and they don’t think he’ll be getting to the line much at all. It’s a pretty discouraging projection, especially with Wright, the bane of most Raptors’ fans’ existence at one point, as the top comparable player. Like Jonas, though, the model probably doesn’t have a whole lot to go off of for this projection, so try not to bury your head in your hands when you see that Andre Drummond is projected for 20+20 with 10 blocks (note: that’s a joke).

Jose Calderon
Top Comparable: Mark Jackson (97.2/100)
Key Stat: 22 MPG
Reaction:Possibly because the model doesn’t have the intuition to play with two-guard lineups, it assumes Calderon will play strictly a backup’s minutes. Luckily for Jose, Mark Jackson managed to play until he was 38, with success until about 36. The Ast:TO story is probably the reason for the high comparability rating, and it’s nice to see that as Jackson’s scoring and athleticism wound down, his basketball acumen kept up enough for him to keep the assist numbers high. Jose’s injury history and lack of defensive ability may mean his shelf life is shorter, but with bigger minutes it’s reasonable to expect him to remain an efficient creator on offense.

Linas Kleiza
Top Comparable: Ryan Gomes (98.2/100)
Key Stat: 7.1 FGA/game in 18 MPG
Reaction: The shorter the minutes, the more he chucks, as the model sees him firing up a shot every two and a half minutes. They see his 3FG% from last season as an aberration and don’t anticipate him staying strong from out there, limiting his versatility and ability to play a secondary role on offense. As Arse says, just keep on translating for Jonas.

Others – the projections have small minutes for Quincy Acy and John Lucas, while any other Raptors not listed here do not have projections.

Reflections
Overall, I’d say that the SCHOENE system doesn’t look too favourably on individual Raptors, although the Basketball Prospectus annual is not yet released for us to see how the Raptors stack up as a team. For the model in general, I certainly appreciate the substantial effort that Kevin Pelton et al put in to it, as it is without a doubt a difficult, complex and arduous task.

With that said, I do find that these projections don’t particularly take any risks, and most of the “interesting” nuggets I’ve outlined here refer to one or two key areas we had already been curious about, not anything  unexpected.

As with all of the different models and projections I’ve looked at in the past few weeks, you have to take this stuff with a grain of salt and use it as just an additional tool for your analysis. It’s impossible for models to accurately simulate how players will mesh together, what rotations the coach may employ, or what roster changes could come about.

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Fields’ three-point opportunities should be of a higher quality in Toronto.

The key to Landry Fields’ season could very well lie in his three point shooting ability.

As a rookie in 2010-11, Fields connected on 39% of his attempts from long range, putting him on the map as a potential floor-spacing weapon for the Knicks moving forward. In 2011-12, though, his three point efficiency tanked, falling to just 26%. Fields essentially went from being a sharpshooter to being someone who shouldn’t be allowed to shoot from outside.

While Fields does other things well on the floor, specifically rebounding and the “little things” that tend not to make the boxscore, most of his offensive value is derived from his shooting. So if Fields is a sharpshooter after all, the three year, $19M contract the Raptors gave him this offseason won’t seem too outlandish. But if he continues to be an offensive zero, it will look like quite the overpay for a contributing role player, likely one who will eventually come off the bench.

Playing with ‘Melo
So why did Fields’ three point efficiency drop off? A lot of the blame has been placed on the Knicks’ offense in 2011-12, specifically the impact of playing with ball stoppers Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire.

Late in the 2010-11 season, the Knicks acquired Anthony from the Nuggets and he played 27 games with them down the stretch. Fields’ three point shooting clips for the season had been 28.6%, 42.9%, 42.5% and 48.5% in November, December, January and February respectively. In March and April, those numbers fell to 38.9% and 25.0%.

So while Fields has played his entire career with Stoudemire, the anecdotal evidence that adding another ball stopper to the offense impeded Fields seems to be backed up by the first cursory glance at the split stats.

In fact, despite playing just 27 of 82 games together, Fields appeared with Anthony quite often, and five man units including both players were Fields’ fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth and tenth most common units. It seems playing with Ray Felton, Wilson Chandler and Danillo Gallinari agreed with his game more than playing with Chauncey Billups and Anthony.

It may actually have been the loss of Felton that had the bigger impact, as Felton’s assist rate generally hovers around 30%, compared to 25% in recent years for Billups and 20% for Toney Douglas, the other guard he played significant time with after the trade. If we look to last year, Jeremy Lin wasn’t quite a ball stopper but also had just a 27% assist rate, while Fields also spent significant time with Douglas, Iman Shumpert (19% assist rate) and Baron Davis (usually around 30% the past few years), none of whom would be confused with facilitating point guards.

Offensive Schemes
The narrative makes sense – offensive players who tend to have a lot of isolations run for them and who have low assist rates don’t foster strong ball movement. Ball movement not only involves everyone and spreads the touches around, but it also forces defensive rotations that can turn contested jump shots into poorly contested or uncontested ones. Picture a play where four players stand around the outside while a player dribbles in isolation – each defender can stay on their man with relative ease. But if the ball is being moved more, with screens or a pick-and-roll at the core of the set, every defender is moving his feet and can be forced to switch, putting a much greater focus on defensive awareness and communication, improving the chances for defensive breakdowns.

Now in Toronto, Fields finds himself playing with Kyle Lowry, who has roughly a 30% career baseline assist rate, and Jose Calderon, whose baseline generally sits above 40%. Fields is now playing in a more motion-oriented offense with point guards who are historically more focused on setting up teammates. Since 86% of Fields’ three point attempts were of the spot-up variety last year, it seems imperative that Fields be created for through the flow of the offense.

If we look at the comparison below, we see that Fields’ more successful season also saw him have a much larger share of his buckets come directly after a pass. The amount of assisted baskets he scored dropped from 70% to 61%, while the drop was even more significant for jump shots.

We can also see that Fields’ shooting fell across the board, but the drop was almost negligible on mid-range shots, providing hope that his jump shot may not be broken or flawed, but he just had three point opportunities that were of a poorer quality last year.

Looking Forward
We have already seen in just two preseason games that the presence of Jonas Valnciunas as a dive-man can cause trouble for a defense and require them to focus more attention in the paint. This can open up players at the elbow and in the corner, places that Calderon is very strong at finding teammates. If Kyle Lowry can replicate this ability to make passes out of the pick and roll, Fields should be afforded some better opportunities than he was last year. In addition, if Andrea Bargnani, a frequent target as a pop-man from the pick and pop, can identify situations where an extra pass can be of benefit, the offense should be able to get adequate touches for three outside shooters (I’m including Calderon or Lowry with Fields and Bargnani).

Of course, I didn’t see much Knicks tape from the past two years, no more than a normal non-Knicks fan basketball junkie would have, anyway. So it’s entirely possible that the fact that the numbers match up well with the narrative of Fields’ shooting woes is just a coincidence, and his shot is actually broken or his confidence shaken. It’s also possible that the usage demands of Bargnani, Lowry, and DeMar DeRozan could limit Fields’ touches, and he’ll be utilized more as a screener and rebounder than an offensive weapon. There is still much to be seen about the 2012-13 offense, considering we’re yet to see the starting point guard in action.

With that said, it doesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch to suggest that 2011-12 was an explicably poor outlier season for Fields as a shooter. He may have been over his head as a 30% marksman, but a more movement-oriented offense with players more willing to share the ball should help Fields return to be an effective spacing weapon.

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Can Demar follow Dunleavy’s path?

With a lot of the pre-season discussion in Raptor land focusing on DeMar DeRozan and how he may evolve in his fourth season, I was curious to see if I could find players with similar career paths. Basketball Reference’s similarity scores don’t really help us in this regard. While fun and interesting at the end of a player’s career, they don’t tell you much about how similar players progress. To wit, DeRozan’s highest similarity score is Raymond Felton, a point guard who has a dissimilar on-court game.

This isn’t a flaw with their scores, because this isn’t what they aim to measure – their similarity scores measure Win Shares ranked from a player’s best to worst season, regardless of style of play. Specifically, I was interested to see if DeRozan’s downward-trending true shooting percentage (TS%) could be looked at as a red herring or if it’s a big red flag about his potential development.

True Shooting Percentage
DeRozan’s TS% in his first three seasons has declined from 55.4% to 53.0% to 50.3%, thanks largely to his increased frequency of three-point shots and his declining two-point field goal accuracy. His free throws have trended upward, preventing an even greater decline. TS% is a shooting percentage that takes three-point shooting and free throws into account. Basically, since regular field goal percentage (FG%) measures two different types of shots in the same way and ignores another, TS% is a more representative measure of the value of one’s shooting efficiency. Thus, while DeMar is a poor three-point shooter, his ability to get to the free throw line (approximately five times per game, just outside the top-10 in the NBA last year) brings his TS% back up.

Method I
To try and find players with a similar career trend in TS%, I ran a Basketball Reference Play Index query for players in the three-point era in their first five years, who were marked as guard, guard-forward, or forward-guard, and qualified for the FG% title (300 field goals made, which DeRozan technically narrowly missed, but bear with me). When I limited the range to single seasons where a player meeting these criteria had a TS% between 49.5% and 60%, I got 800 results.

Results I
The first thing I did was try to see if any player had three individual seasons in these ranges, regardless of the order. It turns out there were only three such players – Kirk Hinrich, Randy Wittman, and Michael Dickerson. Dickerson was the only one who had the same declining pattern as DeRozan, dropping each season from age 23 to 25 (DeRozan dropped from age 20 to 22). Dickerson isn’t a great comparison for us, because after his first three years he was hampered by hamstring and groin issues, rarely got on the floor, and retired prematurely. Hinrich is a point guard with a dissimilar game (far fewer free throws, strong three-point shooting) and has wildly fluctuated in terms of TS% over his career, while Wittman didn’t get to the line or shoot threes (though for the record, after seeing another TS% decline in his sixth season, he went from being a regular to a sparsely used bench player for the rest of his career).

Method II
Since we didn’t really get great comps using this methodology, I thought I’d try to alter it. This time, I set a minimum free throw attempts per game of 2 and a maximum three-point attempts per game of 4 and changed the qualification from FG% leader to minutes per game leader, to allow for some more rookies (like DeMar, who played 70 games and thus qualified) in the sample. This time we had a new sample of 717 players.

Results II
Here, I looked for players who had seasons with a TS% of 54.4-56.4, 52.0-54.0 and 49.5-51.3, all within their first five seasons, regardless of the order they occurred in. This gave me 16 results, so we have a little more to work with this time around, although once again DeMar is by far the youngest player in the “high TS%” group (Alvin Robertson and Mike Dunleavy are next closest at 23 to DeMar’s 20). Here we see that Mike Dunleavy is the only other qualified player in the three-point era to experience declining TS% rates in a relatively close range to DeRozan within his first five seasons. So what does this mean for DeMar? While this looks somewhat favourable given that Dunleavy has had some pretty successful seasons, it’s still not a great comparison considering that Dunleavy, while at his peak he got to the line a decent amount, is a relatively dissimilar player to DeRozan, trading free throws for threes.

Reflection
So, did I do all of this analysis basically to say that DeRozan doesn’t have any good player comparables? Maybe, and that might sound like a waste of time, but I don’t think so. The fact that there are almost no other instances of a player with a roughly similar profile to DeRozan starting their career off with this kind of a TS% trend is a worthwhile finding on its own. On one hand, you can look at this and claim that he’s doomed, since no other player has experienced such a stark decline to start their career. But you could also say that, since there is no precedent, you could just as easily expect him to rebound or improve as flame out entirely. If we make some pretty reasonable, if optimistic, assumptions, we see how DeRozan’s TS% can improve rather quickly.

TS% Experiment
If we hold DeRozan’s 3PA/game at 1.5 and increase his effectiveness from 26.1% to 28.5%, increase his FTA/game from 5.3 to 5.7 and hold his FT% at 81%, and decrease his total FGA/game from 14.3 to 14, increasing his 2FG% from 44% to 45%, his TS% would improve from 50.3% to 51.8%. These aren’t extreme increases by any means, more or less rounding errors (his points per game would only increase from 16.7 to 17.1). Of course, a 51.8% TS% still isn’t strong (it’s about what Vince Carter did last year), but my point is that he only has to make pretty small improvements to buck his current trend.

Shot Distribution
Just to be thorough and see if I was missing anything, I also took my data set and filtered it for seasons where players had between 4 and 7 FTA/game and between 1 and 2 3PA/game within their first five seasons, and it gave me 46 such seasons. This doesn’t really mean anything either, just that DeRozan’s free-throw and three-point frequencies are relatively uncommon. The average TS% for the sample was 54%, and surprisingly the sample had a three-point percentage average of just 28.1%. Free-throw shooting was also at 78.5%, so basically given his profile, 2FG% is the only thing holding DeMar back from having an adequate TS% given his profile. Looking at his Advanced Stats from NBA.com, we see that DeMar shot 57% at the rim, 45% in the lane, 36% from mid-range, 40% from the corner-three, and 22% from above the three-point line. For comparison, have a look at Rodney Stuckey and Tyreke Evans, who were also a part of this last sample group I created. Compared to these two players who show similar profiles in terms of threes and free throws, DeRozan shoots a disproportionate amount of mid-range shots. So the onus is on DeRozan to continue to improve his ability to get to the line by attacking more and more, trading mid-range shots for attempts closer to the basket. Whether or not he’ll be afforded this opportunity sharing the court with Kyle Lowry and Andrea Bargnani is yet to be seen, but the simplest way for DeRozan to make sure he continues to get touches is to make the most of them. And the best way to do that is to get to the rim, where shots fall with a greater frequency and free throws are more likely to follow, both of which should keep DeRozan from becoming a TS% cautionary tale.

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2nd worst in the NBA? C’mon Son!

We’re one game into the preseason and that means it’s time for a lot of forward-looking predictive pieces in the next few weeks, as talking heads and the “stats guys” battle for prediction supremacy.

We’ve already discussed Hollinger’s player profiles and PER projections, and Basketball Prospectus’ SCHOENE projections are still a few days from publication (if you’re a rich yuppy type who can afford paywalled content).

Today, though, we were treated to some statistical analysis from Wages of Win. WoW is an analytical site that I enjoy reading, however, I’m unsure if there has ever been any research done into the efficacy of different projection systems. This has been done in baseball for individual player projection systems, but I’m ignorant to whether it has been done for basketball at the league-projection level and, if so, how WoW stacked up. With that said, they’re currently available (and shocking), so let’s take a look.

Their Methods
Their methods are a lot to explain, so if you’re interested, head over there and have a look. If not, I’ll summarize by saying that they’ve found that empirically, only the top-6 players on a team matter for playoff performance, but quality depth can lead you to the playoffs.

Based on eight different categories (Wins Produced, Point Margin, Offensive Wins Produced, Defensive Wins Produced, and each of those four also on a per-minute basis), they rank every player in the NBA similar to the ESPN NBA Rank program we looked at earlier in the offseason. They then take the individual player rankings to create team rankings (more on that in a bit).

Raptors Players
The Raptors’ roster is distributed similarly to what we saw with NBA Rank, with a few key differences…no wait, some seriously major differences. A starting lineup of Calderon-Lowry-Fields-Davis-Johnson with Wright, McGuire, and Gray as the first guys off the bench? What-what-what?

The first major difference is that Kyle Lowry ranked as the #21 player in the NBA with an average rank across the eight categories of 44.5. Basically, because Lowry is in the second tier in just about every area, he ranks as a top-tier player overall.

Ed Davis also makes a massive leap, finding himself at #42 overall thanks to some solid defensive and per-minute contributions. This one was a bit of a shocker since, while I’m a fan, I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone other than Arturo from WoW who believes Ed Davis could be a top-2 player on an NBA team, now or in the future (although to be fair, I doubt he thinks this as well). In a similar vein, Amir Johnson ranks at #60, showing that the Raptors big-man rotation, while overrated here, is potentially underrated on the whole.

Jose Calderon clocks in at #51, posting upper-crust numbers in all non-defensive categories, including a #6 ranking in overall offense. Landry Fields is at #53, and then suspected bench-dwellers Chris Wright, Dominic McGuire, and Aaron Gray check in at 101, 136, and 152. They don’t rank beyond #180, since the purpose of their piece is to look at the “top-6” tier of players.

I dug deeper using the Google Docs link he posted, and the players rank as follows:

I swear to Shuttlesworth that I didn’t post this just to troll DeRozan and Bargnani comments. But have at it…Jamaal Magloire is better than Andrea Bargnani. Boom.

Now…I know what you’re thinking. This does not appear to be an intuitive analysis, and you’re probably right given that I find averaging a player’s categorical ranks to create a full ranking isn’t necessarily the best way to rank value. Also, there should be checks in place that say “when a borderline training camp invitee narrowly misses the top-100, we should re-evaluate our formulas.” However, let’s push forward.

Raptors as a Team
The analysis then begins to evaluate teams based on the number of players they have in the “top-6” range (#1-180), the “bench” range (#181-330), and the “dregs” range (worse than #330). With 8 players in the top-6 category, the Raptors are among the best teams in terms of having playoff-caliber players.

Using an arbitrary weighting system based on player rank, the article ranks the Raptors 4th based on high-end roster composition. This, once again, should have stuck out as an issue with the system, since not even the most optimistic among us would argue that the Raptors are the 4th best in the NBA at…well, anything, probably.

More Method
They then use an algorithm to project minutes, and then apply those minute distributions to their simulation engine to create win projections. Note: These do not include rookies…I strongly disagree with not even trying to project them or using some sort of baseline in the interim, but I digress.

The Key Result
The Raptors will win 44.5 games and finish 4th in the Eastern Conference. No, seriously. Depending on how they alter their model, it could be as low as 43.5 or as high as 45.4, but they’re expected to get the 4th seed in an average scenario.

Reflections
The author indicates that he plans to add rookies and Euro League players into his analysis before the season starts, and I’m interested to see how that changes things in the win projections.

As it is, you’d almost have to argue the current methodology is flawed – in general, you shouldn’t make conclusions about a model’s efficacy based on results you didn’t expect, but between the high win total and the bizarre rankings of some players (seriously, Andrea is the 2nd-worst player in the NBA? Come on) you have to question it a bit.

With that said…he admits it’s incomplete, and I don’t believe his main point is to accurately predict win totals. If you take the analysis as more of a touching-base with roster composition, you can use it as a means to identify teams that could be undervalued in the public eye due to their strength coming from depth or all-around adequacy rather than top-heavy offensive dynamite. The fact that the Pacers, Timberwolves, and Nuggets all also do well, and are likewise teams built with depth, speaks to that notion.

So no, I don’t think Chris Wright is a top-100 player in the NBA, and I don’t think the Raptors will win 45 games and have home court advantage in the playoffs. I do, however, think that our own “inflated” expectations of this being an adequate team and a borderline-playoff team, are not as ridiculous as some make them out to be, however flawed this particular analysis may be.

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