Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

Statophile 29 | Four Factors

Liston cries out, will anybody listen?

Four Factors


From the forum thread “Raps Have Highest Free Throw Differential“, we see the Raptors have the worst free throw defferential in the league. But its not about the Raptors not getting to the line as most on the thread have speculated. The team is 19th in the league (and only 0.2 trips below the median team) in getting to the line. And Andrea Bargnani averages the most free throws per game, so missing him so many games hurts this average. The Raptors also have the 12th highest field goal attempts “at rim”, so its also not about getting into the paint enough.

As we have mentioned a couple of times: “the ‘no easy baskets’ philosophy has its drawbacks. It usually equates to more fouls.” Low FG% allowed in the paint is welcomed, but the Raptors need to also manage the foul rate in the paint as well. This is by far the primary reason for the FT differential.

Another point on the Raptors “four factors”: as I was doing this the lowish eFG% stood out as well, so the obvious question emerges as to why that is. I found the one major reason is the team takes the third most FGA from “long 2” range (16-23ft) in the league despite only making 34.7% of them. By contrast, they are 19th in 3pt attempts, despite a reasonable 50.5% eFG% from deep. Conclusion: Bayless (63.6% eFG from 3), Calderon (55.5%) and Kleiza (54.0%) all need to take more 3s.

This needs to change next year.

DeRozan’s vs Bargnani’s productivity

DeRozan has averaged 20 points per game over the last four on reasonable true shooting percentage. James Herbert’s post game noted the Raptors have yet to win when DeRozan takes over 20 field goal attempts (although its only a 5 game sample size – note the Raptors are also 0-4 when he has more than one block in a game, and 1-7 when he takes more then 8 trips to the line…. so these stats can be misleading)

DeRozan had to shoulder much more of the offensive load while Bargnani was out and the big man certainly has been very slow to return to form.

Bargnani since he’s been back:

Four Factors – individuals


It is interesting to also examine the individual contributions to the “four factors” model. Obviously, this is only the offensive production as it is difficult to measure all defensive match ups (e.g. James Johnson does not stand out in the chart below, but if we could accurately measure his impact on defense his “net” four factors contribution it would likely show much better – 82games.com shows he holds SF to 41.9% eFG% whereas the average SF shoots 48.6%, for example)

Questions? There is a dedicated to “Statophile Q&A” forum thread here . If you prefer to send questions privately, you’re welcome to email me at tomliston [at] gmail [dot] com or find me on Twitter (@Liston).