I felt like doing something a little different today, so we’re going to have a look at the Raptors players’ contributions this year graphically. Below, you’ll find a radar diagram for each Raptor who qualified for the minutes leaderboard.
Method
I took the 193 NBA players who qualified for the minutes leaderboard this year and created an index out of 100 for five different stats. The stats used are just meant as an approximation of the “attribute” identified in the radar screens. They might not be perfect, but it’s a first try at a methodology like this.
The Attributes
Volume: Indexed Points Per Game.
Efficiency: Indexed True Shooting %.
Rebounding: Indexed Rebound %.
Playmaking: Indexed Assist % minus Turnover %.
Defense: Indexed Defensive Win Shares (yup, it’s flawed, but it’s the best catch-all I have access to).
The Raptors
Oops, it turns out only four Raptors and two ex-Raptors qualified for the board. Let’s have a look anyway.
The Unqualified
Let’s have a look at how some other Raptors stack up, loosening the minutes requirement to 1000 minutes. For the record, the NBA’s minutes requirement is “70 games or 2000 minutes,” hence Valanciunas and Lowry missing out.
Flaws & Possible Improvements
Obviously there are some flaws with these. Indexing probably isn’t the best way to go because guys like Tyson Chandlers (TS%) and Reggie Evans (Reb%) really skew the index as outliers. And Defensive Win Shares is probably a poor judgement of defense due to flaws in the statistic and because it’s a counting stat, hurting a guy like Valanicunas or Johnson. I probably should have scaled it for minutes, and perhaps done the same for “volume.” But it was just for fun anyway. If people want I can take suggestions for tweaking it and re-post it next week. If I run it again, perhaps it will be as follows:
Volume – Points Per 36 (or FGA per 36?)
Efficiency – TS%
Rebounding – Rebound %
Playmaking – Ast% – TO%
Defense – DWS Per 36
And Just for Fun
