Cory Joseph and The Hometown Bonus

And here we are.  September has come, training camp is still weeks away, the roster is likely set, and we have largely run out of news to discuss.  We truly are in the dog days of summer and NBA basketball can’t begin soon enough.

All that’s left to do is to dream about what this roster could do and how they could play together, while hoping (praying?) that they have improved enough to not lose in the first round of the playoffs for the third year in a row…or embarrassed for the second year in a row.

The starters will still feature the likes of Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, and Jonas Valanciunas, with DeMarre Carroll and Patrick Patterson likely to join them.  These two new entries will certainly change much about the Raptors, but it is on the bench where the biggest changes are now found.

With Patterson likely joining the starting lineup, the seldom played James Johnson is the one bench hold over from last year who actually saw the floor.  Lou Williams has taken his NBA Sixth Man award to the Lakers in an attempt to share the ball with Kobe Bryant and Nick Young, while Tyler Hansbrough has taken his agitation of opponents and fans to Charlotte.  Greg Stiemsma and Chuck Hayes will no longer ride the pine in Raptors’ jerseys, and Landry Fields and his left handed shooting has also moved on (although to nowhere in particular).

Lou Williams helped define the Raptors style of play last year.  He was the ultimate gunner who dominated when he was hot, but continued to shoot even when nothing was falling.  The Raptors become one of the top offensive teams in the league, but also became a collective group that prioritized scoring over defence.

This wasn’t all on Lou, and he certainly wasn’t the only culprit, but it was a visible pattern.

All of this culminated in the Raptors getting destroyed (to put it kindly) in the first round by the Washington Wizards.  What had started as an exciting and hopeful season, ended with disappointment and a new objective by Ujiri to improve the Raptors defensive focus.

Hence the changes to the roster for 2015-16.

As intriguing (see: scary) as it is to see what Terrence Ross can do as a primary weapon off the bench, perhaps the biggest change to the second unit is the signing of Cory Joseph for four years at $30 million, with a contract starting at $7M for 2015-16.

Joseph will be tasked with the role of primary ball handler off the bench and will be asked to replace all of what Greivis Vasquez provided, as well as some of what Lou Williams did (with Ross hopefully providing the rest).

So how do Joseph and Vasquez compare statistically, and how can Cory go about fulfilling the role that he has been brought in to play?

For starters, Joseph brings a much higher offensive rating compared to Vasquez (115 to 105), and a lower defensive rating (104 to 110).  Joseph is a net positive on the court, while Vasquez was a negative for the Raptors last season.  Although it’s a rather low bar to exceed, Joseph showed himself to be a far more valuable contributor than Vasquez.  Just look at their advanced stats.

Joseph has a higher player efficiency rating, true shooting percentage, free throw rate, offensive rebounding percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, total rebounding percentage, steal percentage, block percentage, offensive wins share, defensive win shares, win-shares per 48 minutes, box plus/minus, and value above replacement, all while having a lower usage rate and turnover rate.

Cory Joseph truly is an advanced stats darling based on his 18.3 minutes per game last season, and helps to answer many of the questions that Ujiri needed answered this summer.

Despite all of that though, Joseph has yet to show that he is capable of replacing the three point shooting that Vasquez provided.  He may have shot just 1.5 percent less than Vasquez from long distance, but he also took less than one three point shot per game (0.6 to be exact).  Vasquez meanwhile attempted 4.3 such shots per game.

The hope in Toronto is that Joseph will be able to maintain his shooting percentage from last year, while also increasing his three point attempts, and that he can do so while extending his minutes played.  A tough task to say the least.

There’s one more stat that Joseph now has on Vasquez: a higher annual salary.

Joseph’s contract starts at $7M in year one, while Vasquez is entering the final year of a contact that will earn him $6.6M.  In the grand scheme of things, $0.4M isn’t a large gap between the two, but in a salary cap world every dollar matters.

On the surface it feels like Joseph is getting well overpaid, so much so that it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that a hometown bonus was included to bring him back to Toronto.  A hometown bonus for a player who brings a championship ring back to the place where he grew up, and can be marketed as such.  After all, the Raptors have long dreamed of having a Canadian player to sell to their fanbase.  This was one of the main reasons that Steve Nash was so appealing when he last entered free agency (I love Nash, but I’m thankful each day that we dodged that bullet).  Despite the Nash overtures though, Joseph is the first of what the team hopes is many players who could fulfill this dream for the Raptors management.

But $7M seems awfully high for a back-up point guard.  How does this salary compare to other back-up point guards around the league?

Jarrett Jack is making $6.3M for Brooklyn, while Cleveland is paying Mo Williams just $2.1M.  J.J. Barea gets $4.1M annually, and Shawn Livingston is paid $5.54M.  Patrick Beverley is now paid $6.5M after re-signing with Houston this summer, and Darren Collison gets $5M.

Back-up point guards have a wide split when it comes to salary, but Joseph’s contract is certainly on the high end of the scale despite being at least in the same area as many other back-up point guards around the league, many of who have already hit their ceiling as older players while Joseph still has room to grow.

But let’s use Shawn Livingston as an example.  I’m picking him due to the role he played in Golden States run to the championship last year, as well as his rather middle of the road contract (compared to other back-up point guards that are not on rookie scale).  Livingston originally signed with the Warriors in 2014 for the full mid-level exception, with a first year salary of $4,673,825, a number substantially lower than Joseph’s first year salary of $7M.

Joseph’s first year salary is 44 percent higher than that of Livingston.  The hometown bonus seems insane at this point, but this is without factory in the new economic landscape that includes the new TV money.

When he was signed last summer, Livingston accounted for 7.4% of the $63.2M salary cap.  The first year of Joseph’s contract accounts for 10 percent of the 70M salary cap.

Yes, his contract his high, and Joseph is still a relatively unknown player who has yet to prove himself as a focal point of a roster, but his signing isn’t nearly as large of a gamble as his starting salary makes it out to be.

An argument can be made that Joseph didn’t get any hometown bonus, but rather the normal youth/potential bonus that many young players with proven track records receive.  He’s a young player with room to grow who has already played a role for a championship team.  These type of players get paid.  And based on the new economic landscape, taking up an additional 2.6 percent of a team’s salary cap space (when using Livingston as an example) could easily be explained by his youth and not his nationality.

He is a ball-hawking defender who makes opponents work for every inch of room they can get, and when given the opportunity he has shown to attack at will.  If he can improve his three point shooting then his contract could very easily become a bargain in a year or two, instead of being mildly overpaid at the moment.

With the signing of Joseph, the Raptors have a back-up point guard that could one day become a starter, and did so without breaking the bank.  You can’t do much better than that when it comes to free agency.

Now, let’s get this season started already…