The Regend and the Ninja: A Response (part II)

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On Saturday, Tom Liston of Raptors Republic - TrueHoop's Raptors' affiliate - wrote a column about Reggie Evans and James Johnson. In his column, Tom mentions that he has some problems with Wins Produced and my analysis of Evans and Johnson in the past. Specifically, Tom's main issues seem to be:

• Evans' WP48 is near the top of the league (currently at 0.356), but Reggie doesn't seem to belong with the other players (Kevin Love, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade) at the top.
• If Wins Produced doesn't overvalue rebounds, and the only thing Evans' does well is rebound, why is Evans' WP48 so high?
• James Johnson is playing well in Toronto - "he’s pretty much exactly the same player" as he was during his rookie season. So why did I say that he probably wouldn't be a good player when Toronto traded for him?
• Wins Produced is one measure of player productivity among several, and one should "never rely on one metric to draw conclusions".

The other day I responded to these first two points. Today I'm going to tackle the last two.

Nerd Numbers Guest Post: The Regend Continues

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I'll have part two of my response to Tom Liston of Raptors Republic up shortly, but in the meantime, Andres Alvarez - the currently blogless nomad of the Wages of Wins Network, and the man who created the automated WP site - has graciously offered some additional commentary on Reggie Evans.

Here's what Nerd Numbers has to say (with very slight editorial changes):

The Regend and the Ninja: A Response (part I)

New readers, please check out the basics before leaving any comments.


Yesterday, Tom Liston of Raptors Republic - TrueHoop's Raptors' affiliate - wrote a column about Reggie Evans and James Johnson. In his column, Tom mentions that he has some problems with Wins Produced and my analysis of Evans and Johnson in the past. Specifically, Tom's main issues seem to be:

• Evans' WP48 is near the top of the league (currently at 0.356), but Reggie doesn't seem to belong with the other players (Kevin Love, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade) at the top.
• If Wins Produced doesn't overvalue rebounds, and the only thing Evans' does well is rebound, why is Evans' WP48 so high?
• James Johnson is playing well in Toronto - "he’s pretty much exactly the same player" as he was  during his rookie season. So why did I say that he probably wouldn't be a good player when Toronto traded for him?
• Wins Produced is one measure of player productivity among several, and one should "never rely on one metric to draw conclusions".

Let's start with Reggie.

No, no, no: DeMar DeRozan is not the MIP

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During the Raptors’ blowout loss at the hands of the Nuggets, I listened in disbelief as the commentators - Matt Devlin and Jack Armstrong - made the case that DeMar DeRozan should be in the running for the Most Improved Player (MIP) award. Now, I’ve already written about this in the past, but the fact that this idea is still out there means that I need to keep addressing this topic.


The argument for DeRozan as the MIP

During the game, the stat used to back up this argument was...drumroll...PPG increase from last season. Here were the names that they included on the graphic that popped up onto the screen:

Raptor Trivia: Pounded (or Pound for Pound: The Sequel)

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Last time my trivia question was about the best 'pound for pound' players in Raptors history. This week, I figured we should take a stab at the players with the worst 'pound for pound' seasons in Raptors history.

Raptor Trivia: Pound for Pound

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Last week I asked a question about players who were capable of getting triple-doubles. Today I want to ask a question based on a term that is often thrown around in sports: 'pound for pound'.

Back in the day, we used to hear about how Allen Iverson was, 'pound for pound', the "best scorer in the league" (of course, I beg to differ on that one). Frequently, boxers (the athletes, not the undergarments) are referred to as the best 'pound for pound' fighters. So, given my interest in basketball and the Toronto Raptors, what I want to know is, pound for pound, who are the most productive players in the history of the franchise?

The 50 greatest NBA players of all-time

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Given the team's record right now, Raptor news is a bit boring these days; eventually I will take another look at how the individual players have been playing, but Nerd Numbers is down (and the Game Splits tool - which I had just started to rely on for my weekly player evaluations - has been down for a while now). So today I will write about a topic that is barely even tangentially related to the Raptors - my version of the NBA's 50 greatest players.

David Berri on DeRozan and the Raptors

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David Berri, author of the Wages of Wins, Stumbling on Wins, The Wages of Wins Journal, and the founder of the Wages of Wins Network, has posted a new article about the Raptors. While it is very similar to what I've already discussed on this blog (after all, we both use Wins Produced to analyze basketball statistics), Dave is always a good read, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven't already done so.

 - Devin

Week 15 Auto WP numbers

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Hey, it's been a week, and I'm still around! What's going on?

Some good news for this week: Linas Kleiza is out for the season. Not only does that mean that someone else (hopefully someone more productive this time, like Wright) will get more minutes, but it might also be the explanation for why Kleiza has been so unproductive this year; in the past, Kleiza had been much better. There are also concerns about how the Raptors' training staff handled the injury, and the Raps seem to have a recent history of injury disputes with certain players. Oh well - what's a little more dysfunction for this franchise?

Here are the numbers for the season so far, which are Powered by Nerd Numbers (full spreadsheet here):

Champions and Drafted Players

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I've been away for a while, so I've been writing a bunch of new posts in the short term. Today I'd like to revisit a classic topic: NBA champions and the draft.

Congraturation!

I've already shown that securing a top tree draft selection is generally not the ideal position to be in for an NBA team. To recap, I found that:

• in the lottery era (1985-present), 60% of teams that have ended up with a top three draft pick haven't made it past the first round of the NBA playoffs during their draftee's first four years in the league.
• to put it another way, only 40% of teams with a top three draft selection managed to advance past the first round in one or more of their draftees' first four years.
• during the lottery era - only four (Duncan, Robinson, Sean Elliott, who was traded away and then reacquired, and Darko Milicic, who shouldn't count because he didn't really play) out of the 78 players (5%) taken with a top three pick have won a championship with the team that drafted them.
• all that makes sense, as top three draft picks generally start their careers on bad teams. The Spurs lucked out with Duncan because, rather than being a bad team, they were a good team that had injury problems. The Pistons "lucked out" with Milicic because the Grizzlies were dumb enough to trade away their 2003 1st round pick in exchange for Otis Thorpe. Robinson and Elliott won their championships well after they were drafted, and Elliott was actually traded away and reacquired before he got his.
• top three picks fared a little bit better in the pre-lottery era - ten players (Jordan, Olajuwon, Worthy, Thomas, McHale, Magic, Walton, Kareem, Unseld, and Cazzie Russell) out of the 57 top three draftees (17.5%) eventually won with the team that drafted them, and only 28% of teams couldn't make it past the first round in their draftee's first four years.
• this also makes sense, as there were fewer teams in the pre-lottery days, which gave each team a better chance of moving up in the standings.

Week 14 Team Opponent Stats

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Yesterday I posted the Team Stats update for week 14, and the day before that I posted the player stats for week 14. Today I'd like to post something I haven't done before: opponent stats. I figure that it would be interesting (and useful) to see how well other teams perform against the Raptors. Here's another of those weird double-scrolling charts:

Week 14 Auto WP Numbers

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Well I'm back - and hopefully for good. After an eight day delivery delay, an OS crash, and a one day delay in the delivery of the new OS installation disk, my new computer seems to be up and running just fine.

For now.

Meanwhile, in a disturbing parallel, the Raptors - suffering through injuries and the return of unproductive players - have crashed as well. How bad has it gotten? In terms of record, the Raps are now in 14th place in the East, only ranking ahead of...the Cavs. In fact, the Raptors are 27th in the league standings, cavorting with the likes of the aforementioned Cavs, the Kings, the T-Wolves, the Nets, and the Wizards. Not only that, but the beloved "most consecutive games with at least one 3pt FG" streak finally came to an end, and the Mavericks are about to break the record, erasing Toronto from the record books forever.

Yes, it's been ugly lately.

But what do the WP numbers look like? Are the Raptors playing better than their record? Here are the numbers - as always, Powered by Nerd Numbers (full spreadsheet here):



Here are my thoughts:

• See all that red? Of the 21 players the Raptors have employed so far this season, ten - almost half of the roster - 47% - have produced in the negative range. "Oh well," you might say, "most of those players haven't played many minutes," and you'd be right: six of the ten haven't managed any more than 89 minutes played. Unfortunately, that also means that the remaining four have played significant minutes; Kleiza, Weems, DeRozan, and Bargnani (the current Four Horsemen) have combined for 4920 minutes of playing time, which is only 39% of the team's minutes.
• These four players have also combined to produce -4.9 wins. Yes, by playing these four unproductive players this many minutes, the Raptors have cost themselves almost five games in the standings.
• Barbosa gets a reprieve for now, as he is barely positive for the time being, but if you add him to the above numbers, you get five players producing -4.5 wins in 45.5% of the team's minutes. That is just an absolutely astounding level of putridity.
• Jerryd Bayless has not played well ever since his first few glorious games in a Raptor uniform; he's now a below average player over the course of his tenure with the Raptors. This is probably because he feels bad for defying my prediction that he won't be a productive NBA player, and is simply playing worse to make me feel better. Either that, or injuries, or small sample sizes, or some combination of the three.
• With all the injuries lately, the Raptors had to sign some fringe players to 10-day contracts and managed to acquire Alexis Ajinca (and the second round draft pick they sent to the Mavs to acquire Solomon Alabi) from the Mavs (in exchange for the rights to an old draft pick who will never play in the league). Although they have played limited minutes of the course of their careers, Dupree, Trey Johnson, and Ajinca have not looked like good players. Gaines is the more interesting case, as he was pretty decent when he played for the Jazz last year, but he hasn't shown anything so far this season.
• I like the idea of acquiring young centres on the cheap, but if you're going to do it, do it right and go after undrafted players, productive D-League players, or productive players from other leagues. Gaines was certainly worth the gamble, but - despite having impressive scoring averages - Trey Johnson was merely an above-average D-League player (WP48 0.150), and not even the best player on his team.
• The players who should be playing the most minutes: still Calderon, Bayless, Wright, Amir Johnson, Dorsey, and Davis.
• Add up the Wins and you get 14.9; since the Raptors have won 13 games, that means that they have been a little bit unlucky over the course of the season. Unfortunately, if you look exclusively at more recent numbers (thanks Arturo!), the Raptors are actually playing even worse than their record.
• Do I have to mention Bargnani's poor play? Last time I mentioned that his play was likely to get worse, and it has. He now has a comfortable lead over the other contenders for the Darius Songaila award. Is Bargnani a bust? Most definitely.

Player trends

Good:

• Ed Davis: 11 GP, AdjP48 +0.069, Wins +1.5
• Amir Johnson: 11 GP, AdjP48 +0.018, Wins +1.6
• Jose Calderon: 10 GP, AdjP48 -0.008, Wins +1.4

Meh:

• Julian Wright: 10 GP, AdjP48 +0.004, Wins +0.7
• Leandro Barbosa: 2 GP, AdjP48 0.000, Wins +0.3
• Linas Kleiza: 4 GP, AdjP48 -0.006, Wins -0.1

Ugly:

• Joey Dorsey: 6 GP, AdjP48 -0.034, Wins 0
• Alexis Ajinca: 3GP, AdjP48 --, Wins -0.1
• Sony Weems: 4 GP, AdjP48 -0.018, Wins -0.3
• DeMar DeRozan: 11 GP, AdjP48 -0.025, Wins -0.8
• Jerryd Bayless: 9 GP, AdjP48 -0.040, Wins -0.1
• Andrea Bargnani: 11 GP, AdjP48 -0.040, Wins -1.9
• Trey Johnson: 3 GP, AdjP48 --, Wins -0.2
• Solomon Alabi: 4 GP, AdjP48 -0.450, Wins -0.2

More posts to come over the next few days - I promise!

 - Devin

Pre-season predictions: how have I done?

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Well, it's the first week of the new year, and I'm reading a book I received as a Christmas gift (thanks Mom and Dad) called Future Babble, which is written by Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner, who has also written the excellent Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. The gist of Future Babble is that people suck at making predictions. For instance, in his latest article, Gardner says:

People want to hear predictions. And for the expert, there's no way he can lose. If the prediction hits, he can boast about it and reporters will cite it as proof of his wisdom. But if it misses, no one will ever hear about it again.

Heads, I win. Tails, you forget we had a bet.

Of course the rules of the game would be a little different if, at the end of the year, instead of asking for new predictions, we looked back at what was predicted to happen in the year ending. Think of it as holding people to account for the predictions they make.

While admittedly I don't consider myself an "expert" and I've previously noted the difficulty of predicting the outcome of the NBA season before the season starts, I did make some predictions that we could examine. I'd  like to be accountable and trustworthy, and I'd like to learn from my mistakes, so let's start out with my predicted NBA standings - how have I done so far (full spreadsheet here)? All win totals are accurate as of January 5, 2011.



Included in the table are several columns - predicted wins (what I predicted before the start of the season), current record, a simple win projection (which multiplies current winning percentage across 82 games), a point differential win projection (which uses Arturo's formula to determine wins via point differential), and the average difference between my pre-season predictions and the two projection methods.

What does the table show? Generally, I was either really close or way off - not much in between. Thirteen of my predictions came within 5 wins of the current projections, 12 predictions were off by ten or more wins, and only five predictions were off in the 5-10 win range. The teams I overrated the most: Sacramento (a whopping 22.4 wins off target), Cleveland (21.3 wins off), Portland (18.3 wins off), Golden State and Philadelphia (each 17.1 wins off), and New Jersey (16.3 wins off). The teams I nailed: Orlando (0.4 wins off), Chicago (0.6 wins off), the Lakers (1.0 wins off), and (of course) Toronto (1.1 wins off). Where did I go wrong with those six teams?

Sacramento



Carl Landry has fallen into the toilet and can't get out, Dalembert isn't playing up to his usual standards, and I was burned by one rookie (Cousins) and one second-year player (Evans). As we saw with Kevin Durant, sometimes the rookies that we think are going to be good NBA players start out slowly, so either of these two players could turn it around in the future. Of course, some players never get it - we've been saying the same thing about Michael Beasley, who is still not playing well during his third season.

A few players - led by Udrih, Casspi, Garcia, and Head - have out-performed my expectations, but if you combine the bonus wins provided by every player in the green (6.6 wins) it is barely enough to make up for Evans or Landry by themselves.

Cleveland



J.J. Hickson has, to paraphrase Jason Kidd, performed a complete 360 this season. Last year Hickson was just a shade below an average player, and this year he is giving the lovable Andrea Bargnani a run for his money in the competition to win the Darius Songaila award. Hickson is only 22 years old, so his volatility is somewhat understandable...but you can't blame me for not forseeing such a huge change. Antawn Jamison is finally starting to show his age - you could argue I should have seen a decline coming there. Mo Williams is also down this year - his shooting efficiency (which is supposed to be his strong point) is way down and his turnovers are up, but thankfully he's been able to up his assists. Other than that, the other players who haven't met my expectations have only been slightly below what I had penciled them in for; however, all those small changes add up quickly.

Andersen Varejao is really the only player on the team who has stepped up his play this season. It seems that the turmoil associated with LeBron's departure has really messed with the players who stuck around - probably one part new roles and one part psychological.

Portland



The big letdown here is Brandon Roy - I expected him to account for 10.8 wins on the season, and right now he is not even on pace to win a single game. And even though I only allocated 800 minutes to Oden, his rate of production is so good that I expected him to account for 4.7 wins. Well, there's about 16 wins out the window. Joel Przybilla is also on pace to be down about 5 wins, but, as he returns from injury, his minutes will go up and so will his projected wins. The rest of the players who have let me down have combined to produce 10.4 wins fewer than I expected.

On the plus side, the two old guys (Miller and Camby) have upped their games, as has Batum and Mathews. These four players have combined to exceeded my expectations by 10.7 wins. It's a testament to the Blazers that they've been able to stick around 0.500 with injuries to some of their top players.

Golden State



The big problem with my Warriors prediction has been the play of David Lee. After receiving an early Christmas present from Wilson Chandler, Lee had a serious infection in his shooting arm and hasn't played well since. The other players that are hurting my prediction are Stephen Curry, Reggie Williams, and Louis Amundson - all players with limited playing histories.

On the plus side, human sine wave Monta Ellis is playing better than I expected...for now.

Philadelphia



The Sixers are the only one of these teams to be off in a positive direction - I predicted they would win around 19 games, but right now they're on pace for 39 wins. The big differences are due to the return of Elton Brand (finally) and Andres Nocioni, the emergence of two young players (Jrue Holiday and Thaddeus Young) as average to above-average players, and a lower than expected amount of minutes being allocated to unproductive players (perhaps coach Doug Collins is actually helping the team in this case?).

While he has been slightly better than I expected, Iguodala's minutes have been low due to injuries. Rookie Evan Turner hasn't lived up to expectations so far, and Louis Williams has offered less than he has in the past. Still, things are much rosier in Philadelphia than I thought they would be.

New Jersey



Brook Lopez is another young player who seems to have taken a huge step backwards, as has old WP favourite Troy Murphy.  Additionally, Outlaw and Terence Williams aren't playing the way I thought they would.

On the bright side, ex-Raptor Kris Humphries has improved drastically, nearly making up for Murphy's poor performance on his own (he's also the star of my Wins Score Association fantasy team). New Jersey should also get a little better as Vujacic gets a larger percentage of the team's playing time.

Once the season finishes, I'll take another look back and see if anything's change significantly. Hopefully things regress back to my expectations!

 - Devin

Week 10 Auto WP Numbers

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Okay, so I didn't get that week 9 post up. After missing my target, I figured that I'd just wait and post the week 10 numbers on time for a change! A lot of injuries have started to pile up for the Raptors, although in some cases (*cough*Bargnani*cough*) that hasn't necessarily been a bad thing. The last numbers I put up were from week 7, so that gives us a larger number of games than we usually have and thus more definite trends to analyse.

Without further ado, the stats, which are always Powered by Nerd Numbers (full spreadsheet here):



Here are my thoughts:

• Jose Calderon - despite his injuries - has maintained his production and finally caught up to Reggie Evans in terms of total wins produced, with 0.9 wins over the last six games.
• Amir Johnson has struggled recently. In eight games he's put up -0.3 wins. Apparently he's been a bit hurt, but since the Raptors have been low on bodies he's had to suit up.
• Joey Dorsey produced 0.9 wins in eight games. Even though he's only 6'8, he's been playing a lot of centre with Bargnani out, so he's not as productive as he should be. That being said, his raw productivity has also declined somewhat.
• In six injury-filled games, Jerryd Bayless produced -0.3 wins. I guess it was a bit early to proclaim him a star, but we'll see how he performs once he returns to health.
• Rookie Ed Davis produced 0.6 wins in eight games. Like Dorsey, Davis has been spending a lot of time out of position at centre, although Davis has actually boosted both his raw productivity and his WP48.
• Over seven games, Julian Wright's wins produced numbers have remained almost completely unchanged, although his PPS has increased substantially (from 0.897 to 0.983).
• Ronald Dupree is back and has literally done nothing during his nanoscopic playing time.
• Linas Kleiza increased his AdjP48 by 0.03 over eight games, which is enough to move him out of the red for the first time this season. Unfortunately, that is true only if we consider him to have split his time almost equally between shooting guard and small forward, and he's actually spent more time at power forward than at SG in reality (remember, these positions are determined by an automated formula, so there are a few positioning issues every now and then).
• Sonny Weems managed to enter into negative wins territory in his one game; DeMar DeRozan and Leandro Barbosa used their eight games to enter into the red as well.
• Andrea Bargnani played two games and his wins produced numbers remained almost completely unchanged (still deep in the red). As of right now, J.J. Hickson of the Cavs has finally caught up to Bargs and has produced fewer wins and has an even more negative WP48. The only other player who seems to be in the running for the Darius Songaila award this season is Brook Lopez, but he'll have his work cut out for him.
• The foul-prone big men - Johnson, Dorsey, and Davis - have seen a decrease in their foul rates. This could be because they are trying to be less aggressive and stay on the court longer without Bargnani mopping up a large number of minutes...or they could simply be learning how to stay on the court. Or some combination of the two.
• The Raptors really, really need to find some help at the shooting guard position - Weems, DeRozan, and Barbosa are terribly inefficient. When Bayless gets healthy, I hope they go with Calderon and Bayless together in the backcourt for long stretches, although it remains to be seen if Bayless can be a productive player for more than a couple of games at a time.

 - Devin

Raptors All-Time Leaders

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The last two times I had some Sporcle quizzes for you, I was limited to the numbers that are currently on the Wins Produced Viewer that is Powered by Nerd Numbers. But Andres Alvarez, creator of the Wins Produced Viewer and Nerd Numbers, was nice enough to put together the all-time Toronto Raptors franchise stats for me, which, of course, means more Sporcle quizzes:

Raptors All-Time Wins Produced Leaders
Raptors All-Time Fewest Wins Produced

If you are interested, here is the complete list of every player to put on a Raptor uniform (not including the current season), and here is the list of players who met the minute requirements (800 MP).

Remember, if you take a look at the list before playing the quiz, you're only cheating yourself.

 - Devin

Week 7 Raptors Auto WP

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Time for week 7 WP numbers, which are Powered by Nerd Numbers (full spreadsheet here):



Here are my thoughts:

• Bargnani, Kleiza, and Barbosa have all had good games over the past week or so, and it's now showing in their WP48. Bargnani is up almost 0.035, Kleiza's up 0.040, and Barbosa's up around 0.040. Despite what many people think, I would love to see these trends continue.
• Those three are still really unhelpful: only Barbosa is in the positive range (WP48 0.004), and only barely.
• Weems and DeRozan remain mostly unchanged, and continue to offer very little as well.
• Julian Wright has improved slightly.
• Calderon and Evans haven't played, and so have remained stable.
• Everyone else - Johnson, Bayless, Dorsey, and Davis - has declined. Other than Johnson, these players haven't played that many minutes, so the variation is not surprising. Johnson's been up and down all season long.
• Even though his WP48 decreased, Bayless improved his AdjFG% by 5%. So why did his WP48 decrease? More minutes at PG (due to Calderon being injured) and fewer net possessions (his rebounding had been exceptional and was bound to regress).
• Reggie Evans and Amir Johnson are 27th and 37th, respectively, on Arturo's list of most important players
• Bargnani, DeRozan, Kleiza, and Weems (1st, 21st, 44th, and 47th, respectively) are on Arturo's naughty list.
• Maybe we'll just kick Barbosa out of that group for the time being and stick with the four horsemen again.

I'll try to keep posting regularly, but as the holidays get close, I have more and more things to do. Andres has kindly given me the WP numbers for the entire history of the Raptors franchise, so I'd like to do some work with that in the near future. I'm also still working on another Top 3 picks post. Hopefully these will be up shortly.

 - Devin.

Raptors most and least efficient players (2000s)

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A week ago I posted the Raptors wins leaders for the 2000-01 to the 2010-11 seasons. I also created some Sporcle quizzes out of them to make things more interesting.

Today I have two more quizzes for you: the Raptors' most and least efficient players for the seasons from 2000-01 to 2010-11. To qualify for these lists, players also had to have played at least 400 minutes as a Raptor. Some of the answers may surprise you; others should not (the least efficient Raptor is someone I identified years ago as a terrible player, but you'd have to be a very dedicated Raptor fan - like me - to remember him).


I love Sporcle, so if you find some nice NBA quizzes on there, let me know in a comment. Of course, chances are that I've already played the quiz, but give it a shot anyways!

 - Devin

Week 5 WP numbers

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After almost a week travelling to and fro, I'm back and ready to post the Week 5 auto WP numbers. A lot of important things have happened, especially Reggie Evans going down with a broken foot and the imminent return of Ed Davis. Here are the numbers (spreadsheet here):



Here are my thoughts:

• Reggie. The player with the third highest WP48 in the league (minimum 100 MP) was the driving force behind the relatively surprising Raptors. Now that he's out for 4-6 weeks with a broken foot, the team is going to have to find a way to replace his productivity (which was mainly due to rebounding).
• Could that player be Joey Dorsey? I've said it over and over - when Dorsey gets playing time, he produces at a very high level. He started in Evans' place the other day and replaced him quite nicely. Surprisingly, Dorsey's rebounding is very similar to Reggie's. The only problem he might face is foul-trouble and a lack of minutes.
• With Jack gone, Calderon has picked it up quite a bit. Perhaps the Hornets trade has lead to some psychological gains in his case. He's really only improved with regards to shooting, something I've been waiting for, so it's not unexpected.
• Bayless and Stojakovic have been quite good in limited minutes (and Jack has been terrible - with a WP48 of -0.159 in 70 min - over in New Orleans). But it's too early to fully evaluate stats just yet, so no one jump on me just yet. Bayless still can't shoot, but so far he's been getting to the line like crazy.
• Bargnani still "leads" the league with -1.5 wins, and his closest competitor is Knicks centre Tomofey Mozgov at -0.9 wins. Barring injury, I think Bargs is a lock to win the fewest wins produced this year.
• Bargnani is shooting less accurately, but a decrease in FGA and an increase in FTA has helped to offset that. Overall, he is playing slightly better than he was last time.
• Kleiza has gotten a little bit better across the board, and it's showing in his numbers. Mind you, he's still been terrible so far this year, but he's improving.
• Sonny Weems has gotten quite a bit worse. His FGA have stayed about the same, but his FTA have decreased and his PPS and AdjFG% have dropped quite a bit (from 1.11 to 0.98 and 55.7% to 49.1%, respectively).

And how was Bargnavans doing?



Pretty well, actually. With Evans out, who will the Raptors pair up with Bargnani, and will they make up for his flaws? Only time will tell; tune in next week to find out!

Or, you know, watch the games. But if you come here, you won't even have to!

 - Devin

Week 3 WP Numbers

Since it's Tuesday, it's time for another look at Andres' automated WP numbers (spreadsheet here):



Here are my thoughts:

• Not really too much has changed; Evans and Johnson are still playing really well; Jack, Calderon, and Andersen are playing okay; and the four horsemen are still stinking up the joint (although DeRozan somewhat less so)
• But Weems has improved and - in limited minutes - so has Dorsey. Wright has regressed in limited minutes
• None of that is surprising, given past histories and preseason numbers
• One thing the take into account: using the automated positions, Barbosa is listed as a PG - which makes him look worse than he really is - and has Jack playing more time at SG - which makes him look better than he is. Kleiza is also listed as a SG for part of his minutes, which (very scarily) means he's actually been worse than what we see here
• At -0.9 wins produced Bargnani "leads" the league. Just thought I'd put that out there
• At -0.6 wins produced, Kleiza is close behind Bargnani at "7th" (and remember, he's actually played even worse than those numbers indicate)
• Reggie is now 30th in total wins produced, right around Kobe Bryant (27th)
• Raps have played a little bit better than their record suggests, with 3.6 wins produced and only a 2-8 record to show for it
• The bigs who should be getting playing time: Evans, Johnson, Dorsey, and Andersen
• The guards/smalls who should be getting playing time: Jack, Calderon, Weems, and...uhhhh...either Wright (not really a small, but we're dealing with lemons here) or DeRozan

Coming up soon: team stats for week three.

 - Devin

Week 2 WP Numbers

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Andres Alvarez has been updating the automated WP site regularly, so it's time for week two of the Auto WP numbers (spreadsheet here):



From now on, this spreadsheet will be updated automatically, so in the future, this entry will have current data (ie: my comments in this post might not make sense if you view this post next week)

Here are my thoughts for the season so far:

• Reggie Evans has still been playing rather well, but (as I predicted) not quite as well as he had been playing. He still leads the Raptors with 1.4 wins
• Jarrett Jack and Amir Johnson are next with 0.7 wins apiece. Johnson has been playing at a more productive rate, but he still hasn't been getting much playing time behind Evans
• Calderon, Andersen, and Weems are in the next tier with 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3 wins, respectively
• Banks, Dorsey, and Wright are all around 0.1 in limited minutes
• And then we have the Four Horsemen - DeRozan, Barbosa, Kleiza, and Bargnani - all producing at negative levels (-0.2, -0.2, -0.4, -0.5, respectively)
• Each of these players are in the team's top five for shot attempts. Unfortunately none has managed to score an average amount of points per shot
• Also unfortunate is that three of the Four Horsemen are in the Raptors' top four for minutes played
• Reggie's shooting is mind-blowingly bad - but the guy rebounds like a madman and that makes up for it (and then some)
• Johnson has foul trouble - big surprise. But as I've said before, all he has to do is be able to play 30 minutes; Johnson could still play just over 31.5 minutes a game at his current foul rate of 9.1 per 48min
• David Andersen is still the rich man's Bargnani. Based on his play so far, he should probably be the Raptors' starting centre
• Calderon's been productive without shooting well - hopefully he'll regress back to his normal shooting and see a jump in productivity
• Kleiza has really fallen off what he was doing during preseason play

And let's check up on how Bargnavans is doing:



Oh, not so good. Who could've predicted that? Now that Reggie has fallen back down to earth and Bargnani is starting to work his "magic", the two don't look nearly as good together. The problem lies with Bargnani, of course, but don't tell that the kool-aid drinkers (unless you are a masochist).


Overall, there haven't really been many surprises for the Raptors so far - if they continue to play like this, they should finish the season with around 27 wins, which is what many people predicted before the start of the season.

In the next few days I'll be posting team data for every team in the league and seeing how the Raptors compare in various categories. But before I sign off, I'd like to say one thing: the state of basketball coverage is atrocious here in Victoria. I haven't been able to catch a single game on basic cable since the start of the season, and weeks can go by between showings. I blame this on the fact that the Raptors always put their games on stupid specialty channels like TSN2 or Sportsnet One. As the only Canadian team in the entire league, the Raptors should really focus on two things: 1) putting a better product on the court and 2) building their fanbase. Putting more games on basic cable across the country would go a long way towards the latter, although unfortunately I suspect that lack of success with regards to the former is to blame.

 - Devin