Full TOR-NOH trade analysis

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


It turns out that yes, the Raptors and Hornets did make a trade, and the details of the deal haven't changed since I posted my initial reactions. But I promised I would come up with some fancy graphs, so here is one:



Now everything I mentioned earlier becomes that much clearer. Over the past three seasons, the players Toronto had before the trade were better on a per-minute basis (WP48 of 0.077) and in terms of total wins (14.5) than the New Orleans players (WP48 of 0.051 and 9.2 wins produced). This year, the former Raptors have also been more productive on a per-minute basis (WP48 of 0.073 vs -0.046) and in terms of wins (0.8 vs -0.2). The Raptors take on $5.5 million in extra salary this season, but manage to save about $3.6 million over all of the years after that. Additionally, the Raptors seem to have spent about $2.3 million of the Bosh trade exception (as far as I can gather). So, to recap, the Raptors:

• traded for players who have been less productive in the past
• traded for players who have been less productive so far this season
• traded for players who are likely to be less productive in the future
• take on an extra $5.5 million in salary this season
• save $3.6 million over the years after this season
• spent $2.3 million of the TPE
• opened up a roster spot

No, this is not a good deal. If the trade was "made with the future in mind", whoever's responsible for approving the trade either wants the Raps to do worse as an organization or is incompetent (we know where I stand on that issue). It doesn't improve the team on the court in the short term or long term, and financially, it hurts the team more in the short term than it helps in the long term. At least Bryan Colangelo is up front about the team being worse in the short term:

"whether or not we win games is really not the true issue right now, it's how much we're growing as an organization, how much these young kids are coming along." 

Unfortunately for the Raptors, Bayless probably won't become a useful player, and everyone knows what BC has done with lots of cap space in the past (see Turkoglu, Hedo).

 - Devin

Projections for the 2010-11 NBA season

Without further ado, here are my projections for next season:

The projected WP numbers are based on a very complicated formula....Well, actually, I averaged each player's yearly WP for the last 5 seasons, calculated their total WP over the last 5 seasons, and then used that data to come up with my own educated...projections. Guess wouldn't be an appropriate word in this context, because WP tends to be relatively stable over time, but yes, my projections include a tiny bit of "guessing".

The projected minutes is where it gets interesting. The Raptors aren't exactly renowned for their player usage, and they have several players who are interchangeable. My projected starters are in bold in the chart above. Note that I project Andrea Bargnani to be the starting centre - not Amir Johnson. Calderon and Jack split the PG minutes, but either could be designated as the starter.

There is also the matter of the rookies. How well and how many minutes will they play? Based on his college performance, I've projected Ed Davis to be an average NBA player in his first year. Based on the playing time the Raptors gave DeMar DeRozan last year, I'm predicting that Davis should see around 1600 minutes of playing time. Solomon Alabi does not project to have a good season, and I doubt that he will see much court time this year.

So, without Bosh (and Turkoglu), the Raptors project to win around 35-36 games. If rookie Ed Davis has a good season and/or the Raptors pick up a few "lucky" wins, they might actually sneak into the playoffs as an 7th or 8th seed.

In the coming days I will start posting my individual player "reviews" for the upcoming season, where I will discuss each player in greater detail.

 - Devin.

Raptors 2009-2010 team review

Let's revisit my first post on the Wages of Wins Journal. Many people complained that I hadn't noticed that certain players (such as Turkoglu and Johnson) were automatically assigned to incorrect positions. Well, let's see what happens when we adjust the positions manually, shall we? The first table below is WP as calculated automatically by Andres Alvarez's automatic system:

This second table is what happens when we correctly adjust positions:

As you can see, there isn't much difference between the two. Adjusting Hedo Turkoglu, Amir Johnson, and Reggie Evans doesn't really change the team outlook very much. The Raptors go from a projected total of 36.26 wins to 36.76. And I don't want to hear from anyone that "Chris Bosh isn't a centre", because last year, he was indeed the Raptors' centre.

Now I will admit that, when writing certain parts of my review, I was not paying attention to the correct table. While my overall projection for the coming season is the same, certain of my specific comments relating to certain players need to be adjusted. Hedo Turkoglu, or Turkish Delight, wasn't as bad as I had mentioned. Last year, Turkoglu actually had a WP of 0.088 and produced around 4 wins (instead of a WP of 0.022 and around 1 win). Amir Johnson wasn't as good as I had mentioned; he actually had a WP of 0.181 and produced around 5.5 wins (instead of a WP of 0.252 and around 7.5 wins). Reggie Evans goes from 1.3 wins to around 0.84, which really isn't much of a difference at all.

With that in mind, in a subsequent post I will rewrite my thoughts for the coming season. Now that I'm on my own blog I have to abililty to break my thoughts into more than one post, and I plan to use that to my advantage. I'm also going to be posting individual reviews for each player on the roster for the coming season, as well as covering any more roster changes that may happen between now and the start of the season.

I'll see how this goes, and if all goes well I'll be posting frequently during the season. Hopefully someone will find at least some of this analysis interesting.

 - Devin.