Season at a Glance (2/10)

Game #13 has come and gone -- time for the second team review of the season.

Last time the Raps were on pace to post a 28-38 record. Despite the decent start, I said that I expected to see that number shrink towards 19-20 wins. Where are they right now?

Season at a Glance (1/10)

It's been a number of months since my last post here, as most of my new stuff is being published on the Wages of Wins Journal. But there are some Raptor-related things I want to write about that aren't really suitable for that audience. After all, how many people care to read a regular review of the Raptors' season progress?

Speaking of regular, my plan is to post ten summaries this season, so each one will represent approximately 10% of the shortened season (which amounts to 6-7 games per summary).

Eurobasket 2011: Raptors Edition

It's been a long time since my last post here at NBeh? - given the lockout, there hasn't been much Raptors news to write about. But with the 2011 Eurobasket tournament having just wrapped up, there is finally a bit of tangential analysis that I can write about: how players with various Raptor connections fared playing for their respective teams.

Andrea Bargnani: The Centre who plays like he’s 6 inches shorter

New readers, please check out the basics before leaving any comments. The following post is a post I wrote (with Dre's help) over at the Wages of Wins Journal.


Andrea Bargnani is a bad player. He is a historically bad player. His assigned job is centre. Yet, he does none of the jobs expected of a centre. Some people defend Bargnani and it’s often with one of these two arguments:

• Bargnani isn’t your run-of-the-mill centre. Treat him like a shooting guard. 
• Bargnani is an offensive centre [You can say that again!]. His scoring is his skill and any good team could use it. 

Quick thoughts: 2011 NBA Draft

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I’ll offer more in-depth coverage shortly, but here are my quick thoughts on the 2011 NBA draft. If you need more draft data in the meantime, take a look at my full draft prospects preview.

Full 2011 NBA Draft Prospect Overview

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**(Note: the images are too large to be properly uploaded into Blogger, so I will be moving them into Google Docs format)**


About a month ago I posted my numberless preview of the NBA draft. The draft is coming up this Thursday, so now's the time to put out the full version of the post (it's been ready for a whole month, I swear!).

In case you've been stuck under a rock for the past few months, you'll know that the NBA draft is coming up shortly. My team of choice (for now....) is the Toronto Raptors; the Raptors will have the fifth pick this year. My question is, according to the numbers, which players should the Raptors (or any other team, for that matter) target?

2010-11 League Opponent Stats

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It's been over a week since I posted the league team stats...time to get the league opponent stats up.

Here they are (full spreadsheet available here):

2010-11 League Team Stats

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As promised, here are this year's team stats for every team in the NBA (full spreadsheet here):

2011 NBA Draft Prospects Overview

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In case you've been stuck under a rock for the past few months, you'll know that the NBA draft is coming up shortly. My team of choice (for now....) is the Toronto Raptors; the Raptors will likely have a top three pick and can fall no lower than 6th. My question is, according to the numbers, which players should the Raptors (or any other team, for that matter) target?

Well, I have a post written up and ready with all of the numbers included, but I'm actually going to keep that unpublished until right before the draft. Why? Let's just say that it'll be some good content to help launch a new website. So for now, I'm going to operate contrary to my normal M.O. and post some stat-free player assessments, organized into five categories: players to avoid, promising players, overrated players, underrated players, and "mystery box" players

2010-11 Raptor Charts Part II

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Yesterday I posted part one, which included both team and individual charts showing the game-by-game distribution of both field goal attempts and scoring efficiency (as determined by the formula PTS-FGA-0.5*FTA). Today I'll be posting the part two, which does the same for Net Possessions and "Helpers".

A player's Net Possesions is determined by the formula REB+STL-TO. This formula rewards those who gain possessions for their teams, and punishes those who give the ball away. Who do we think is going to show up first using this method?

2010-11 Raptor Charts Part I

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I have a couple of things to post today (with more to come in a bit). The first is a link to a piece about the "most harmful players" of the regular season by Ty Willihnganz over at Courtside Analyst (take a stab at why this article would be relevant to the Raptors). Ty also has posted his MWS Charts for every NBA team - go and take a look at Toronto's numbers. The overall numbers are very similar to Wins Produced - although by MWS, Bargnani looks even worse, Reggie looks even better, and Ed Davis looks more average.

I have also been working on various Raptor charts over the last few weeks. Several weeks ago, I looked at how the Denver Nuggets' FGA changed before and after the Carmelo Anthony trade, and the intention was always to apply the same technique to the Raptors at the end of the season. Well, the season has been over for the Raptors for a while now, so it's time to get this up.

2010-11 Raptors Season Review

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Now that the season is official over for the Raptors, it's a good time to review how the season went.

Team Overview:
Team Record: 22-60 (28th)
Eastern Conference Standing: 14th
Team Wins Produced: 23.3 (27th)
Point Differential: -6.28 (27th)

Even the brief numbers aren't pretty; in a little bit I'll take a deeper look at the team numbers, but for now let's just take a quick look. The Raptors finished with the 3rd-worst record in the league (2nd-worst in the East), behind only Cleveland and Minnesota. In terms of Wins Produced and point differential - both better indicators of team quality than Win-Loss record - the Raps finished with the 4th-worst numbers in the league.

Certainly not very happy numbers. And actually, even worse than the paltry amount of wins I predicted that the team would end up with (which was 28 wins). What happened to the Raptors this season? Well, it would make sense if I compared what I thought would happen against what actually happened.

Fake Trades: Jazz Edition

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Short post today.

For shits and giggles, I was playing around on the ESPN NBA Trade Machine, which is what happens when your favourite team has been out of the playoff picture since December. Unfortunately, now isn't the best time to be fiddling around with it - as many contracts can't be traded at the moment - but it's still fun.

I was looking at the Jazz as a trading partner for the Raptors. Why? Well, since the Deron Williams trade, it looks like the Jazz are trying to move in a new direction (aka blow it all up). They still have plenty of good players, including some up-and-comers, and thus are ripe for the picking.

NBA Today and rebuilding the Raptors

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Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index sent me a link to a recent NBA Today podcast where (starting at around the 27th minute) Ryen Russillo talks about how to rebuild the Raptors. Mosi wanted to hear my thoughts on Russillo's comments about the Raptors, and so I sent him a quick email reply.

I've expanded on my brief thoughts below. Each of my comments is made in response to something that Ryen Russillo said on the podcast; Russillo's comments are italicized.

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:

Nuggets, Knicks, and the 'Melo Effect'

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While the Raptors haven't been very interesting lately - although they did pull off a nice upset of the Thunder before getting absolutely walloped by the Nuggets last night - I've been looking into other things. One of these things, incidentally, was the improvement in the play of the Nuggets since they traded away Carmelo Anthony. And if you don't believe that the Nuggets have improved, here are some stats for you, because here at the Wages of Wins Network, we're all about stats:

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.