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.

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):

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.

WOW Podcast - Talking Raptors and "Trading Up"

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Yesterday - along with Andres (of Nerd Numbers) and Daniel Alvarez - I appeared on the Wages Of Wins Network podcast. Because I was replacing Arturo Galletti of Arturo's Silly Little Stats, Dre decided to title the podcast "Trading Up".

Just kidding; I'm the Keanu Reeves to Arturo's Doug Flutie. The title actually refers to the Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams trades that feature prominently in the podcast. We also talked about the All-Star game, the huge James Johnson deal, some Raptors issues, and got into a heated debate about Kobe in the clutch.

 - Devin

Raptors trade: Another PF?!?

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According to ESPN, the Raptors have traded a first round draft pick (originally Miami's and acquired during the Bosh sign-and-trade) to the Bulls in exchange for James Johnson. Here's what Bryan Colangelo had to say about the deal:

“James Johnson is a strong, athletic and versatile small forward that we have had our eye on dating back to the 2009 NBA Draft."

This whole thing is rather odd. First of all, James Johnson is more of a power forward than a small forward - both 82 games and Andres' automated WP site (Nerd Numbers) say that Johnson has spent more time at PF than at SF this season. For last season - Johnson's rookie year - the Auto WP site had Johnson playing more of his time at SF than at PF, but 82 games still has him playing most of his minutes at PF. This all makes sense because Johnson is 6'9" and 245lbs; he's as heavy as Reggie Evans and one inch taller, tied for third heaviest player on the roster, and tied for fifth tallest on the roster. He also doesn't have much of an outside game and is best playing close to the basket...like a power forward.

ESPN's Chad Ford: Colangelo won't trade Bargnani

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Raptors HQ brought the following quote from Chad Ford of EPSN to my attention today:

Herman (Toronto)
With Ed Davis and Amir Johnson showing signs of potential. Does there come a time when Toronto looks to trade Bargnani? Maybe they should take a shot at Odem?

Chad Ford(1:36 PM)
It's a good question. The answer is ... not as long as Bryan Colangelo is the GM. GMs fall in love with the players they draft. It's part of our psychological need to justify our decisions. Colangelo took him No. 1 over Rudy Gay and Brandon Roy. He needs to be right. Trading him is tantamount to admitting he was a bad pick. Lakers are suffering from the same problem with Bynum. As a rule around the league, teams tend to overvalue their own players and undervalue other team's players. It's partly why we don't see more trades in the NBA. But if Colangelo were to leave the Raptors, my guess is the first move a new GM would make would be to trade Bargnani. He's talented, but it's tough to have a 7 footer on the floor who refuses to rebound or defend anyone.

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

Arturo's 100 Worst Seasons/Players in the NBA since 1978

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Arturo has done a lot of number-crunching on historical productivity in the NBA, and yesterday, he posted two lists: the 100 worst seasons since 1978 and the 100 worst players since 1978.

Can you guess where this is going?

Just click the link. If you are looking for more information from the Raptors' perspective, you can take a look at my front-office audit or the ultimate Bargs post.

 - Devin

Full TOR-NOH trade analysis

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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

AGS for Front Offices Audit: Toronto Raptors Part 3

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Continuing with the third part of the front office audit series (please see part 1 and part 2), I'll examine the last three components and offer some suggestions on how to turn the franchise around.

5) If you are going to the free agent market then look for low-priced underrated players.

Colangelo has actually done a pretty good job on this one historically. The Raptors have signed Jose Calderon (Rob Babcock's work, actually), Anthony Parker, Jorge Garbojosa, and Linas Kleiza (all at cheap salaries) from Europe. David Berri, founder of the Wages of Wins Network and creator of the Wins Produced metric, called it Colangelo's "third way" (in addition to drafting and NBA free agents/trades). He also found the undrafted, cheap, and very productive Jamario Moon. He recently re-signed Amir Johnson to a reasonable contract. But at the same time, Colangelo has also signed Hedo Turkoglu to a terrible free agent deal, given Bargnani a ridiculously huge (and long) extension,  traded for the Player Formerly Known as Jermaine O'Neal, and actually gave Jason Kapono a positive amount of money in his contract (rather than asking Kapono to pay him to stay on the team, which is what he'd have done if this was a rational world). So he's done very well on the "small" deals, but very poorly on the "big" deals. In this case, the good outweighs the bad, but the bad has been so bad that I can only give him partial marks on this one.

6) For the playoffs it is more important to have stars than average players. If given the opportunity trade for stars even if it means losing a few slightly above average players.

Playoffs? You're talking about playoffs?!?!? [that's the first and probably the only time I will reference North American Football on this blog] Well, in terms of stars, the Raptors haven't had much luck. Damon Stoudemire and Vince Carter asked to be traded. Tracy McGrady, Shawn Marion, and Chris Bosh left as free agents. Good players like Jerome Williams and Marcus Camby were stupidly traded away. Older but good players like Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Oakley, and Mark Jackson faded and were either traded away or decided to retire. The Raptors have failed in this area completely.

7) Target good big men (Power Forwards – Centers) and ball handlers (Point Guards).

The Raptors have targeted big men in draft after draft - but other than Bosh, their decisions have been terribly poor. They have had good point guards fall into their hands, only to watch them struggle with injuries (Alvin Williams, Calderon) or suffer from age-related decline (Mark Jackson). In one instance, Colangelo actually traded a big (Charlie Villanueva) for a small (T.J. Ford), something that is a "no-no" according to traditional basketball wisdom; given that Ford was productive and Villanueva was not, it was actually a good move. I'm going to give them an A for effort, but an F for their execution.


Summary:
Five failures and two partial marks out of seven


Verdict:
Do not pass go, do not collect $200.



Future Direction?


Let me start by stating the obvious: hire a GM who knows what they're doing (allow me to suggest a Mr. Galletti). That means that the Raptors should not renew Colangelo's contract once it expires at the end of this season (or fire him sometime during the season), even though they are probably going to ignore that advice.

The next step is figuring out which contracts the Raptors should keep on the books. Most of the players on the team are signed to relatively cheap contracts, but Calderon, Bargnani, and Barbosa have the biggest deals. Bargnani needs to be traded. Barbosa is overvalued and it shouldn't be hard to trade him to a contender or pseudo-contender. Calderon is the interesting case. His history suggests that he is a good player, but he has been declining, his recent play has been poor, and his contract is pretty hefty. I'd keep him for one more season and see how he fares; if he does poorly, he'd be gone before the start of next season. In each of these cases, I would only make trades that would net me at least one (hopefully more) of the following: young players on rookie contracts, players with expiring deals, stars/superstar players (determined by Wins Produced), and draft picks.

The next issue is the Bosh trade exception: it needs to be used. If I had to include it in a package with one of the above players, I would. But preferably I'd used it to acquire a superstar player. I'd go after every star/superstar that I could get (your Wades, Lebrons, Howards, Durants, Rondos and Pauls) but most of those players aren't on the market, so I'd target up-and-coming stars like Westbrook, Noah, Batum, Love, and the like. I'd also look at non-star players if I couldn't do any better.

Once that was done, I'd have a cheap, young, and better team. I'd make sure to continue to flip scorers for draft picks and to use WS40 to determine which players I should draft (or I could just ask Mr. Galletti). The only time I would trade away draft picks is if I could obtain a superstar calibre player in return.

Of the cheaper players on the roster, I'd trade away DeRozan after this season if he maintains his current trajectory. I'd try to include Marcus Banks in deals, but if I couldn't find a use for him I'd be fine with letting his contract come off the books. I'd resign Reggie Evans and Joey Dorsey to really cheap contracts as long as they produce like they have in the past, but I'd avoid long-term deals. Julian Wright and Sonny Weems are quite replaceable, so I'd probably shop around for better players on the free agent market, or use the "third way" and find hidden gems in Europe.

I guarantee that this plan would have better success than whatever Colangelo is doing right now. Such a plan would likely net a playoff berth in the next two seasons, followed by advancing to the second round in the following two years after that. And if the Raptors hired either Arturo, myself, or any of the other Wages of Wins Network analysts, I doubt that they would regret it.

 - Devin

AG Standards for Front Offices Audit: Toronto Raptors (Draft History II)

This article uses the Wins Produced metric to discuss the productivity of NBA players. This metric is based on box score statistics that are adjusted for other factors including pace, position and team. A general scale is given for these, and links to advanced explanations are listed at the bottom of the page.

Wins Produced per 48 Minutes (WP48) – The number of wins a player produces in 48 minutes of play. 0.100 is average and 0.250 is considered the “superstar threshold”. A player a WP48 of 0.000 produces no wins, and any player with a negative WP48 produces a negative number a wins (or, if you prefer, a positive number of losses)

For more information on the terms used in this post, please consult the Glossary of Terms.



Last time we looked at the last ten years of Toronto's draft history. The general conclusion? The Raptors are really bad at drafting productive players (or, if you want to put an optimistic spin on it, the Raptors are excellent at drafting unproductive players). But, as bad as they were, maybe some of those draft choices were the best available options? Let's take an individual look at each draft pick and see if the Raptors could have gotten anything better than they did (you might want to follow along with this spreadsheet).

• 2000: #21 Morris Peterson; #56 DeeAndre Hulett 

As a Raptor fan, I gotta love the man. But looking at the numbers, Mo Pete wasn't so good in his first four seasons; he only managed a WP48 of 0.050. At the 21st pick, you would expect there to be some more palatable options than that, but was that the case? While there were 7 players with higher WP48s selected after him, the only truly useful players available were Michael Redd and Eduardo Najera. Overall, Mo Pete wasn't too bad of a pick.

DeeAndre Hulett never played a minute in the NBA, and neither did most of the players selected after him. While Jason Hart eventually played 5289 NBA minutes, he didn't play enough in his first four years to qualify. I'd give the Raptors a pass on this pick.

• 2001: #17 Michael Bradley; #46 (traded) 

Michael Bradley was actually a pretty good player in limited minutes. Despite that, he never made much of an impact on the NBA, and after the Raptors cut him in 2004, his NBA career was pretty much over. Instead of Bradley, the Raps could've had Mehmet Okur, Jamaal Tinsley, or Samuel Dalembert. The Raptors didn't do too badly with Bradley - now if only they had had the intelligence to play him more minutes.

The 46th pick was traded. Which was fine, because that year there were no useful players available at that number. So far the Raptors have been pretty good.

• 2002: #20 (traded); #27 Chris Jefferies; #42 (traded) 

And so begins the trading of useful draft picks. Kareem Rush was not a productive player - and Chris Jefferies didn't last long enough for us to find out how good he was. Trading down from #20 to #27, the Raptors missed out on the opportunity to draft Tayshaun Prince. Useful players available at #27 included Carlos Boozer, Dan Gadzuric, Luis Scola, and Matt Barnes. Given that the other two players involved in the exchange of these draft picks were Lindsey Hunter and Tracy Murray, I have no choice but to fail this draft decision. Drafting Carlos Boozer or Luis Scola would've been much better than Jefferies.

At #42, Scola and Barnes were still on the board. Yes, the Raptors could've picked up Boozer and Scola in the same draft if they knew what they were doing. And that is why you don't trade away your second round picks: when you hit with them, they have the potential to turn your franchise around.

• 2003: #4 Chris Bosh; #52 Remon Van der Hare 

Chris Bosh was a very good fourth pick - accordingly, Arturo ranks him 144 out of 980 draftees. But there were three players available who were even better than Bosh: Wade, Josh Howard, and Luke Walton. Now, keeping in mind that this ranking only considers the first four years, the only player I would think about drafting instead of Bosh would be (of course) Wade. So the Raptors did very well on this one.

Van der Hare never played in the NBA - and no one else drafted after him was useful. Looks like 2003 was a good drafting year.

• 2004: #8 Rafael Araujo; #39 (traded); #47 Pape Sow 

Ah, the first monumental Raptor bust of the 21st century! Araujo was such a bad pick that he only managed to last 1585 career minutes. In those minutes, he was very bad (WP48 lower than -0.07). Who could the Raptors have chosen instead? Oh, only Andris Biedrins, Andre Iguodala, Al Jefferson, Kevin Martin, Anderson Varejao, Trevor Ariza, Dorell Wright, Josh Smith, Delonte West, Chris Duhon, Tony Allen, and Jameer Nelson - all above-average (WP48 greater than 0.100) players. It's funny, because the recent development of Bargnani had almost made me forget about Hoffa.

The 39th pick could have been useful - Trevor Ariza and Bernard Robinson were both available. Robinson wasn't all that good, but Ariza certainly was.

Ah, good old Pape. Well, he didn't play enough minutes to get ranked, and he wasn't that productive...but there was nothing after him. Hmmm. Maybe Toronto should have just taken Ariza at the 39th instead of trading down...but they only missed one really decent player, so you can't hold it against them too much. Overall though, 2004 was a bad year.

• 2005: #7 Charlie Villanueva; #11 (traded); #16 Joey Graham; #38 (traded); #41 Roko Ukic; #58 Uros Slokar 

Busy draft year for the Raptors - let's start with the pick that had so many "experts" laughing: Villanueva. He actually wasn't that bad of a player - he managed a WP48 of 0.072 - and, as a scorer, was overrated, but the biggest problem with picking Villanueva so low was that...there were so many better players available. How many? Only David Lee, Marcin Gortat, Amir Johnson, Andrew Bynum, Luther Head, Danny Granger, Travis Diener, Jason Maxiell, Monta Ellis, Jarrett Jack, Ersan Ilyasova, and Ronny Turiaf. The Raptors could've at least chosen Granger there instead. This pick gets a D.

With Graham, you were never sure if you were getting "good Joey", the player who rebounded well and attacked the basket for easy shots, or "bad Joey", the player who hoisted up silly jumpers and didn't do much else (maybe the twins were playing tricks on us all?). Over his first four years his WP48 was 0.056. Again, instead of Graham, the Raptors could've had David Lee, Marcin Gortat, Amir Johnson, Luther Head, Danny Granger, Travis Diener, Jason Maxiell, Monta Ellis, Jarrett Jack, Ersan Ilyasova, or Ronny Turiaf. This pick gets a D minus.

Instead of seldomly played Roko Ukic, the Raptors could have had Gortat or Amir Johnson. But Ukic is exactly the kind of pick you want to make in the second round: high risk, high reward. All things considered, not a terrible choice.

Uros Slokar: another high risk, high reward pick. This time it didn't pan out, but again, at least Toronto went for it. There were no useful players selected after Slokar either, so this was an okay pick.

• 2006: #1 Andrea Bargnani; #20 (traded); #35 P.J. Tucker; #56 Edin Bavcic 

Everyone should know by now how badly the Raptors did by choosing Bargnani; I've talked about it several times before. In fact, if you've read those posts you'll know that Bargnani is ranked 970/980 draftees on Arturo's list. Instead of Bargnani, the Raptors could have chosen: Rajon Rondo, Renaldo Balkman, Brandon Roy, Paul Millsap, Ronnie Brewer, Leon Powe, Josh Boone, Kyle Lowry, Thabo Sefolosha, Tyrus Thomas, or Shelden Williams. This pick is an F.

Had the Raptors not traded #20, they could've had Rondo, Balkman, Millsap, Powe, Boone, or Lowry. Instead, the 20th pick was used to sweeten up the Jalen Rose trade, which was simply a correction of a previous mistake...and the resulting cap room led to future mistakes. Dumb.

P.J. Tucker didn't get much of a chance to play in the NBA, but when he did play, he showed promise. And after he left for overseas, he actually managed to achieve some measure of success. So the Raptors took exactly the kind of player they were supposed to, only to cut the guy in favour of Luke Jackson.

As Arturo would say

Edin Bavcic didn't play - and there was nobody useful picked after him - but again, at least the Raptors were looking for hidden gems

• 2007: #22 (traded); #52 (traded) 

Ah, the year of no picks. Why no picks? Because - years before Colangelo - they needed to get rid of Yogi Stewart and wanted to acquire Lamond Murray and John Wallace. Who could they have picked at #22? Rudy Fernandez, Carl Landry, Marc Gasol, Ramon Sessions, and Jared Dudley. At #52, they still could have had Sessions. Lesson? Don't trade away your picks.

• 2008: #17 (traded); #41 Nathan Jawai; #45 (traded) 

Really? T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic, and the 17th pick for Jermaine O'Neal? The only saving grace of the trade was the cap room that it created, and BC did not use it wisely. The returns are still pretty early, but at #17, the Raptors could have had Luc Mbah a Moute, Serge Ibaka, DeAndre Jordan, Bill Walker, J.J. Hickson, Mario Chalmers, Courtney Lee, Goran Dragic, Ryan Anderson, and Sonny Weems. I'd take any of those players over Jermaine O'Neal, and I'd have been happy to keep T.J. Ford for a bit longer, thank you very much.

Instead of Jawai, Toronto could have had Walker or Dragic. Not too bad, and Jawai was an okay gamble. Those same two players were still available at #45 as well.

• 2009: #9 DeMar DeRozan; #39 (traded); #51 (traded) 

Another lottery pick, another poor choice. DeRozan didn't have good numbers coming out of college, and his first year wasn't very good (nor was his preseason this year). DeRozan is shaping up to be your classic Raptors lottery pick bust. Who could the Raptors have had instead? DeJuan Blair, Ty Lawson, Jon Brockman, Chase Budinger, Rodrigue Beaubois, Jonas Jerebko, Austin Daye, Jeff Pendergraph, Taj Gibson, Omri Casspi, or Darren Collison - just to name the above average players. It'll be a few more years before we can fully evaluate this draft class, but it's looking very likely that the Raptors made another poor choice.

Picks #39 and #51 were traded. Remember what I said about trading draft picks? Imagine Jerebko, Budinger, Marcus Thornton, or A.J. Price on the team. At least the Raptors got Carlos Delfino out of it...er, I mean, Amir Johnson (not bad, actually, although I would've preferred to have kept Delfino).

• 2010: #13 Ed Davis; #42 (traded), #50 Solomon Alabi 

Ed Davis seems like he's going to be a very good NBA player, and eventually we will get to see him in action. Based on nothing other than college numbers, it looks as if the Raptors made good pick. Although it must be said that the fact that there were 12 teams drafting ahead of them was probably a big factor in them choosing Davis.

In dropping down from #42 to #50, the Raptors may have missed out on a man with a sexy name, Devin Ebanks, and a man with a humourously erroneous name, Tiny Gallon. I'm not so sure that Alabi was a high risk/high reward player...high risk, certainly, but given that he played in the NCAA and didn't post good numbers, it's not likely that he will turn out to be too productive.


Draft Verdict?

In the last ten years, the Raptors have hit on a draft pick only once (maybe twice if Ed Davis turns out be as good as we think). That is a terrible, putrid rate. Some of the middling picks (late teens to early 30s) were okay, but the Raptors ended up cutting/trading away the draftee too early. Some of their second round picks were at least adventurous, but none of them succeeded. Any time the Raptors get into the lottery, there is a very good chance that they will select someone who not is very productive. To make matters even worse, Toronto has also traded away a rather large number of picks and hasn't made many trades to acquire any back - except for the occasional forced trade, such as the trades involving Carter and Bosh. So really...you can't blame good players for avoiding Toronto.

Next week I'll post Week 1 team stats (as reader Mattt points out, the Raptors are at 0.500 at the moment!), as well as the final part of this AGS front office audit and suggestions for turning the franchise around.

 - Devin

• All basic NBA stats, including play time, salary, and age, are from Basketball-Reference 
• Shooting data by location are from Hoopdata 
• The Wins Produced (WP and WP48) metric is the work of Berri and Schmidt. I use the Automated Wins Produced site, which is powered by data from Basketball-Reference and Yahoo Sports and put together by Andres Alvarez. 
• Positional averages (for PPS, etc) are from The Wages of Wins. 
• All of the draft data is the work of Arturo Galletti 

AGS for Front Offices Audit: Toronto Raptors (Part 1:Draft history)

This article uses the Wins Produced metric to discuss the productivity of NBA players. This metric is based on box score statistics that are adjusted for other factors including pace, position and team. A general scale is given for these, and links to advanced explanations are listed at the bottom of the page.

Wins Produced per 48 Minutes (WP48) – The number of wins a player produces in 48 minutes of play. 0.100 is average and 0.250 is considered the “superstar threshold”. A player a WP48 of 0.000 produces no wins, and any player with a negative WP48 produces a negative number a wins (or, if you prefer, a positive number of losses)

For more information on the terms used in this post, please consult the Glossary of Terms.
 

As promised, let's take a look at the Raptors' management plan. To start, I have been analyzing the organizational philosophy of the Raptors, and after hours of work, I have come up with an image that summarizes my findings:

Hey - I never said I was an artist

There are certainly more than a few obstacles for the Raptors to overcome in order for them to simply win a playoff series, let alone a championship. So, using Arturo's standards for evaluating front offices - previously employed by Andres to evaluate the Nuggets front office - let's see what the Raptors are doing well and where they can improve.


1) Get an advanced stats model to gain an edge over other teams. Make sure this model correlates with winning.

Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo seems to be skeptical about stats, and, as far as I am aware, does not have any dedicated statistical analysts working for the team. While he claims to have read parts of The Wages of Wins, he clearly doesn't buy into Wins Produced or he wouldn't have made a lot of the moves has has (Bargnani, Turkoglu, etc). So that's a fail.


2) Bolster your roster with draft picks rather than free agency.
3) Flip scorers for draft picks (see 2).
4) Use later picks on high risk/reward players for a cheaper price.

Let's take a look at what happened to all the draft picks the Raptors have had since 2000. Although Colangelo has only been around since 2006, I think we should also look at how the Raptors did BBC (before Bryan Colangelo), so let's look at the last 10 years of Raptors drafting:

• 2000: Morris Peterson (21st), DeeAndre Hulett (46st)
• 2001: Michael Bradley (17th)
• 2002: Kareem Rush (20th)
• 2003: Chris Bosh (4th), Remon Van der Hare (52nd)
• 2004: Rafael Araujo (8th), Albert Miralles (39th)
• 2005: Charlie Villanueva (7th), Joey Graham (16th), Roko Ukic (41st), Uros Slokar (58th)
• 2006: Andrea Bargnani (1st), P.J. Tucker (35th), Edin Bavcic (56th)
• 2007: none
• 2008: Roy Hibbert (17th)
• 2009: DeMar DeRozan (9th)
• 2010: Ed Davis (13th)

That list doesn't look too good - but we are not done yet. We also have to consider that some of those picks were immediately traded to other teams:

• Kareem Rush, along with Tracy Murray, and a 2003 draft pick (Luke Walton), to the Lakers for Lindsey Hunter, Chris Jeffries, and a 2003 draft pick (Ramon Van de Hare)
• Roy Hibbert, along with T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic, and Maceo Baston, to Indiana for Jermaine O'Neal and Nathan Jawai
• Acquired Pape Sow and a 2005 draft pick (Uros Slokar) from the Miami Heat for a 2004 draft pick (Albert Miralles)

And what about the draft picks that Toronto traded away:

1. 2001 draft pick (Ousmane Cisse), along with Kevin Willis, Alex Radojevic, and Garth Joseph, to the Nuggets for Keon Clark, Tracy Murray, and Mamadou N'Diaye
2. 2002 draft pick (Jason Jennings), along with Charles Oakley, to the Bulls for Brian Skinner
3. 2005 draft pick (Fran Vasquez), along with Corliss Williamson, Tyrone Corbin, and Kornel David, to the Kings for Jerome Williams and Eric Montross
4. 2005 draft pick (Travis Diener), along with Mengke Bateer and Remon Van der Hare, to the Magic for Robert Archibald and a 2005 draft pick (Roko Ukic)
5. 2006 draft pick (Renaldo Balkman), along with Jalen Rose, to the Knicks for Antonio Davis
6. 2007 draft pick (Jared Dudley), along with Michael Stewart, to the Cavs for Lamond Murray and a 2004 draft pick (Albert Miralles)
7. 2007 draft pick (Taurean Green) to Portland for John Wallace
8. 2008 draft pick (Goran Dragic) to the Spurs for the rights to Giorgos Printezis
9. 2009 draft pick (Jack McClinton), along with Matt Bonner and Eric Williams, to the Spurs for Rasho Nesterovic
10. 2009 draft pick (Jonas Jerebko) to the Pistons for Carlos Delfino
11. 2010 draft pick (Da'Sean Butler) to the Heat due to the Shawn Marion trade
12. 2011 second round draft pick to the Pistons for Carlos Delfino
13. 2013 second round draft pick to the Mavs (to acquire Slomon Alabi)
14. 2014 second round draft pick to the Celtics (to acquire Patrick O'Bryant)
15. 2015 second round draft pick to the Rockets (to acquire David Andersen)
16. 2016 second round draft pick to the Grizzlies (to acquire Turkoglu)

And what about future draft picks they've acquired:

1. 2011 first round draft pick from Miami (Chris Bosh trade)
2. 2015 second round draft pick (51-55 only) from the Clippers for Hassan Adams

Phew! That was a lot of work. By the way, these last two lists may not be complete - it turns out that it's actually quite difficult to find out what happened to all the draft picks that the Raptors have acquired or traded away over the years (my best resource was, unsurprisingly, Wikipedia). Adding everything above together, how successful has Toronto been with its picks? To evaluate drafted players, we'll turn to Arturo's handy Draft Score spreadsheet, which ranks the past 30 years of draft picks. Since the total number of players drafted is 980, each draftee can be expressed as a percentage (1-n/980). Please note: Arturo's draft numbers are based only on the first four years of a player's career (their rookie contract) and includes only those players who managed to play at least 1600 minutes over four years (400 minutes a year). Numbers for players drafted after 2006 are calculated using Andres Alvarez's Automated Wins Produced.

If you'd rather view this spreadsheet as a webpage, click here.



Given that list, what can we say about the Raptors' recent draft history? Abysmal. Of the 15 retained draftees that could have played four seasons by now, only six were even ranked (ie: nine players didn't even manage to play 400 minutes/season in their first four seasons). The six rankable players - including Chris Bosh - had an average ranking of 517/980 (48%). Take out Bosh (144), and the remaining five players had an average rank of 585/980 (40%). The Raptors simply do not draft well.

Toronto has been the team trading the draft picks in order to get...mostly unproductive bench players. The Raptors fail #2 and #3 big time. Up until 2006 (the first year with Colangelo at the helm), the Raptors were doing okay on #4, but since then, they haven't had any second round picks to use, because they traded them away (not entirely Colangelo's fault, as many of the transactions happened years ago). But because they demonstrated that they have no understanding of the value of second round draft picks, I'm giving them a fail there too.


This post is getting far too long, so I'm going to split it into at least two parts. In the next part, I want to review individual draftees and then see how the Raptors measure up to the last three aspects of Arturo's requirements.


 - Devin
 

• All basic NBA stats, including play time, salary, and age, are from Basketball-Reference
• Shooting data by location are from Hoopdata
• The Wins Produced (WP and WP48) metric is the work of Berri and Schmidt. I use the Automated Wins Produced site, which is powered by data from Basketball-Reference and Yahoo Sports and put together by Andres Alvarez.
• Positional averages (for PPS, etc) are from The Wages of Wins.
• All of the draft data is the work of Arturo Galletti

Canadian Connection

The idea and data for this post have been gracefully donated by Andres Alvarez over at Nerdnumbers.


Let’s take a look at two mystery players let’s be unoriginal and call them “Player A” and “Player B”:

They seem remarkably identical in terms of production, don’t they? Player B was a little more consistent and offered two more wins and a better WP48, but the difference is quite small.

So what’s the big deal about this? The interesting thing is who these two players actually are. One of them is a former NBA MVP (guess which one). One of them is a former Toronto Raptor (guess which one). Give up? The answers are below.

“Player A” is Chris Bosh. “Player B” is Steve Nash. Bosh’s numbers are taken from his last four years in Toronto, while Nash’s numbers are from his last four years in Dallas (before he moved on to the Suns and won back-to-back MVP awards). This brings up several points in my mind:

1. How amazing is Steve Nash? He was a pretty good player up until age 29, and then he really took off. The guy is 35 years old and still has a WP48 of around 0.300.
2. How dumb is Mark Cuban for letting Nash leave? He decided that Nash was too risky to sign for $10 million at his age (30)...and then proceeded to sign Erick Dampier (then age 29) to a 7 year, $73 million contract in an effort to replace Nash’s production. Remember, Nash had just come off four years of production similar to Bosh's last four years in Toronto. Bryan Colangelo has certainly made his mistakes, but can you imagine BC walking away from the bargaining table at $10 million/year for four years?!?
3. Bosh’s last four years were as good as the four years Nash had right before his first MVP award. Does Bosh have what it takes to improve to the degree that Nash did? Just for fun, let's compare Nash's number's with Bosh's:

If Bosh can improve on his production in Miami (which may be a distinct possibility, due to the impact that Lebron and Wade will have on his shooting frequency and efficiency), maybe Bosh's career will be able to approach the career of the greatest Canadian NBA player of all time.

If you want to see more about how great of a player Steve Nash has been over the course of his career, check out the work that Andres Alvarez has done over at Nerdnumbers.

 - Devin.