Ball v.1.15

I've come to grips with the fact the Raptors will keep Jarrett Jack as their starting point guard. I've gone through the all the required "steps":

Denial - This is when I thought the starting lineup was just a temporary thing while Calderon returned to 100%...

Anger - This is when the Raptors were going through their hot stretch and everyone thought Jarrett Jack was the greatest thing since sliced bread...

Bargaining - I tried finding any statistic to prove to someone that Jarrett Jack was not a good point guard... no one listened.

Depression - I didn't post for weeks on end. I even made up a story about going to the Olympics to justify my lack of work.

Acceptance - This is where I'm at now. Jarrett Jack is Toronto's starting point guard. I've moved on.

And this is what I've moved on to (and something I won't give up on this season): It's time to sit DeMar DeRozan down for this season. I've talked about it before, and I won't give up on it. It just makes too much sense. Here are the arguments:

1. It's too hard to be a rookie guard in this league - Among the playoff contending teams in the East, there's only one successful rookie guard (Brandon Jennings), and even he has hit a massive wall of late. The Raptors can't afford to be playing someone who's in over his head, and DeRozan clearly is...

2. He's lost the one other trick in his bag - Other than driving to the net, the only other thing DeRozan does offensively is take long 2s. Other than the fact that those are the most inefficient shots in basketball, DeRozan is also the worst in the league among shooting guards when it comes to those shots... take a look:

LONG TWO-POINT JUMPERS FG%
AMONG SHOOTING GUARDS

D. DeRozan 34%
K. Martin 35%
J. Stackhouse 37%
D. Jones 38%
D. Wade 38%
M. Ellis 38%
*min 4 att per 40 min

Here's the thing too... Martin, Wade, & Ellis probably take the majority of these shots under extreme defensive pressure, compared to DeRozan, Stack, and Dahntay Jones, who probably were taking open Js.

3. He's the least effective player on the Raptors, according to one metric - If you gauge by on-court plus/minus, no one has been less useful for Toronto this season:

ON COURT +/-
PER 48 MINS

Wright 2.3
Johnson 2.2
Belinelli 1.2
Bosh 0.8
Weems 0.8
Calderon 0.7
Evans 0.0
Jack -1.5
Bargnani -1.6
Turkoglu -2.2
DeRozan -6.0

This is obviously not the be-all and end-all when it comes to statistics. However, one thing is striking about this list: All of the players fall within a certian range (-2.5 to 2.5). It's a five-point range which pretty much says, "We're all NBA players, and when we're on the floor over the course of a full season, you're not going to win or lose by too much." And then there's DeRozan... 6 points per 48 minutes... that's insane. And it's way too much of a hole to be giving up when playoff spots are on the line.

THE SOLUTION

I'm so jacked about this problem, I'm going to give you the goods on three possible solutions. If you hold the four other spots of the starting lineup constant (Jack, Turkoglu, Bosh, Bargnani), and just look at the stats of the five-man units for all of the possible shooting guards, here is what you get:

DeRozan 314 mins, -72, 102 off eff, 113 def eff
Weems 83 mins, +4, 106 off eff, 110 def eff
Belinelli 39 mins, +24, 138 off eff, 117 def eff
Wright 35 mins, +6, 124 off eff, 104 def eff

Weems, Belinelli, and Wright have all been relatively successful playing with the starting lineup (with all the obvious notes about sample size and not accounting for competition). Belinelli or Wright provide the stronger offensive punches, Weems or Wright provide the best defensive punches.

One thing is for sure: DeRozan provides the worst overall option.