Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Shove as many refs as you want...
Amir, you deserve as much shoving as you want, as you're the best Toronto Raptor of the season (which, admittedly, isn't saying much).
Let's break it down as simply as possible:
With Johnson on the court, the Raptors have outscored their opponents by 32 points. With him on the bench, they've been outscored by 160 points.
Why is that? Well, Toronto's rebounding gets much, much better with Johnson on the court. Offensive rebounding percentage jumps 8 percent, while defensive rebounding goes up by 3. The Raptors also attempt more free throws with him on the court (likely a by-product of the offensive rebounding jump), and turn the ball over less often (11 per 48 mins, compared to 14 per 48 with him on the bench).
What does it all mean from a league-wide perspective? 188 players have been on the court at least 40% of the time this season. Here are the 9 players among that group with a net plus/minus above 17:
1. Thaddeus Young 25.2
2. Kevin Durant 24.2
3. Wesley Matthews 22.4
4. Kobe Bryant 21.5
5. Ron Artest 19.7
6. John Salmons 17.9
7. Jared Dudley 17.5
8. Kevin Garnett 17.2
9. Amir Johnson 17.1
Net plus/minus is, by no means, a perfect statistic. It tends to underrate players who play on teams that have good benches, for example. Limitations aside, it still does a pretty good job of showing who's playing well, especially on a team-by-team basis.
Using data from NBA.com, it's not clear whether the Raptors are really rewarding Johnson for his good play this year. There are six possible two-man combinations of Toronto's four most-used post players and I've listed them in terms of net rating (pts per 100 poss - pts against per 100 poss):
1. Johnson-Bargnani 1.8
2. Johnson-Davis 0.6
3. Johnson-Valanciunas -1.5
4. Bargnani-Valanciunas -8.2
5. Bargnani-Davis -9.3
6. Valanciunas-Davis -16.8
Notice a trend with that top 3?
What I find most interesting is that you don't really notice anything about Johnson's personal statistics to explain why the team is playing better with him on the floor. His field goal percentage is down, his scoring and rebounding per minute ratios are right around career norms.
Regardless, the real disappointing thing to consider about these numbers is this: What would Toronto's season look like if they had chosen to bring Valanciunas along slowly, cherry picking only the best possible scenarios for him to play in (10 mins a night), and giving those extra 12 or 13 minutes to Johnson?
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My question would be if Amir's production would stay the same on the floor, or decrease with extra minutes. I guess we won't know unless the extra minutes are allocated.
As far as Jonas goes, I have no problem with him starting and facing top centres as long as he is learning from it and it is not getting him down.
Our upside, I mean absolute ceiling, was 40 wins and squeezing into the playoffs. Realistically, with our projected win total at 34 1/2, we would have fallen short, so given that playoffs was not a realistic option, our record is really not that big a deal to date.
I was hopeful that this year would be used as a development year, transitioning in the new players into Casey's defensive system, while finding a way to increase our scoring average. Unfortunately, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong thusfar, and we are in danger of handing Oklahoma City a pretty high first round draft pick. Maybe we luck into a Top 3 pick, but that is highly unlikely.
With Amir we know what we have, and he is a useful piece to have. I have no problem giving him additional minutes, but hopefully we will be able to move Bargnani, who although I know you disagree, is a huge problem for Casey's defensive system. Let Jonas take his lumps and learn. It will quicken his development. So far, so good.
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