The Toronto Raptors lost to the Atlanta Hawks by 31 points on Wednesday night.
The loss gave the Raptors 13 defeats in their first 20 games. The team’s efficiency differential – offensive efficiency (points scored per possession) minus defensive efficiency (points surrendered per possession) – of -5.9 suggests the Raptors are only going to win about 26 games in 2009-10. In sum, the only NBA team in Canada isn’t very good.
After the Atlanta game, there were grumbles out of Toronto that the players are blaming the coach – Jay Triano — for their troubles. (HT to TrueHoop). Such grumbles are reminiscent of the story told a year ago in Toronto. Last December, the Raptors decided to fire head coach Sam Mitchell (and replace him with Triano). The thinking at the time was that an 8-9 record was simply unacceptable. And somehow if the players had a different coach, life in Toronto would be different.
At the time I expressed a great deal of skepticism regarding this perspective. How players perform on the court determines the outcome of each game. And coaches don’t appear to have much impact on the player’s performances. Essentially, if you give a coach productive players a team will tend to win; and if a coach doesn’t have many productive players he gets to lead a loser. The Raptors of last year didn’t have many productive players. Consequently, we shouldn’t have been surprised that the Raptors only won 25 more games after Mitchell left the scene.
This past summer the Raptors seemed to get this message. Toronto decided to keep Triano as head coach, while a number of new players were added. Unfortunately – as the early results indicate — most of the new players haven’t helped. Again, a differential of -5.9 suggests this team is going to struggle to reach 30 wins this year.
If we move from efficiency differential to Wins Produced, we can see where Toronto’s team makeover went wrong.
Let’s start with the good news. Chris Bosh – the team’s star – is on pace to produce 13.3 wins this season. Jose Calderon – who led the Raptors in Wins Produced in 2008-09 – has struggled. But Calderon is still on pace to produce 5.9 wins in 2009-10.
So Bosh and Calderon are on pace to produce 19.2 wins. And the team is on pace to win about 26 games. A bit of simple math reveals that everyone not named Bosh and Calderon must be on pace to produce only about seven wins.
The perception in Toronto is that everyone else is led by Hedo Turkoglu. Toronto gave Turkoglu a $53 million contract this past summer. Although Turkoglu was a sought after free agent last summer, he really has only been an average player across his career. And he’s now 30 years of age (young for an economist, old for a basketball player). Hence, we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s only on a pace to produce 2.9 wins this season. His Wins Produced per 48 minutes [WP48] is 0.052, a mark that’s well below the average mark of 0.100 (and even if he was average, he wouldn’t be helping that much). So the Raptors – as one could have expected — aren’t getting much return on this investment.
In addition to Turkoglu, the Raptors also held the 8th pick in the 2009 NBA draft (a reward for being so bad last season). With this pick the Raptors selected DeMar DeRozan. His draft position suggests DeRozan could be above-average. His college numbers tell a very different story. Of the 47 players taken out of college last year, DeRozan ranked 39th in PAWS40 [Position Adjusted Win Score per 40 minutes]. The early returns on DeRozan are consistent with this college numbers. After 20 games, his WP48 stands at 0.013. Again, that’s below average.
Although DeRozan’s production is quite low, it’s well beyond what the Raptors are getting from Antoine Wright. Last season Wright produced -2.4 wins. This season he’s on pace to produced -5.0 wins.
Turkoglu, DeRozan, and Wright are not the only players the Raptors added. Toronto also added Amir Johnson, Marco Belinelli, and Jarret Jack. Of this trio, only Johnson was above average last season (WP48 of 0.145). And of this trio, only Johnson is above average this season (WP48 of 0.169).
Of the players who have played 200 minutes this season, only Bosh, Calderon, and Johnson are above average. Everyone else – and that includes Andrea Bargnani [WP48 of 0.043], Belinelli, DeRozan, Jack, Turkoglu, and Wright – are below average.
Again, none of this should be surprising. The Raptors struggles are simply not about their coach. This really is all about the players. Toronto has assembled a roster of players with very few productive performers. And these players can grumble about their coach all they want. But until the Raptors employ better players, a better outcome is not likely to be seen.
– DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Tom L
December 4, 2009
Richard Peddie of MLSE (ownership group of the Raptors “… The last [book I read] was the The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport, which I’m getting my hockey and basketball general managers to read.”
I suspect, unfortunately, Bryan Colangelo did not read it. Too bad.
SWaN
December 4, 2009
Looking at some additional stats, K.D. at Yahoo points out that in terms of defensive efficiency Raptors may be worst in NBA history.
Your statistical model is a better evaluator of talent than Toronto’s GM. Sadly for me as a Toronto resident, it looks like we are in for years of rebuilding.
Ray
December 4, 2009
Prof Berri, I was reading the top 15 players at each position post from earlier in the year and I had a couple of questions that were unresolved in the comment section. First, I noticed that the WP48 that was posted in that article was different than the team review that lists each team’s player production. I noticed Delonte and Kobe were about .02 lower for some reason. I was just wondering why that was.
Also, there was a lot more production at the PG/C spots than SG/SF. Is this because the average player at thos positions is less productive, causing good players to have their WP48 be higher. This wouldn’t be a bad thing, it’d just mean that there were less of these quality players to go around. If that’s adjusted for, and my explanation is incorrect, then what would be the case for the WP disparity?
Brothersteve
December 4, 2009
Firing Mitchell last year was probably a mistake, the result of unresolved conflicts with Colangelo.
Unfortunately Triano hasn’t shown that he has a clue and statistics do not quantify the impact of bad coaching.
Specific line-ups and play calls that Triano keeps trying out fail over and over and screw up your model.
Brasky
December 4, 2009
Brothersteve
Many people using a variety of more advanced statistical methods supplemented by a solid grasp of the NBA game made very accurate predictions concerning this year’s edition of the Raptors’. The lack of defense and rebounding was very easily forecasted. No specific quality of coaching, be it Sam Mitchell, Jay Triano, Etore Messina, or whoever else was going to change the team’s fate.
ilikeflowers
December 4, 2009
The Gospel of Brothersteve, I remember it fondly…
Italian Stallion
December 4, 2009
As long as the Raptors have a guy like Bargnani playing C or PF, they are going to be at a huge disadvantage on the boards and elsewhere.
As I’ve said numerous times, Bargnani’s skill set is closer to that of a SF than a C or PF.
Here are his significant offensive numbers.
PTs Per 36 18.9
eFG% = 55%
TS% = 59.5%
41.3% from behind the arc
88% from the FT line
Those are all very impressive numbers for anyone, let alone a guy that spends a lot of time on the perimeter.
What he doesn’t give you is a lot rebounds (partly “because” he spends so much time on the perimeter). He gives you “SF type numbers” in other areas.
So the idea is to take advantage of his height and ability to draw opposing big men out to the perimeter (and provide space) by also having a smaller player that excels on the inside and that is also an excellent rebounder.
Bargnani is a hybrid player. IMO, whenever you have a hybrid player, you pretty much need a second hybrid player to counter balance him so that all the traditional roles/skills are covered.
You simply can’t measure the value of a hybrid player by assigning him to one of the traditional positions. It doesn’t work that way.
One of Toronto’s major problems is not the talents of the individual players. It’s that the talents are not complimentary. They are mismatched players.
Man of Steele
December 4, 2009
How about a shoutout for Bargnani; Isn’t he like the most improved player in the league? As I remmber, he was -.100 or worse last year, and now he’s only .043. How often to guys improve bu +.150 from one year to the next? I’d guess it’s not very often
Peter
December 5, 2009
Dave, hate to nitpick on English, but a sentence in the next to last paragraph should read like:
Everyone else – (hypenated stuff) – is below average.
khandor
December 5, 2009
Those who predicted [more like hoped] the Raptors were going to finish with 50 or more wins this season will eventually turn out to be wrong.
Those who predicted the Raptors were going to win as few as 30 games this season will eventually turn out to be wrong, as well … whether they use so-called “advanced” stats is irrelevant.
Unless Chris Bosh [or one of their other important players] gets injured, or is traded, the Raptors are probably going to finish somewhere around the .500 mark this season.
They are a middle-of-the-pack team in the Eastern Conference, that might miss the playoffs entirely or slip into one of the bottom slots … before being eliminated by Boston, Orlando or Cleveland.
The only question of any importance to the Raptors organization this season SHOULD be this:
Does Chris Bosh have enough CONFIDENCE in Bryan Colangelo’s ability to eventually construct a championship-calibre team in Toronto, or not?
If he does … then, Chris BOsh will be willing to re-sign with the Raptors, under his Larry Bird Rights.
If he doesn’t … then, Chis Bosh will have played his final game in a Raptors’ uniform this season, and the Toronto franchise will be back to square one, again.
The only person on the proverbial “hot-seat”, in Toronto … which is really no “hot” seat, at all, as long as the franchise continues to churn out a profit for MLSE [the ownership group] … is the same person who’s responsible for constructing the team’s current roster, last year’s roster, and the one from the year before that, etc.
Non-complinetary pieces to the puzzle, you say?
No, guff.
someguy
December 9, 2009
Couldn’t players’ skills could be leveraged, and, hence, could a coach affect a player’s efficiency differential or Wins Produced?