CBC-Sports

Chemistry, math could make or break Raptors’ season

October 27, 2009 04:43 PM | Posted by   Paul Jay  

If you're a student of mathematics, the outlook for the Toronto Raptors in 2009-10 is, in all probability, not good.

Any way you cook them, the numbers are scary. Nine new faces. Some lousy three-point shooting percentages in the pre-season. Poor rebounding totals. One impending free agent in Chris Bosh.

A number of prominent stats geeks have analyzed the Raptors based on their production from previous years, and tell a gloomy story.

According to the mathletes ...

Wayne Winston tells the Toronto Star that based on his adjusted plus/minus number crunching, the Raps will be in a fight to make the playoffs.

John Hollinger over at ESPN, whose PER efficiency number has become de rigour in the blogosphere, says the Raps are poised for great success or epic failure, though it sounds like he's leaning toward the latter.

And Stanford economist and Wages of Wins author Dave Berri, whose Wins Produced model attempts to reflect how much a player contributes toward actual wins ... well, let's just say he's bearish on players not named Bosh or Jose Calderon.

Essentially, the criticisms of the Raptors say many of the team's new players are either inefficient shooters (Marco Belinelli, Hedo Turkoglu), turnover prone (Jarrett Jack) or poor rebounders (DeMar DeRozan). And the players they do like – for example, Amir Johnson – aren't expected to get the playing time to make a difference.

Now, if you are a student of history, or in this case, recent history, then maybe you might be more inclined to buy what general manager Bryan Colangelo is selling.

Colangelo mused a month ago that 50 wins was a conceivable goal, and compared the team to the 2006 squad that won a weaker Atlantic Division and earned the GM an executive of the year award.

It's worth noting then that the 2006 team was also roundly pooh-poohed by the mathletes of the world. Berri looked at the additions of TJ Ford, Rasho Nesterovic, Kris Humphries and Fred Jones and said it was unlikely they would help, an assessment that proved true only for Jones. Hollinger, writing in the NY Sun, predicted a 31-51 record, 16 short of their eventual total .

Both lamented the loss of Mike James and the addition of Ford based on the relative efficiency of each player, though history has since shown us that, for all of Ford's character issues, he can still play, while James has done nothing since to earn the hefty salary he's been paid since fleeing the Raptors.

Turkoglu, Nash deals not that different

Colangelo has also taken criticism for signing a 30-year-old Hedo Turkoglu to a five-year, $53 million US contract, the thinking being that they overpaid and are likely to see decreased production as Turkoglu gets older. When Hedo took off the first week of training to “rest”, it probably didn't help the optics that perhaps the Raptors had bought a declining resource.

But Colangelo also took heat, when he was the GM with the Phoenix Suns, for signing a 30-year-old Canadian point guard Steve Nash to a deal for similar money back in 2004. People said points guards don't age well, and a point guard who been an all-star only once in his career up to that point wasn't worth all that dough.

Two MVP awards later, nobody can deny the Nash signing was a slam dunk. And Colangelo argues Turkoglu is a similar player: someone who gets things done by out-thinking, rather than out-jumping, opponents. Whether he's 30 or 35, the thinking is Hedo will be Hedo.

Making teammates better players

What the mathletes failed to consider with Nash in 2004 and with the Raptors in 2006 was the importance of point-guard play in making everybody better. Nash improved everyone's numbers in Phoenix, and the two-headed combo of Ford and Calderon turned bad shooters into good ones. From that point of view, the 2009 Raptors success might turn on the same result: Turkoglu, known for his ability to create shots for others as a kind of point-forward, could make something out of nothing.

Now, the contrarians might say that both Nash in 2004 and the Raptors in 2006 bucked the statistical odds, and that, probability being what it is, we can't expect two aberrations to be proof of anything.

So, ultimately, whether you see good things in store this year might depend on what you put greater faith in: mathematics or chemistry.

" Previous Post | Main
  •