2011 Free Agents that BC and Stefanski may love that you hate
by No Way Jose on Oct 31, 2011 3:05 PM EDT
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PrintA fanpost I wrote a couple of days ago about Allen Iverson and the subsequent comment section got me thinking about a topic that every armchair general manager/ Raptors fan is thinking of: Free Agents that BC and Ed Stefanski may be interested in for personal/stylistic reasons that we as fans would completely disagree with. To be clear, this is purely speculation. Given the lockout situation, we won't be hearing about any free agency rumours until that problem is resolved anyways.
Past examples of this may include Jason Kapono, Hedo Turkoglu, Fred Jones and Linas Kleiza.
Here are some guys I can think of in no particular order:
1) Allen Iverson
I mentioned this in my other fanpost in more detail, but given Ed Stefanski's history with Iverson while with the 76ers and his propensity for bringing in veterans, I can see the Raptors making a run for Iverson. Though the financial risk would likely be minimal, the bigger risk is Iverson's impact on our youngsters through team chemistry and ball movement.
2) Troy Murphy
Big man who shoots 3s. Doesn't play much D, though he will grab a rebound. The thought of Murphy playing alongside Andre Bargnani scares the living daylights out of me.
3) Mike Dunleavy Jr.
Younger Hedo Turkoglu. Can handle the ball some and an excellent shooter. Like Hedo, a poor defender but that wouldn't be enough to deter BC.
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Dunleavy is not nearly as bad a defender as Hedo – he would be a decent piece to add, if Bargnani isn’t around. The others? No thanks.
How anyone could contemplate adding a terrible Dunleavy to a team that already caries the defensive carcasses of Bargnani and Jose is beyond me. Dunleavy is a chucker, who is a terrible defender. He’s a 6 foot 7 Andrea Bargnani.
Let’s see how this comparison of yours holds up:
Dunleavy: -4 Points Allowed per 100 possessions (on vs off court)
Bargnani: +5.5 PAP100P (on vs off court)
Dunleavy: 12.6 at SG, 14.3 at SF opponents’ PER
Bargnani: 21.1 opponents’ PER
Dunleavy: .468 at SG, .486 at SF opponents’ eFG%
Bargnani: .588 opponents’ eFG%
Dunleavy: .593 TS%, .560 eFG%
Bargnani: .533 TS%, .480 eFG%
Dunleavy: 1.32 Points per shot
Bargnani: 1.20 PPS
Dunleavy: 11.1 FGA per 36
Bargnani: 17.9 FGA per 36
Add in that Dunleavy out-rebounds and out-assists Bargnani, and produces .129 WS/48 to Bargs’ .053, and that 42% of that comes on the defensive end (compared to Bargnani’s 15%), and your assertion that Dunleavy is simply a shorter Bargnani doesn’t hold up. From what I’ve seen, Dunleavy is a much more efficient scorer and a much better defender (and is in fact a decent defender even when not compared to Bargnani) and the stats back all that up. In no way is he a chucker who is a terrible defender.
Interesting
First thing I’l say is that Andrea Bargnani is a terrible basketball player (as the statistics you’ve identified above illustrate) so being better than one of the worst players in the NBA is not saying much. However, obviously you have a point here, I may have been a bit over zealous calling Dunleavy a 6 fot 7 Bargnani. Fair point. That said, Dunleavy is a 31 year old shooting guard that doesn’t really shoot that well, is not that athletic and despite deriving 42% of his WS/48 from defence (whatever that really means) is a terrible defender. WS does not track defensive ability as well as everyone wishes it would. So, no I can’t see how adding him to a team that already has Calderone and Bargnani on it makes any sense. How does he stack up against the average shooting guard/small forward? I’m asking because I don’t know the answer and am interested (and trust you know where to find the applicable stats to make a comparison).
Mike Dunleavy's defense
Dunleavy has been a consistently average defender when using Defensive rating (an estimate of number of points allowed per 100 possessions). Here is the breakdown of the 2010-2011 season. Dunleavy’s rating of 107 is comparable to Kevin Durant and OJ Mayo and is favourable to pretty much every Raptor (http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2011_advanced_stats.html). I’m not sure how comprehensive this metric of defense is, but it gives us something to use at least. I should note that our dear friend Hedo Turkoglu scored a 94 while with the Spurs in 2004, a figure that is the 78th best defensive season in NBA history. He does not approach that figure in any subsequent year
Tried to access the link but got an error from basketball reference (file not found). Any chance you have the correct link? I suppose you’re right that at the very least these metrics would give us a starting point. However, defence in basketball is extremely difficult to quantify. Simply comparing the opponent counterpart position (i.e. opponents SG or SF in Dunleavy’s case) efg% etc. when matched up against a player is significantly limited. No one plays one on one defence in the NBA, especially at the wing positions where "help" is a matter of course . Further, many teams employ many different defensive systems in the NBA. For example, how relevant is it to look at the offensive efficiency of opposing SG or SF when the coach asks Dunleavy to go under screens or to chase over them, or to double off of his cover etc. etc… Take a wing player on the Orlando Magic for example, I’d bet they have better defensive metrics than they should simply because Dwight Howard is on their team and teams are generally less efficient offensively against the Magic simply because of his defensive presence (why I feel that DHoward is actually underrated). Even the metrics that team’s capture internally, such as contests, follow through on assignments etc. are arguably subjective.
So, all this to say, while the most frequently used defensive metrics are maybe a starting point, they are hardly the last word. I’ll be the first to admit this is a subjective opinion, but from what I’ve seen of Dunleavy, he’s a terrible defensive player. He’s lazy on chases, contests, hedges and recovery, he’s not quick enough laterally and depends heavily on help. He also appears (again to me at least) to be regularly disengaged on that end of the court.
Sorry, the site won't give me a different link
(http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2011_advanced_stats.html). You can find the year by year stats by going to basketball reference’s home pages and going through League Stats on the left.
82games has some excellent advanced statistics for Dunleavy (http://www.82games.com/1011/10IND8.HTM). Looking at what 82games has, Dunleavy was a fairly effective defender at SG but was getting beat when played at SF and PF (though when you account for switches and zone defenses, I’m not sure how relevant these stats are).
Oh, I agree that you’d never want all three on the same team, but he’s not a bad enough defender that he couldn’t coexist with Jose.
I think the average eFG% across the league is about 50%, so he holds up well in the defensive and offensive categories there. Sorry I don’t have the data to compare to the average SG. However, holding your opponents to a 12.6 PER and .468 eFG% at SG is nothing to be sneezed at.
Of course, I don’t think any player holds up well on a team with Bargnani as the defensive anchor… hence my statement:
Dunleavy is not nearly as bad a defender as Hedo – he would be a decent piece to add, if Bargnani isn’t around.
“I think the average eFG% across the league is about 50%, so he holds up well in the defensive and offensive categories there.”
Take a look at my response to No Way Jose. Interested on your thoughts on the true value on Defensive metrics…
Agreed – I try to limit my use of raw defensive metrics – I prefer to use on vs off court defensive and offensive ratings, which while not a perfect buffer from the teammates one plays the most with (and is replaced by), at least isolates one from the effects of the team system as a whole.
For the record, I don’t have the positional eFG% by on-court-off-court, but I do for the team, and the team not only allows 4 less points per 100 possessions, but does so while improving from 49.5% to 47.5% eFG% allowed when Dunleavy steps on the court. So, I agree that stats cannot capture a player’s defensive contributions (and I would argue the same, although to a lesser extent, for their offensive contributions), but they do form a framework especially when taken in the right context, and all of the stats I can attribute to Dunleavy paint him as a positive defensive contributor.
Considering my opening stance was built on my personal experience watching him play (only on occasion, I’ll admit), I have no problem believing the stats that support my own impressions. Call it observation bias if you like, but until I see some stats to disprove my position, I’ll hold to it.
"For the record, I don’t have the positional eFG% by on-court-off-court, but I do for the team, and the team not only allows 4 less points per 100 possessions, but does so while improving from 49.5% to 47.5% eFG% allowed when Dunleavy steps on the court."
The problem with this is it does not isolate for other variables. For example, who is on the court when Dunleavy is? Who is on the court for the opponent when Dunleavy is? Since Dunleavy started the majority of games he played last season, isn’t the only thing we can really extrapolate from those statistics that the Pacers starting line-up (or at least the line-up Dunleavy played with) was better defensively than the lineup that did not include him. Is this really saying that much about Mike Dunleavy’s defense?
Depends on if you think the lineup plays as a lineup. Granger played 70% of the available minutes. Dunleavy played 43%. Rush played 44%. Hibbert played 57%. Collison played 60%. Hansbrough played 39%. So, clearly the Pacers didn’t just use two lineup sets. I don’t know what players Dunleavy played the most with.
The funny thing about that complaint is that the same can be applied on the offensive end, but you never hear that about offensive stats. It is a valid complaint, but if you consider the consequences of eliminating statistical usefulness on that standard, all statistics are invariably useless for evaluating players.
The data that 82games has on 5 man units would be helpful in this discussion. http://www.82games.com/1011/10IND8.HTM. Surprisingly, Dunleavy is on all 10 of the Pacers top units, more than any other Pacer.
Hmmm… I don’t think you can argue that the same “complaint” as you call it can be attributed to offensive metrics in the same way. In offensive metrics, the player shooting the ball is accountable for the efficiency rate at which he scores far more than a defender would be for his oponents offensive efficiency. It’s apples to oranges.
I think you are falsely making this two different things. The impact one’s teammates can have on your offensive efficiency is certainly something that shouldn’t be ignored. People do, because it is easy, but it shouldn’t be. A player’s offensive efficiency is VERY dependent on the players he plays with. Consider the effect of a good point guard on an offense, or a good pick man. Or a floor spacer. To ignore these effects is silly. But we do it because it is so hard to account for the effects.
The defensive metrics are similar – certainly on a different scale, but certainly not apples to oranges either. The only reason we ignore the team effects for the offensive stats is because we have so many of them which would be useless if we couldn’t look at them in isolation. So, when someone proposes to do the same for defensive stats, people get up in arms, not because they overvalue the complexity of defense, but because they undervalue the complexity of offense.
If you look at the dependency of a player’s defensive rating on the teammates he plays with, then did the same with his offensive rating, I expect on average across the league you would get similar effects. Same for eFG%, eFG% against, etc. My opinion, and no way to prove it without a huge amount of work, but I’ve seen nothing to convince me otherwise.
Look, the distance between what you are saying and what I am saying is not as great as you are making it to be. Let’s distill it down shall we:
MAS11:
“In offensive metrics, the player shooting the ball is accountable for the efficiency rate at which he scores far more than a defender would be for his oponents offensive efficiency.”
dhackett1565:
“The defensive metrics are similar – certainly on a different scale…”
My only point is the gap between the team impact on offensive metrics and defensive metrics is greater than you think it is. Again, because at the end of the day, the player shooting the ball has more accountability over his offensive efficiency than a player who is “guarding” the player who is shooting the ball (even though we all know he alone is not guarding him) or on the floor at the same time as four others when a defensive rating is assigned. This seems elemental to me…. Does the pg you play with for instance have an effect? Yes. Is the effect as significant as the role you play in your team’s defense, what scheme you are playing, what your assignment is, who the other 4 players are etc. etc. etc. no. Kevin Durant’s or Dwanyne Wade’s offensive efficiency is going to be RELATIVELY the same no matter who they play with, within reason. Hedo Turkaglu’s defensive rating was I’m sure WILDLY diferent in Orlando than Toronto…
Just for reference sake… Granger’s net DRTG (on vs off court) was +1.1. Hibbert’s was +1.2. Dahntay Jones? -2.0. Hansbrough +3.8, Collison +6.0, Rush +5.3. McRoberts, -1.0. Dunleavy -4.0.
And in terms of raw points allowed per 100…
Granger, 107.7. Hibbert, 107.9. Jones, 105.7. Hansbrough, 109.7. Collison, 109.8. Rush, 110.3. McRoberts, 106.8.
Dunleavy, 105.1.
The single most used lineup with Dunleavy in it (by far) is Collison, Dunleavy, Granger, McRoberts, and Hibbert. He played 442 minutes with that lineup – his next most used lineup is only 152 minutes, and it substitutes Hansbrough for McRoberts. The next most used lineup? 83 minutes. The next 10 lineups at up to only 310 minutes total. So besides those main two, where he was by far the best player in defensive metrics, he played with a variety of lineups.
What I’m wondering with the on vs. off court/ net difference stats is whether or not it accounts for differences in teammate and opponent talent. For example, if Starter A sits and Bench Player B subs in who is a considerably worse defender, then starter A’s defensive +/- will become inflated? Then you have to consider whether or not the caliber of offensive player they are defending changes. How does the opposing team’s bench player vs. Bench player B compare to the opposing team’s starter vs. Starter A compare?
What I am getting at is that the defensive rating of player A is dependent on player B and vice versa. Even though they are inter-related to one another, the circumstances that each player are facing may be completely independent of one another. Ideally, in order to calculate a defensive rating, you would have to run two teams against the exact same opponent. One team featuring player A and the other player B with everything else the same.
Similar to the point I’m making above. I like where you’re going with the idea of running teams/lineups against the exact same oponent (and realise you are saying this is ideal). However, it becomes a question of sample size and a host of other variables.
You people are trying to talk yourselves into adding Mike Dunleavy! Really? Based on his career to date I would like to argue that Dunleavy is an exception to the Advanced Stats are good argument because he is a terrible player that has been mostly on losing teams.
P.S. His wife is ugly too and if I learned anything from Moneyball its that we should be able to tell how great a player is based on their wives. That is why Kris Humphries was the best player in basketball. Apparently not the smartest but the best.
"P.S. His wife is ugly too"
thats all I needed to read. Got a great laugh out of it.
by Not so Friendly Stranger on Nov 3, 2011 11:51 AM EDT up reply actions
I agree. He’s a terrible player, stats be dammed. Especially unreliable defensive stats. Every experience I have watching Dunleavy play – and I have watched a ton of him playing over a decade now, from Duke to the GSW to Indiana – reconfirms for me that he is a bad defender and an overrated offensive player.
BTW....
BTW dhackett, for a guy who has such an obvious strong grasp and affinity for statistical analysis and generally being objective, I have difficulty understanding your continual defence of Colangelo. Over the years now, you’ve made some pretty herculean efforts to defend the guy and suggest he should keep his post despite all the arguments and objective evidence I’ve presented (payroll efficiency stats, attendance rates – actual and comparative – examples of terrible decisions and resource management etc. etc.).
I guess I just find it difficult to reconcile how a guy who in most instances is rational and reasonable can defend the irrational. Anyways, not trying to pick a fight just an observation…
My defense of Colangelo is more of an apathy towards change on this team. I don’t think managership has as big an impact as ownership, and any impact another manager would have would be predetermined by who gets hired, and I don’t trust MLSE to hire someone worth hiring. You think they’d be taking a risk on a solid young GM who cares about advanced stats and will build a proper team, or would they hire an Ed Stefanski (aka Bryan Colangelo without the brains) or a Don Nelson (shudder) who are known and have basketball ‘experience’?
I guess I just think that BC is the closest thing we’ll be getting to a competent manager until the team gets sold, which will be a couple years anyway, which is why I was totally fine with re-upping him for two years.
I don’t know that I’ve ever said he does well in evaluating free agent talent or value of players on the market. I have said he has done pretty well in maintaining flexibility through trades and has been decent drafting (outside of one mistake, in a draft that was littered with them), which is more than you can say for some past GM’s of this team. I defended some of his moves, and lambasted others, but not in a way I believe to be severely biased. Of course, my bias could be blinding me.
Plus, I guess at some point dealing with this team, rationality devolves into recognizing what a terrible franchise this really is, so you have to occasionally be irrational just to stay interested ;)
“Plus, I guess at some point dealing with this team, rationality devolves into recognizing what a terrible franchise this really is, so you have to occasionally be irrational just to stay interested ;)”
LOL well put… Just for the record, I’d put more blame for the Stefanski hire on BC than MLSE as he’s the one that ran the recruitment process from all acounts and was accountable for the final selection. Just sayen…
Yeah, he was BC’s hire. But answer me honestly – if MLSE was running the process with the same rumored candidates, who would you wager on them hiring?
A fair question. I guess answering that question is to speculate. However, I KNOW who BC hired. And to be honest, once I saw the list of candidates, and read the daming review of Stefanski on Raptors HQ (doesn’t know anything about advanced analytics, career Yes man to Rod Thorn) I was near 100% sure that was the guy BC would hire. And what do ya know… What does that tell you? It tells me I’d rather roll the dice with MLSE than BC at this point. Lesser of two evils at this point I suppose…
Better the devil you know, I say.
I expect BC may have hired Stefanski because he still wanted complete control and the other candidates weren’t as interested in that kind of setup. I was disappointed in having Stefanski brought on board rather than any of the other candidates, but I’d still rather have BC in the real GM spot than him, or several other burnt out GMs.
All this tells me is that you trust MLSE more than I do. Which is fine.
by dhackett1565 on Nov 3, 2011 10:02 PM EDT up reply actions
I guess I’d say I trust MLSE to hire someone better than BC more than I trust BC. After everything I highlighted above…. – “all the arguments and objective evidence I’ve presented (payroll efficiency stats, attendance rates – actual and comparative – examples of terrible decisions and resource management etc. etc.).”
3 strikes
None of those three players are appealing. Jr. would be palatable but I still like JJ’s upside far more at the 3. Troy and AI? No.
I think people forget how young DD, JJ, Bayless, Amir and Ed are. Let’s give these guys lots of court time and let them develop as a core group. Don’t bring in marginal players to hurry to the middle of the league to be doomed to eternal mediocrity. The only players that we should bring in are young guys with a big potential upside. We are not in a win now mode. I would be happy if we just started to develop a young core that could grow together and start to win in a year or two. JV is a big piece of that future as well.
That's kind of the point
These are 3 players that I can see Colangelo and Stefanski being interested in that I think would be horrible for this team.
by No Way Jose on Oct 31, 2011 11:48 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm falling to understand the logic here
intentionally make an already bad team worse? All that while taking away minutes from players who could use it?
Big no to them all.
I will say though, I do agree with Dhack in that Dunleavy could be useful if it wasn’t for the already no existent D. I’d also add he’d have to stay healthy for the season, and the chance of that happening is slim… so I wouldn’t bother.
by Not so Friendly Stranger on Nov 1, 2011 8:55 AM EDT up reply actions
The point isn't to make the team intentionally worse
For the past couple of years, management has made some regrettable personnel choices. While I am not saying that we as fans had the foresight to see that these moves weren’t going to work, there was certainly some debate as to whether our past free agents signings (especially our MLE signings) would help this team.
What I was going for was a light-hearted attempt at finding free agents that we think BC and Stefanski would think that can help our team that we think/know will certainly hurt us short term or long term. I presented a brief explanation of why the Raptors may be interested in some of these free agents and why they would probably be a dud for our team.
I'm with you now
missed the sarcasm sorry
by Not so Friendly Stranger on Nov 1, 2011 2:04 PM EDT up reply actions
I think you are overstating the AI thing. There is no way that Steffani will bring AI in here as there is no way AI would play here.
Murphy will not come because BC would be admitting that Barney sucks and they need a better version of him.
Perhaps I am being rather cynical about Stefanski and overstating his relationship with AI, but he does seem to enjoy bringing in veteran talent and AI has fairly limited options at this point in his career. I’m not saying Toronto would be his preferred choice, but if he was offered a spot her on a minimum contract, I don’t know if anyone else will do better.
Don’t worry about AI, i’ll eat my hat if the Raps sign him. Dunleavy on a short contract wouldn’t be so bad. Vet who’ll space the floor for DeMar and the bigs, why not? I don’t know any good young SF’s we can target in free agency and it isn’t like JJ has such a high ceiling, he’ll be 25 in february. One more poor perimeter defender is less likely to hamper the development of the young guys than the spacing nightmare we saw last year.
"Vet who'll space the floor"
Sounds like Jason Kapono again. Lol. Admittedly, I’m actually a Dunleavy fan. He isn’t a sieve on defense but when you are playing Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani on the floor at the same time, you need a helluva good defender to compensate (not that we’re going to be able to get that on FA anyways)
We will (in all likelihood) draft a SF next year...
We should try and sign another young C
1. Kyrylo Fesenko
2. DeAndre Jordan
Assistant Roach
I think they are more likely to draft a big or a point guard.
There are lots of bigs in the draft next year. The only wing players I would consider a top 10 pick at this point are Harrison Barnes, Jeremy Lamb and maybe Quincy Miller. Andre Drummond, Jared Sullinger, Anthony Davis and Perry Jones are all bigs that could go high. Kabongo, Austin Rivers and Marquis Teague are point guards that may also go high. So I don’t think it’s surefire by any means that we will draft a SF, given our limited selection and quality at other positions.
In 2010-11 Dunleavy Was 21st In Efficiency Among All Shooting Guards
NBA Efficiency recap = ((Points + Rebounds + Assists + Steals + Blocks) – ((Field goals attempts – Field goals made) + (Free throws attempts – Free throws made) + Turnovers))
Which only proves how useless some advanced stats are as I would rather have neither player (based on their careers to date) on the Raptors. If I had to choose one I would take DD due to his youth.
You Argue Against Yourself
You say some advanced stats are useless
The advanced stats show that DeRozan was more efficient than Dunleavy
Then you say that you would prefer DeRozan to Dunleavy
x—————————————-
I could see the Raptors also adding Dunleavy if they wanted to play him at SF.
Efficiency doesn't account for minutes played
It’s ironic since this Efficiency calculation doesn’t really calculate efficiency at all as this unit isn’t on a per-minute basis. On a per 48 minutes basis, Dunleavy has DeRozan beat 21.65 to 19.44 though I should note that neither of these marks are considered good.
Based Upon Efficiency Rating
Dunleavy was 14 – 19 in his match-ups last season
With his injury history and age I could see the Raptors maybe adding him if the Raptors dumped Barbosa. Otherwise I see no need for him.
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