Dinos & Digits: The Best Bench in Basketball

Welcome back to Dinos & Digits, a column where we dive into the box scores and find five interesting or strange Raptors statistics and put them on front street for discussion.

We like to explore a mix of both individual player and team statistics, ranging from raw box score numbers to some interesting and funky advanced metrics. The goal is to present the numbers without too much opinion attached, leaving those debates for the comment section.

OK, let's get down to it. Here are this week's interesting digits:

The Raptors’ bench has the best combined net rating in the Association at 14.3.

The only member of the Raptors’ bench (or team for that matter) with a negative net rating is Jakob Poeltl at -0.5.

The rest of the bench more than makes up for that, though:

• Lucas Nogueira: 24.4
• Norman Powell: 16.2
• Terrence Ross: 14.5
• Patrick Patterson: 13.5
• Cory Joseph: 6.2

The San Antonio Spurs’ bench has the second best combined net rating at 9.1, while the Golden State Warriors are third at 9.0.

The five-man lineup of Kyle Lowry, Cory Joseph, Terrence Ross, Patrick Patterson, and Lucas Nogueira has a net rating of 30.6 in 106 minutes of time together, which leads all 33 lineups in the league that have played a minimum of 100 minutes.

The newest iteration of the “Lowry + Bench” lineup that destroyed worlds last year seems to have gotten even better this season with Nogueira filling in for Bismack Biyombo.

The five-man combo has an otherworldly offensive rating of 131.5 and a perfectly serviceable defensive rating of 101.0.

DeMar DeRozan’s 543 games played in a Raptors uniform is a new franchise record.

Morris Peterson held the previous record of 542, which he accumulated between 2000 and 2007.

DeRozan also joined Chris Bosh in the franchise’s 10,000-point club earlier this week. He now sits at 10,052 points scored and is on pace to beat Bosh’s franchise record of 10,275 before the end of 2016.

The Raptors lead the league in drive points per game at 22.2.

Their 49.9% field goal percentage on drives also ranks them third in the Association, trailing only the Golden State Warriors at 55.3% and the New Orleans Pelicans at 50.0%.

They are led by DeMar DeRozan, who ranks third in the league in drive points per game at 8.7, shooting 51.2% on 11.1 drives per contest.

The Raptors are the only team in the NBA that ranks in the top-three in field goal percentage (47.8%, second), three-point percentage (39.2%, third), and free throw percentage (81.3%, second).

As a result, their 58.0% true shooting percentage ranks them third in the NBA, trailing only the Golden State Warriors at 60.7% and the Houston Rockets at 58.3%.

All stats courtesy of basketball-reference.com and NBA.com/stats.