Yeah I’d rather see Davis and Thomas get those McCaw minutes.
Yeah. Davis is the superior defender (and well...superior everything), and Thomas legitimately knows how to spread the floor and get open. He also isn't shy about pulling the trigger when he has even half of an open look. I've never seen a guard so afraid to shoot open shots before, and that fucks up the flow of your offence. His spacing is usually turrible as well, so when he swings the ball out of the open shot, it's too short a pass and ends up creating a contested jumper for someone else instead of an open one.
Here's another example of how "empty" he is offensively. All of this is from the NBA advanced stats site.
McCaw makes 30.1 passes per game in 26.5 minutes...so he gets a fair amount of ball touches. 1.14 passes per minute of floor time. 9.6% of those passes lead to an assist.
Davis makes 1.24 passes per minute (21 passes in 17 minutes). 11.4% of those passes end in an assist. This is while playing primarily as an off guard and not a PG. I get that the roles are a little blurrier than they used to be, but the whole justificating I keep seeing for McCaw's existence is that he's our 3rd string PG.
Regardless, Davis is the better distributor of the two.
Davis has the better Turnover rate. 14.5% to McCaw's 16.0%, despite having the higher AST% 17.0 to 13.1% (The stats are tracked/calculated different though, so aren't useful in comparison to each other...for example McCaw having a 14.5% TOV and only a 13.1% AST doesn't mean that he turns the ball over more often than he gets an assist)
Davis is our best rebounding guard...by a lot. Davis has a higher total rebound % than OG or RHJ. McCaw is the worst rebounder on the team by a lot.
Davis: 16%
McCaw: 6.9%
Despite getting a similar amount of total touches (as referenced above) their usage rates are disproportionate because McCaw doesn't often initiate plays. Davis has a USG% (percentage of possession where you shoot the ball or make a pass that leads to a shot) of 18%. McCaw is shockingly, worst on the team with a 10.4%
How about defence? That's what he's supposed to do well, right? McCaw has a DTRG (amount of points scored per 100 possessions while he's on the court) of 107. Davis? 105
We know this...but True Shooting% (which takes all types of shots into account, including FT's). Davis - .601%. McCaw - .521%. McCaw is of course the worst regular on the team in TS%
I'm kind of fucking amazed that such a data driven organization is making this type of personnel decision. Davis has the underlying metrics of a future stud waiting to happen, and we're slowing his development to play a guy who should be struggling to stay in the league.