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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

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Clearly better than Charlotte, Chicago, Brooklyn, Washington, Portland. Probably better than Utah and Atlanta. Probably a play-in team, 35-40 wins, maybe better if 1st half Scottie from last season is all season Scottie.
 
Average of BPM/EPM/DPM/Lebron last year:

Starter minutes (or close to):

Barnes (34.9min): +2.1
Poeltl (26.4min): +1.2
Quickley (29.2min): +0.7
Barrett (31.7min): -0.7* (* = was much better as a rap)

Bench minutes:

Olynyk (22.6min): -0.2
Boucher (14.1min): -0.3 (coach never played him tho)

So 4 good starters (i'm bullish on IQ being better than that number too), and 2 useful bench pieces (though coach never used one of them).




and then.....

Brown (27.9min): -2.5
Mitchell (15.3min): -2.7
Temple (10.7min): -2.7
Agbaji (21.0min): -3.2
Dick (21.1min): -4.4

this is pretty much unplayable stuff here, even in limited minutes. And only Dick is of an age/experience level where significant improvement seems likely.


Hopefully Dick improves massively in year 2, and Shead and Walter are playable as rooks, and Brown can be better in a much smaller role.

because otherwise any injuries to our good players are pretty much fatal.
 
Fwiw, here's my slightly optimistic but reasonable EPM projections for the rotation

Scottie: 4.0 (2.4)
- Scottie had a EPM rolling average in the 5+ range for most of the first 30 games of the season and looked like he was legit breaking out as an All NBA type player. A shooting slump plus seeing all his vets get traded kind of torpedoed the season, but we saw what he can be consistently. I think we see that more often this season.

IQ: 2.0 (0.6)
- His offensive EPM stayed the same despite moving from a bench/can crusher role to starting, which is positive. His defensive numbers struggled moving from the elite Knicks D to whatever the fuck that was last year from us. I expect the offensive numbers to stay similar and the defensive numbers to improve this year. Not back to Knick levels, but every metric I've seen suggests that he's an average to average plus defender, not the 37th percentile defender he was with us last year. Horrific team D hurts everyone's individual ratings.

RJ: 1.0 (0.2)
- Solid offensive bump up after the trade and I think that's durable. This cutter heavy system just works so much better for him than the ISO driven system in NY. Any improvement in his defensive game would push this to the 1.5-2.0 BPM range.

Jake: 1.5 (0.4)
- Everything sucked last year, don't know what else to say. Last year was Jake's worst EPM of his career aside from his rookie year. All of the individual stuff (rebound%, blk%, TS%, etc) was career norms. It was all team effect shit hurting his EPM (the plus minus bit...). If that doesn't improve a whole lot in the first half Darko isn't a NBA level coach.

Gravy: -2.0 (-5.6)
- It's kind of hard to overstate just how bad the team D was last year and how much it impacted everyone's metrics. I don't have Grady pegged as a breakout player at all, but even just not being rated a 1st percentile defender (he doesn't look great defensively, but he's never struck me as hilariously unplayable either) and bench level offensive production/efficiency gets him up into being a decent bench body. Out of place as a starter imo, but I don't think he sticks in the starting lineup all year anyway. Placeholder until Brown is back

Brown: -1.0 (-2.7)
- Another veteran coming off of a terrible analytic season, easily the worst of his career. He's an established average plus defender who graded as a 15th percentile defender in a Raptors jersey (80th-90th percentile the rest of his career) so bounceback there is pretty reasonable to predict. He's not terrible offensively (50th-60th percentile type guy) so should be a functional starter who does good things and handles PoA defence for the starting unit.

Kelly: 0.0 (-1.2)
- Another established veteran guy who put up horrific defensive metrics in this mess last year despite doing all of the individual stuff at normal rates. A 60th-70th percentile defensive player for most of his career who was a 12th percentile guy last year. What in the fuck happened here last year? Darko lost control of this group really, really badly.

Davion: -1.5 (-3.6)
- This one is more optimistic than most. He was a good but not great defender in his first 2 seasons in the league and then that fell off of a cliff last year. I think he gets back to that level as a decent PoA defender. He had a bit of an offensive burst in the 2nd half last year though were it looks like he found a jumper after doing a bit of form restructuring on his shot. Anything better than -2.0 is a serviceable bench player, I think we're going to get that here, especially with Shead there competing with him for minutes.

Boucher: 0.0 (-0.7)
- Darko hated him for some reason. He's wonky but he's always been a solid bench body. Another veteran who saw his defensive rating/percentile fucking crater last year. If the team defence doesn't improve tremendously by mid season, just fire Darko. There's no reason for this team defence to not be average with the pieces he has.

Agbaji: -2.0 (-3.4)
- Looked okay as a rookie (-2.2) before taking a step back last year (-3.4) but the composition of it all gives me some hope. Was a -0.8 offensively as a rookie, which is serviceable and then a 0.0 defensively as a sophomore, which is pretty okay. Put it together in any meaningful way and he's a functioning bench body, which we could use at the wing position. His performance against Washington the other night gives me some hope there, he looked professional.
 
zeke said:
Average of BPM/EPM/DPM/Lebron last year:

Starter minutes (or close to):

Barnes (34.9min): +2.1
Poeltl (26.4min): +1.2
Quickley (29.2min): +0.7
Barrett (31.7min): -0.7* (* = was much better as a rap)

Bench minutes:

Olynyk (22.6min): -0.2
Boucher (14.1min): -0.3 (coach never played him tho)

So 4 good starters (i'm bullish on IQ being better than that number too), and 2 useful bench pieces (though coach never used one of them).




and then.....

Brown (27.9min): -2.5
Mitchell (15.3min): -2.7
Temple (10.7min): -2.7
Agbaji (21.0min): -3.2
Dick (21.1min): -4.4

this is pretty much unplayable stuff here, even in limited minutes. And only Dick is of an age/experience level where significant improvement seems likely.


Hopefully Dick improves massively in year 2, and Shead and Walter are playable as rooks, and Brown can be better in a much smaller role.

because otherwise any injuries to our good players are pretty much fatal.
Click to expand...

Honestly, it's hard to take last year's defensive metrics seriously. They're fucking horrific beyond words.
 
MindzEye said:
Fwiw, here's my slightly optimistic but reasonable EPM projections for the rotation

Scottie: 4.0 (2.4)
- Scottie had a EPM rolling average in the 5+ range for most of the first 30 games of the season and looked like he was legit breaking out as an All NBA type player. A shooting slump plus seeing all his vets get traded kind of torpedoed the season, but we saw what he can be consistently. I think we see that more often this season.

IQ: 2.0 (0.6)
- His offensive EPM stayed the same despite moving from a bench/can crusher role to starting, which is positive. His defensive numbers struggled moving from the elite Knicks D to whatever the fuck that was last year from us. I expect the offensive numbers to stay similar and the defensive numbers to improve this year. Not back to Knick levels, but every metric I've seen suggests that he's an average to average plus defender, not the 37th percentile defender he was with us last year. Horrific team D hurts everyone's individual ratings.

RJ: 1.0 (0.2)
- Solid offensive bump up after the trade and I think that's durable. This cutter heavy system just works so much better for him than the ISO driven system in NY. Any improvement in his defensive game would push this to the 1.5-2.0 BPM range.

Jake: 1.5 (0.4)
- Everything sucked last year, don't know what else to say. Last year was Jake's worst EPM of his career aside from his rookie year. All of the individual stuff (rebound%, blk%, TS%, etc) was career norms. It was all team effect shit hurting his EPM (the plus minus bit...). If that doesn't improve a whole lot in the first half Darko isn't a NBA level coach.

Gravy: -2.0 (-5.6)
- It's kind of hard to overstate just how bad the team D was last year and how much it impacted everyone's metrics. I don't have Grady pegged as a breakout player at all, but even just not being rated a 1st percentile defender (he doesn't look great defensively, but he's never struck me as hilariously unplayable either) and bench level offensive production/efficiency gets him up into being a decent bench body. Out of place as a starter imo, but I don't think he sticks in the starting lineup all year anyway. Placeholder until Brown is back

Brown: -1.0 (-2.7)
- Another veteran coming off of a terrible analytic season, easily the worst of his career. He's an established average plus defender who graded as a 15th percentile defender in a Raptors jersey (80th-90th percentile the rest of his career) so bounceback there is pretty reasonable to predict. He's not terrible offensively (50th-60th percentile type guy) so should be a functional starter who does good things and handles PoA defence for the starting unit.

Kelly: 0.0 (-1.2)
- Another established veteran guy who put up horrific defensive metrics in this mess last year despite doing all of the individual stuff at normal rates. A 60th-70th percentile defensive player for most of his career who was a 12th percentile guy last year. What in the fuck happened here last year? Darko lost control of this group really, really badly.

Davion: -1.5 (-3.6)
- This one is more optimistic than most. He was a good but not great defender in his first 2 seasons in the league and then that fell off of a cliff last year. I think he gets back to that level as a decent PoA defender. He had a bit of an offensive burst in the 2nd half last year though were it looks like he found a jumper after doing a bit of form restructuring on his shot. Anything better than -2.0 is a serviceable bench player, I think we're going to get that here, especially with Shead there competing with him for minutes.

Boucher: 0.0 (-0.7)
- Darko hated him for some reason. He's wonky but he's always been a solid bench body. Another veteran who saw his defensive rating/percentile fucking crater last year. If the team defence doesn't improve tremendously by mid season, just fire Darko. There's no reason for this team defence to not be average with the pieces he has.

Agbaji: -2.0 (-3.4)
- Looked okay as a rookie (-2.2) before taking a step back last year (-3.4) but the composition of it all gives me some hope. Was a -0.8 offensively as a rookie, which is serviceable and then a 0.0 defensively as a sophomore, which is pretty okay. Put it together in any meaningful way and he's a functioning bench body, which we could use at the wing position. His performance against Washington the other night gives me some hope there, he looked professional.
Click to expand...


I guess my key takeaways are this

- Last year was a fucking abortion. A lot of players who graded as averageish or better defenders elsewhere cratered here. That's honestly the biggest thing to watch this year. I don't think it's a personnel issue, and if Darko can't get them to play passable D, it's probably on him and not them.

- Assuming that last year's defensive issues were a one off, there's a lot of functional bench bodies here to work with. This isn't the Malachi-Svi-Yuta-Khem bench squard type stuff we've seen in recent years.

- We will lack shooting and offensive punch off of the bench regardless of how the rotation shakes out, so the upside is limited there.
 
As for comparisons. Our M.e projected EPM:

Starters: 7.5 (Brown in the starting lineup)
5 man Bench: -5.5

Comparisons to other likely/potential play-in teams EPM from last year:

Miami
Starters: 9.0
Bench: -4.4

Chicago
Starters: -0.9
Bench: -6.3

Atlanta
Starters: 5.1
Bench: -7.4

Brooklyn
Starters: -3.1
Bench: -9.8
 
Boston is going after Grady at the defensive end and everyone is taking their turn abusing him. Kid doesn't look very close to being a starter yet.

Yeah...5-6 possessions in a row and Mazzula is sending every play at Grady.
 
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