Blazer Player Stats of Interest Through 17 Games

The Rip City Project did a good team stat post and included some individual stats, but I thought I'd run through each player and list some stats of interest, relying on basketball-reference.com, 82games.com and basketballvalue.com.

PER is John Hollinger's catch-all metric.  Cue Timbo's rant.

Usage% is a measure of the percentage of a team's posessions a player is involved in.

TS% is True Shooting Percentage (50*points scored/(FG Attempts+ 0.44 * FT Attempts), a metric intended to capture a player's scoring efficiency.

See the bbr glossary for info on these stats plus the other rate stats (reb rate, ast%, stl rate, etc.)

Jump Shot % is what I'm calling 82games' stat on the percentage of a player's shots that are jumpers.

Foul draw rate is 82games' stat on the percentage of shots in which a player draws a foul.

Brandon Roy:

PER 18.4 (24.0), Usage: 25.1 (27.4), TS% .556 (.573), Rebound rate 6.9 (7.9), Steal % 0.4 (1.7), Jump Shot % 78 (66)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -8.23 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.04)

Roy is shooting more jump shots this year and is not scoring at as high an efficiency, despite being fouled on almost an identical percentage of his shots.  His lower PER is explained largely by decreases in both usage and efficiency, but the lower rebound and steal rates don't help either.  Roy has not played at all-star level this year.  He's going to need to be a lot better for the Blazers to go deep into the playoffs.  I expect him to pick it up, but there's a chance this could be a "down year" for Roy.

LaMarcus Aldridge:

PER 17.7 (19.1), Usage: 21.9 (23.7), TS% .538 (.529), Rebound rate 14.5 (12.5), Ast% 10.1 (9.3), Steal% 0.8 (1.4), Block % 1.1 (2.0), Turnover % 6.7 (8.0)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -0.42 (2-year adjusted plus minus +3.84)

LaMarcus is an interesting case.  In the past, his rank in PER has been more different than his rank in WP48 (a metric by David Berri of the Wages of Wins Journal) than all but a very few players.  In short, stat geeks have disagreed about him.  This year, due to his increased rebounding and slightly higher TS%, Berri's metric finally likes him (Berri's system had him as a below average PF before this year), while the lower usage and defensive numbers explain the reduced PER.  LaMarcus deserves a lot of credit for the improved rebounding and for having an extremely low TO rate.  You'd still like to see him draw a foul (his foul drawing rate is up, but only slightly) or block a shot every now and then.  

Steve Blake: 

PER 10.4 (14.4), Usage 14.7 (17.0), TS% .525 (.557), Ast % 22.0 (25.1), TO% 16.4 (13.7), Rebound Rate 5.5 (4.9).

1 year adjusted plus minus: +17.87 (2-year adjusted plus minus -1.88)

Steve Blake is another interesting case.  By virtually any boxscore stat, he's been really, really bad this year.  Everything that makes him good-- shooting and good decision making-- he's not done nearly as well this year.  In terms of plus minus (raw or adjusted), though, he's been killing it.  Adjusted plus minus didn't like him much at all last year, but this year it thinks he's playing at superstar level.  Worth noting here that APM is notoriously noisy eve over entire seasons.  Argue amongst yourselves.

Andre Miller:

PER 15.1 (18.6), Usage 21.2 (21.8), Ast% 30.8 (30.2), TO% 17.0 (14.0), TS% .520 (.548), Rebound Rate 6.4 (7.4)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +15.70 (2-year adjusted plus minus 0.44)

Yet another interesting case.  Andre is still getting assists at his usual impressive rate, but all his other boxscore stats are down.  APM thinks he's been amazing.  Again, argue amongst yourselves.

Greg Oden:

PER 23.5 (18.1), Usage 20.5 (19.3), Blk% 7.4 (4.2), Ast % 6.4 (3.9), TO% 18.9 (16.2), Drating 94 (104), TS% .678 (.599), Fouls/36 minutes 6.0 (6.5)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -1.35 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.31)

By most advanced metrics, Oden has been the best Blazer player while he's been out there.  He's absolutely all over the basketball-reference leaders page.  Its interesting that he's in negative territory in 1 year APM-- a week ago he was leading the team in this category.  Fouls, turnovers.  Those are the only two bad things you can say about Greg's year so far.  He's been great.

Rudy Fernandez:

PER 17.0 (15.5), TS% .628 (.588), Steal % 4.0 (1.9), TO% 20.1 (11.0), Ast % 16.3 (12.7), rebound rate 7.1 (6.4), D-rating 97 (109), Jump shot % 92 (84), foul draw rate 4.9 (6.0)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -9.04 (2-year adjusted plus minus +1.58)

After a slow start, Rudy's been shooting the ball extremely well of late.  He's also leading the entire NBA in steal rate.  Any time you can bring a steal machine who's an excellent shooter off the bench, that's a positive thing.  The TOs are a bit alarming (worse TO% than Oden) and he's penetrating and getting fouled even less than last year, but other than that the numbers look great for Rudy.  I'm not even going to try to explain the APM numbers.

Martell Webster:

Numbers in parentheses are from 2007-2008.

PER 12.2. (12.0), Usage 18.6 (18.0), TS% .512 (.548), Ast % 5.7 (7.0), TO% 10.9 (10.2), Steal % 2.3 (1.1), rebound rate 8.3 (8.2), D-rating 99 (110)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +0.49 (2-year adjusted plus minus +N/A)

Compared with 2007-2008, Martell is shooting worse and has a much worse ast/to rating.  I think its pretty clear his defense has been better though, and the stats bear that out.   He's rebounding at about the same rate as before.  Solid role player.

Joel Przybilla

PER 12.9 (15.4), TS% .532 (.652), Usage 12.0 (10.2), Rebound rate 23.2 (22.8), block % 5.7 (3.9), TO% 23.8 (18.5), O-rating 105 (124), D-rating 94 (105).

1 year adjusted plus minus: +2.47 (2-year adjusted plus minus +4.20)

Joel had a fluky, unsustainably good offensive year last year, as the offensive stats indicate.  There was nothing fluky about his Rebound rate (his O-rebs are way up and D-rebs are down a bit but still excellent) or his defense.  The defensive rating improvement is likely due as much to team improvement as his own-- Joel's been excellent on D the last couple years.

Travis Outlaw

PER 15.0 (15.1), TS% .489 (.541), Usage 25.3 (22.0), Rebound rate 9.8 (9.1), block % 2.6 (2.0), TO% 9.7 (8.9), O-rating 102 (111), D-rating 100 (109).

1 year adjusted plus minus: -0.59 (2-year adjusted plus minus -0.87)

Before the injury, Travis was being relied on for offense even more than usual, as seen in the usage, but was not producing very efficiently at all.  He was rebounding and blocking shots quite a bit more though.

Juwon Howard

Has not been good.  At all.

Jerryd Bayless

PER 15.7 (8.9), TS% .595 (.497), Usage 24.6 (20.9), Ast % 19.9 (18.2), TO% 13.7 (19.3), O-rating 114 (97), D-rating 105 (111), fouls/36 min 7.7 (4.5), efg% on jump shots .318 (.270), jump shot % 46 (52), foul draw rate 22.6 (18.2)

1 year adjusted plus minus: N/A-- not enough data according to basketballvalue.

Lots of interesting stats for Jerryd.  He's still not an efficient jump shooter, but he's making more of them, taking less of them and getting to the line more.  As a result, he's got a very good TS%.  His assists are up a tick, his TOs down quite a bit.  Jerryd looks like he can be a useful combo guard off the bench at least.  Not clear yet if he can be more or not.  We'll have to see more before we can judge that.

Dante Cunningham

PER 20.4, TS% .583, Usage 17.4, Ast % 7.2, TO% 5.0, rebound rate 13.2, O-rating 123, D-rating 100

1 year adjusted plus minus: N/A-- not enough data according to basketballvalue.

Dante is doing a nice job-- making the shots he knows he can make.  He isn't likely to be a great rebounding 4, but he's rebounding more than an any of LMA's seasons except the current one.  All we know so far is that he's done a nice job in his first few stints as the backup 4.  He could be a good fit in that spot should Travis move on.