FanPost

Introducing the Chalupa Efficiency Ratio

Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

For those unfamiliar with the cutting edge research on the the greatest Blazers to help fans get chalupas, see my first post here for some more background. Thanks to everyone for the support, conversation, and providing the next question.

The New Question

From the first post, the top 10 Chalupa go-to men list did not provide any significant surprises because all of those players played lots of games and late game minutes during the Chalupa era. Timmay! and others wondered in the comments if a ratio of chalupas per game would yield an entirely different set of players that were more efficient in reaching the chalupa milestone. Thus I set out to find the player with the best Chalupa Efficiency Ratio (CER).

Hypothesis

As eloi and others mentioned Jamal Crawford possessed a surprising 5 chalupa games in one season. The idea of Crawford leading a franchise in statistics other than Field Goal Attempts Per Minute or Dribbles Per Possession, not to mention a metric that contained the word "Efficiency" in it seemed preposterous to me. After doing some rough approximations, Crawford looked like a contender because of his high number of chalupa games in one season. Folk hero Luke "Designated" Babbitt was my next contender because as superfly05 and others noted in the first post all the "Did Not Play - Coach's Decision"s gave him an efficiency edge over lots of other players.

Methodology

The Chalupa Efficiency Ratio consists of two numbers: first, the total number of chalupa games from each player, and second, the total number of games each player has appeared. Using the data from the first post, I already knew the number of chalupa games for each player. So then I calculated the number of games each player has appeared in based on the following criteria:

  1. All home games from the 1999-2000 season to the 2012-2013 season including the playoffs count as a game appearance for a player. It seemed unfair to count road games because as we all know fans do not get chalupas if the Blazers score 100 points on the road.
  2. A player must play in the game. Simply put, a player cannot help their team get to 100 points if they don't play in the game.

Those two numbers form the Chalupa Efficiency Ratio for an individual player by taking the total number of home appearances for that player divided by the player's number of chalupa games. Another way to think of this ratio is Player X provides chalupas in Y home game appearances.

Results

Folks, we have a shocker. Here are the top 10 players by Chalupa Efficiency Ratio. Remember similar to golf scores, the lower the better for this metric.

  1. Gary Grant - Provides chalupas per 3.5 home game appearances
  2. Jamal Crawford - 6.2
  3. Brandon Roy - 8.0952
  4. Gerald Wallace - 9.25
  5. Ike Diogu - 10.0
  6. Raymond Felton - 10.0
  7. Damian Lillard - 10.25
  8. Wes Matthews - 10.9
  9. Will Perdue - 12.0
  10. Bonzi Wells - 13.6667

Results Analysis

What a total surprise and stroll down memory lane as the Chalupa Efficiency Ratio crown goes to Gary Grant! It's worth noting 7 out of the top 10 players in Grant, Crawford, Wallace, Diogu, Felton, Lillard, and Perdue all played one season's worth of home games(41 home games) or less to reach top 10 status. My initial hypothesis of Jamal Crawford proved a close second. However, the legend of Brandon Roy continues to grow as he not only leads the franchise in number of chalupa games but also gets chalupa games very efficiently behind Grant and Crawford. Sadly it looks like the players with limited appearances because of injuries or "Did Not Play - Coach's Decision" helped players such as Gary Grant, Ike Diogu, and Will Perdue reach the top 10 in CER, but did not help the player I hypothesized, Luke Babbitt onto the top 10 list. For those curious Babbitt finished 43rd out of the total 69 Chalupa players in CER.

Bonus Results and Analysis

Here are the bottom 10 players in the Chalupa Efficiency Ratio:

  • G. Oden, Provides chalupas per 44.0 home games
  • S. Pippen, 49.0
  • V. Khryapa, 52.0
  • A. Sabonis, 54.0
  • J. Jack, 58.5
  • J. McInnis, 62.0
  • M. Camby, 65.0
  • J. Dixon, 67.0
  • C. Frye, 71.0
  • J. Przybilla, 212.0
  • As mentioned in the first post getting big men to score that 100th point for chalupas seems really elusive. 5 out the 10 in the Chalupa Efficiency Ratio here are big men. Interestingly fan favorite Joel Pryzbilla owns the most dubious and worst CER with a minimum of 1 chalupa game for the franchise by a wide margin as it took him 212 game appearances to get one chalupa game for the fans.

    While Joel Przybilla owns the worst CER with a minimum of 1 chalupa game another group of players caught my eye. This group of players consists of the top 10 Blazers with the most game appearances without a chalupa game:

    1. Theo Ratliff - 74 appearances without providing chalupas
    2. Brian Grant - 40
    3. Charles Smith - 33
    4. Raef LaFrentz - 28
    5. Victor Claver - 25
    6. Nick Van Exel - 25
    7. Richie Frahm - 24
    8. Kurt Thomas - 24
    9. Chris Dudley - 24
    10. Sasha Pavlovic - 23

    Acknowledgements

    Same as last time, a hat tip to basketball-reference.com for the 2000-2013 game appearances data and making it easy for a machine to parse the data. A lesser hat tip to stats.nba.com where I manually clicked through to get the 1999-2000 game appearances data because the site makes it difficult for a machine to parse the data. Special thanks to a good friend who I texted several times to double check conditions when chalupa games occur.