FanPost

Blazer Stats of Interest Through 14 Games

With a bit of a break in the schedule, it seems like a good time to run through some stats for the Blazers. I used HoopData for the most part, and also Basketball Reference, Hollinger stats at ESPN.com and Basketball Valuea little bit. *I just realized hoopdata is only updated through the 17th, so many of these player stats are 2 games out of date. Whoops.*

PER is John Hollinger's catch-all metric. APER is PER adjusted to use the percentage of a players fgs that are assisted, rather than the %AST for the whole team.

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.)

Star-divide

TEAM STATS (from basketball-reference)
Discrepancies with other sites in per possession stats are due to slightly different ways of determining the number of possessions.


Offense:

  • The Blazers are 9th in the league in points per possession (108.4 points/100 possessions)
  • Portland is 21st in effective FG% -- defined as (FGM+.5*3PM)/(FGA)-- at 48.2%
  • The Blazers are 4th worst in the league at drawing fouls, with their ft/fga ratio at .214
  • PDX is 7th best at limiting turnovers, turning it over on 13.1% of possessions.
  • The Blazers are the league's best at offensive rebounding so far, recovering 32.9% of its own misses.

Defense:

  • The Blazers are 16th in the league in limiting opponent points per possession (107.4 points/100 possessions).
  • Portland is 21st in defensive effective FG% -- at 50.7%
  • The Blazers are 19th best at not fouling-- opponent ft/fga of .251
  • Surprisingly, Portland is forcing the 2nd most TOs-- 16.0% of defensive possessions. Forcing TOs has never been a strength under Nate.
  • The Blazers are 9th worst at defensive rebounding, allowing opponents to o-reb 29.1% of their misses.

Player Stats (mostly from hoopdata, some bbr, some basketballvale)


--small sample size caveats still apply, especially with the 1 year plus minus stats--


I'll go in order of minutes played. This year's stats are in bold, last year's stats are in parentheses.

LaMarcus Aldridge:

APER 17.39 (17.85), Usage: 22.6 (22.9), TS% .507 (.535), Offensive rebound rate 9.9 (8.1), Def rebound rate: 15.1 (18.6), Ast Rate 10.2 (10.2), Steal% 1.6 (1.3), Block % 2.6 (1.3), Turnover rate 8.6 (6.6)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +22.05 (last year's 1-year adjusted plus minus -0.85)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: LaMarcus is playing somewhat better help defense this year as seen in the block numbers. He's also doing a great job on the offensive boards. He's clearly trying to play inside more this year on offense also-- taking 8.6 shots within 10 feet per game this year (6.5 last year) and fewer shots from 10-15 feet and 16-23 feet. Unfortunately, he's not making those in close shots with any degree of effeciency (as seen in the TS%). He's also turning it over more and somehow even worse on the D-boards. Speaking of the boards, you'd be hard pressed to find someone better on the O-boards and worse on the D-boards (though it is possible). LA's got better numbers than Pau and Okafor on the O-boards and worse than Hedo and Jeff Green on the D-boards. Overall, I see somewhat better effort but no more production. He's 19th in APER among PFs playing at least 20 mpg. You might argue that per minute stats are unfair to a player who's been asked to do yeoman's work in terms of playing time, and that's fair. Still, Hollinger estimates that even with all of LA's pt, there have still been 15 PFs who have produced more wins for their team.

Andre Miller:

APER 21.87 (20.16), Usage 21.44 (23.83), Ast Rate 33.64 (26.20), TO Rate 11.94 (10.19), TS% .545 (.530), Rebound Rate 5.8 (6.6), Stl % 3.3 (2.0)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +16.38 (2-year adjusted plus minus +11.35)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Andre Miller is known as a slow starter, but that's not been true whatsoever this year, as he's having one of the finest years of his career (his PER is as high as its been for season since he was a 25 year old Cleveland Cavalier. Not much bad to say about his play so far this year. In my view, he's been easily the best Blazer so far. He's got the 8th best APER for PGs so far, behind only CP3, the hot-starting Russell Westbrook, Nash, Devin Harris, Rose, DWill and Tony Parker.

Brandon Roy:

APER 17.96 (22.94), Usage: 24.56 (26.75), TS% .526 (.568), Offensive rebound rate 1.5 (3.7), Assist Rate 11.81 (18.31), Steal % 2.2 (1.4), Block % 1.3 (0.5)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +0.17 (last year's 1 year adjusted plus minus +0.06)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Yikes. The assist rate and offensive rebound rate just jump out at you. The steal and block rates suggest that he's trying a little harder on D this year, which is nice. Looking at Roy's shot locations makes one cringe though-- he's taken 2.3 shots at the rim per game this year, making 52% of them... last year, he made 63% of 4.1 shots at the rim per game (and the year before that 60% of 5.8 per game). These numbers are very concerning-- they tale the tale of a still solid player, but a far cry from an allstar, let alone the revelation that was Roy '08-'09. Blazer fans can only hope for the best regarding Roy's knee. Its worth noting that Roy got off to a very slow start last year also before having a great December. This feels different though. SG is not as deep a position as PG this year, as only 11 SGs playing 20 mpg or more have better APERs than Roy so far.

Marcus Camby:

APER 16.75 (16.64), Usage: 12.74 (12.28), TS% .498 (.511), Offensive rebound rate 14.0 (14.2), Def rebound rate: 31.1 (29.9), Ast Rate 19.94 (15.86), Turnover rate 9.57 (12.24), Steal% 1.2 (2.2), Block % 4.6 (4.8)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -5.99 (last year's 1 year adjusted plus minus +1.88)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Old man Camby can sure still rebound-- just Reggie Evans and Kevin Love have been better at it so far this year-- and he's contributed on offense as well, notably with some excellent high post passing. Many of the numbers are right in line with what he's done for his career. No sign of a dropoff yet. Marcus's APER ranks 2 spots below LA on the list for PFs and would rank him 11th on the list for Cs.

Nicolas Batum:

APER 16.25 (16.11), Usage: 19.55 (16.41), TS% .601 (.646), Offensive rebound rate 6.3 (4.3), Def rebound rate: 12.6 (14.8), Ast Rate 9.58 (12.17), Turnover rate 7.18 (7.47), Steal% 2.0 (1.2), Block % 1.6 (2.2)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -27.72 (last year's 1 year adjusted plus minus +4.50)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Batum has started the year nicely, but does not appear to have taken the sort of leap forward that would indicate real stardom is in his future. He's still playing his role on offense highly efficiently (leading all rotation Blazers in offensive rating), but still isn't really creating much offense for himself (as such the PER to APER adjustment dings him somewhat). Subjectively, it seems like he's been a little lazier on defense this year also, and he gets a share of the blame for Portland's defensive rebounding struggles. Still, Batum's play has been solid, particularly for someone down the priority list in his team's offensive system. Batum ranks 10th in APER among SFs playing at least 20 mpg.

Wesley Matthews:

APER 14.26 (12.86), Usage: 23.31 (16.48), TS% .559 (.592), Offensive rebound rate 3.4 (3.0), Def rebound rate: 9.7 (8.0), Ast Rate 10.19 (14.30), Turnover rate 13.38 (10.73), Steal% 1.6 (1.5), Block % 1.0 (0.6)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -17.24 (last year's 1 year adjusted plus minus -3.41)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Wesley has performed well in his recent run as a starter, after getting off to a very rocky start as a reserve. He's playing a much different role on offense than he did with the Jazz last year, as seen in his much higher usage, and was very inefficient off the bench, but much better these past few games as a starter. He's made nearly 82% of his shots at the rim this year which will likely regress towards the 58% he made last year. Hopefully his 3 pt % will regress towards last year's 38% from his 25% figure so far this year (I think it will). Wesley would do well to take fewer long twos-- he's hitting at a 19% clip from 16-23 feet. It'll be interesting to see how he does once he's relegated back to the bench with the return of Roy.

Dante Cunningham

PER 12.9 (14.3), TS% .506 (.517), Usage 13.1 (16.8), Ast Rate 15.92 (5.30), rebound rate 12.4 (14.0), Blk% 2.3 (2.5), Stl% 1.5 (1.9)

1 year adjusted plus minus: +6.26

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Dante's playing more minutes so far this year but is more or less the same player. I like his energy and hustle but don't see him improving or expanding his game much. I don't put much meaning into the much higher assist%, likely a small sample size fluke.

Rudy Fernandez:

APER 11.81 (12.79), Usage: 18.3 (17.7), TS% .523 (.540), Offensive rebound rate 0.9 (3.0), Def rebound rate:8.9 (11.2), Ast Rate 20.85 (19.09), Turnover rate 8.94 (10.83), Steal% 2.6 (2.4), Block % 0.0 (0.3)

1 year adjusted plus minus: -10.68 (last year's 1 year adjusted plus minus -1.28)

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Not a lot of good numbers to point to. Rudy's hustle indicators are down for the most part and he's not hitting his shots at a good rate. He's looked like he's been having a lot of fun during the home blowouts, but his minutes are down a tick overall and he's not been very productive during the competitive games in what minutes he has been given. I was among those that questioned the logic of going with Wesley over Rudy to start in Brandon's place, but that looks to have been a solid move by Nate.

Armon Johnson:

APER 13.94, Usage: 22.5, TS% .563, Ast Rate 27.16, Offensive rebound rate 1.7, Def rebound rate 9.4, Turnover rate 18.80, Steal% 1.0, Block % 0.5

1 year adjusted plus minus: +14.65

Jksnake99's somewhat subjective take: Pretty nice start to Armon's rookie season. He's arguably been one of the top 10 players in his class so far. Turnovers have been somewhat of a bugaboo for him, which hopefully get better as the season goes on.