Raptors Trade: Evaluation

Toronto receives: Amir Johnson + Sonny Weems

Milwaukee receives: Carlos Delfino (sign and trade) + Roko Ukic

Note: because Amir Johnson and Sonny Weems were just involved in a trade less than a month ago, either this transaction is two ‘1 for 1’ deals or it may take up to a month before it is officially completed.

Does this Work Financially?

Amir Johnson 2009/10 salary: $3.941,667
(total contract: $3,941,667)
Sonny Weems 2009/10 salary: $736,420
(total contract: $1,590,809)

*Note: with Sonny Weems he has a two year contract at the minimum with a team early termination clause and a qualifying offer in 2011/2012.

Carlos Delfino 2009/10 salary: $3,666,000
(total contract: ~$11,000,000)
Roko Ukic 2009/10 salary: $1,350,000
(total contract: $2,800,000)

The deal does not work financially if they are traded in two separate ‘1 on 1’ transactions unless further pieces are added. Therefore I believe that this trade will become official once Johnson and Weems are eligible to be traded again.

Why the Raptors Make this Trade?

The Raptors are able to parlay a third-string point guard and a player who - in all likelihood – was not going to play for them this year for a young power forward with good potential and a young swingman for the back of the bench.

Amir Johnson

Amir Johnson was the 56th pick of the 2005 draft, and the last high school player ever drafted. Johnson is a still a young player (at 22) who has the potential to become a good to great player in this league. His PER rating last season was 13.5, which is just below the NBA average of 15. His offensive efficiency was very good last year with an eFg% of .595 and TS% of .608, well above league averages. This would suggest that he tends to take high percentage shots in and around the cylinder. His assist rate % is quite low at 3.4%, but I feel that he will be able to improve that with experience and practice. In addition, he had a fairly low usage rate of 11.1% meaning that he did not have many plays ran for him.

Amir Johnson is also fairly good on the defensive side of the ball. He has a block percentage of 5.1% (2.4 blocks per 36 minutes) and has a defensive rating of 105, which is better than Bargnani’s defensive rating of 109 and Bosh’s of 108.

In terms of offense and defensive, the true value of Johnson can be seen through the ratings differential. His differential of 15 is greater than Bosh’s of 6 and Bargnani’s of -8.

Amir Johnson’s rebounding ability is what really makes this acquisition a very good one. He has an offensive rebounding rate of 13.1 (which is very impressive) and a defensive rebounding rate of 17.2. In general, he grabs around 15% of available rebounds, which is much better than Bargnani’s rate of 9.3% and similar to Bosh’s 14.5%. He instantly becomes one of the best rebounders on this team.

In general, I see Johnson as the second best big man on the Raptors behind Chris Bosh and would excel in a role of grabbing rebounds and playing defense. He is also a good finisher around the rim and tends to take only high percentage shots. He would be an ideal fit in the starting line-up alongside Bosh and Turkolu. However, I do not foresee Triano having the guts to stick Bargnani on the bench. Dave, from NBARoundtable, says his pick and roll defensive is very good and his presence may go a long way to solving this Raptor’s defensive problems.

I have heard concerns saying that Johnson will not play many minutes because many consider him the 5th big man behind Bosh, Bargnani, Evans and Rasho. In my opinion, this is completely untrue because he will prove to be a better player than both Evans and Rasho. Minutes are not going to arbitrary go to the veterans and I firmly believe Johnson will be the first big off the bench at the all-star break, if not earlier.

Sonny Weems

Sonny Weems was the 39th pick of 2008 draft but was traded almost immediately to Denver on draft day. He was injured early last season, and when he recovered he was assigned to Denver’s D-League affiliate in Colorado. He only played 55 minutes, which is hardly a large enough sample to analyze his statistics and I have never seen him play. He seems like an athletic player who may be able to develop into a rotation worthy player down the road.

From this deal, Toronto adds $3,328,087 assuming they were not going to sign Delfino and they are going to keep Weems. Toronto has no contract obligations next year as they have an ETO on Weems and Johnson’s contract is expiring.

Why the Bucks Make this Trade?

The Bucks were heavily stocked at the power forward position with Ersan Ilyasova, Kurt Thomas, and newly signed Hakim Warrick. Milwaukee’s front office must assume that Johnson was not going to play heavy minutes for the team and decided to trade him and a minimum contract for a solid two guard in Carlos Delfino and point guard depth in Roko Ukic. Ukic is insurance if (when?) Sessions leaves to another team as a restricted free agent.

Carlos Delfino

Carlos Delfino did not play in the NBA last year, but played the previous year at Toronto. He was drafted with the 25th pick of the first round by Detroit in the 2003 draft. Looking at his most recent season in the NBA, on offense he shot a TS% of .537 and an eFg% of .492, which are both slightly below the league average. He had a good assist rate of 11.1% and had a pretty high usage rate of 19.0%. Overall, he was a slightly inefficient scorer who made the pass when needed.

On defense, Delfino had a blocking percentage of 0.5% and a steal percentage of 1.9%. From a subjective standpoint, he seemed like a below-average to average defender, who tried to keep his defender ahead of him but should not be considered elite.

Looking at the rating differential, Delfino is +1, which is okay. His defensive rating is good but his offensive rating of 107 is poor. In comparison of some Raptors last year, Parker posted a rate of -6, Marion posted a rate of -3 and Moon has a rate of -1. So in comparison, he would have performed better than some of the other Raptor swingmen of last season.

Rebounding-wise, Delfino is one of best at his position. His total rebounding rate of 11.0 was better than Bargnani’s rate last year! In comparison, Parker had a rate of 7.1, Moon had a rate of 10.6 and Marion had a rate 13.8. He is a very good rebounder for his position.

Delfino was not going to sign for the Raptors because of the limited minutes behind Turkolu and the other swingmen. There was no guarantee that he would have had a starting spot and Delfino would not have left his Russian team for a rotation spot with less money. I believe Scott Skiles would give him a large role on the Bucks team and this must have been discussed before Delfino would consider the sign-and-trade.

Roko Ukic

Roko Ukic was a second round pick by the Raptors in 2005 with the 41st pick. His first year in the league was last year with the Raptors. Ukic is a very poor offensive player with a TS% of .430 and eFg% of .397, which is among the worst in the league. His assist rate is 27.2 % which is very good but it may be largely because he deferred to his teammates when he played. He had a high usage rate, largely because he is a point guard, but surprising considering his poor shooting percentages.

Ukic was also pretty poor on defense with a steal rate of 1.8 and an assist rate of 0.2. In comparison, Calderon rates for those two measures was 1.7 and 0.2 respectively, which shows that our point guard tandem was very, very poor defensively. Some subjective reports have said that he is a good defensive player with good tools, but I haven’t seen this defensive quality yet.

What was really telling was his ratings differential. Ukic had a very ugly -20 (93 on offense and 113 on defense) indicating that he was poor offensively and defensively. For comparison, Calderon had a rate of +11.

In terms of rebounding, Ukic has a total rebounding rate of 4.9%, which is below-average for his position.

My opinion of Ukic is not very positive. He has shown to be a very weak offensive and defensive player with below-average rebounding rates. He may improve with more familiarity of the league, but he is already 25, and has way too much to work on for him to even be considered a rotation quality player.

Conclusions

I think this is a good trade for Toronto which could even become great or even excellent depending on how much playing time they give to Johnson. Toronto has managed to trade two players who are out of their rotation into a player who should be considered their second-best big man. Great trade for the Raptors.

Grade for Toronto: A

I think this is an average trade for Milwaukee. I think Johnson would’ve been better than their other options at power forward, but they do have enough depth to compensate for him. Milwaukee has Michael Redd, Joe Alexander and Charlie Bell who play Delfino’s position and he might round out their wing players. Delfino would provide average defending, below average scoring and great rebounding from the two spot. With respect to Ukic, I do not think he will play much, I still think he will be a third string pg (behind Ridnour and Jennings). If I was a Milwaukee fan, I would have rather not have signed Warrick, and keep Johnson as my starting power forward. But, in general, they did get a rotation quality player in Delfino for a good price.

Grade for Milwaukee: C+

Evaluating the Raptors' Offense

Offense is predicted to be the Raptor's major strength next year due to the likes of Hedo Turkolu, Chris Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon in our starting rotation. To see if this claim is true, I am going to examine the offensive performance of the Raptors last year and try and make predictions for this upcoming season. This article is going to explore the Raptors' performance on the offensive end last year, subjective measure of what the team in general did and how key individual players performed. Tomorrow, I will outline this upcoming season with predictions of individual player performances, team sets and how the Raptors offense would rank along the division and the NBA.

Last year the Raptors scored 99 points a game and 45.8% shooting. Compared to the rest of the NBA, this was fairly mediocre. Looking at some advanced defensive statistics, the Raptors offensive efficiency was 104.3, a very poor 22th in the NBA. The conference finalists (Lakers, Cleveland, Orlando and Nuggets) were all top 8 in offensive efficiency so the Raptors have a lot to make up a lot of ground in this department. 9 out of the top 10 teams in offensive efficiency made the playoffs so it is a good indication of a play-off quality squad (Phoenix Suns were the only team who did not make the playoffs but they were a 9th seed and the reason they were not better was because of their extremely poor defensive efficiency (22nd in the NBA). Toronto also came 20th in efficient field goal percentage, dispelling the myth that they were a good shooting team. The team may have good shooters (and even that is up to debate) and if so, they were not put in situations where they could score efficiently. Finally, the Raptors were ranked 3rd in assist ratio, and 14th in pace, meaning that this team was generally a half-court team which favored ball movement over 1 on 1 play.

I am going to break the Raptors season into three parts: beginning of the season with Sam Mitchell, the implementation of Jay Triano (with Calderon being injured), and the addition of Shawn Marion. There are many more subtle variables (Bargnani playing small forward, Bargnani becoming the starter and JO getting injured) but they will be considered in the context of their respective category.

At the beginning of the season, Sam Mitchell was trying to identify how to co-exist Bosh and O’Neal. At the same time, he was trying to give Bargnani as much time as possible. For offense, the main set being run was a pick and pop with Bosh and Calderon at the three point line with Bosh generally receiving the pass. At this position, Bosh would generally try to create opportunities one-on-one with the intent of getting to the free-throw line. This offense was predicated on the half-court because of O’Neal’s lack of agility and Calderon’s cautious nature. When this proved to not be effective, Mitchell tried the “towers” approach by putting Bargnani at small forward. This was a disaster defensively as Bargnani could not cover SF’s resulting in rotations of help defense of easy buckets for the opposition.

Jay Triano’s arrival as the head coach marked a shift towards more ball-movement and running in the open court. Triano spoke about finding cutters and creating scoring opportunities through ball movement. However the early term was more of the same as the team struggled to embrace the new methods. O’Neal got injured and Bargnani eventually become the full-time starter and with Bargnani willing to run the floor, the offense started to speed up a little. When I watched the games, one positive I remembered was the back-door cut of Jamario Moon with Calderon hitting him for an alley-oop.

Finally, there was a significant shift in offensive philosophy when O’Neal and parts was traded for Shawn Marion and Banks. This moved signified that the Raptors were shifting from a half-court oriented team to more of a running team. Calderon came back and started taking more risks with his passing and Marion made smart offensive decision with his positioning and cutting. There was more running off opponent misses and pushing the ball. The emphasis was on strong ball-movement in the half-court set. This type of offense, in my opinion, was closer to what Triano envisioned for the Raptors.

With regards to individual statistics, we are going to examine Efficient Field Goal Percentage (eFg %) True Shooting Percentage (TS %) and the Usage Rate (USG%). I am also just going to focus on the major players for Toronto last season. eFg% is a measure of shooting percentage that takes into account that the three point shot is worth one more point with .500 being average while TS% is a measure that takes into account all different types of shots (three point, two point, free throw etc.) and the league average was around .541. Looking at some individual player statistics, Bargnani and Bosh had average efficient field goal percentage (eFg %) at .512 and .492 respectively, Calderon was extremely strong at shooting with at .561 eFg% and Jermaine O’Neal was fairly poor with .473 and .422. In terms of True Shooting % (TS %), Chris Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon had very strong numbers, each above .559. Jermaine O’Neal and Shawn Marion both had below average TS%. Finally usage rate is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by the player. On the team, Chris Bosh, Jermaine O’Neal and Andrea Bargnani had the highest usage rates with all of them being over 22%.

Looking at these results, it becomes clear that Jermaine O’Neal was a main reason why we had a poor season on offense. He had the third highest usage rate, and below average TS% and eFg% and also had one of the lowest (ignoring scrubs) assist rate on the team. He was, in my opinion, a black hole on offense and a large reason for our poor offensive play. Andrea Bargnani was an above average shooter but also had a low assist rate. He was a neutral on the offense for the Raptors last year. Chris Bosh was a good shooter (extremely good TS%, below average eFg% - because of inconsistency on three pointers), and had a below average assist rate and was considered a slight plus on offense. Jose Calderon was by far our best offensive player (extremely good TS% and eFg%) and also had an extraordinary assist percentage (41%). His usage rate was far too low for the offensive contribution he gave. I have to state this again, Jose Calderon was clearly our best offensive player by an enormous margin.

In general, the team’s emphasis was to throw it into the big man and let them try to create shot opportunities. Our best offensive player was severely under-utilized and two of the players with a higher usage rate than him were neutral or worse on offense. Bosh may be a better offensive player than the stats indicate, but the stats may have been lower because he had to create offense for himself and teammates, something which he is not strong at doing. Andrea Bargnani is a neutral on offense and that may improve, but if it does not, he has to improve his defense and rebounding significantly to warrant minutes in the rotation. Finally, it is such a relief that Jermaine O’Neal is gone, and our offense would be more efficient just because of that move. (I understand that he has been gone since the trade deadline, but I couldn’t find splits)

Note: thanks to basketballreference.com for the advanced metrics, and NBA.com for the general stats.

The Rationale Behind the Trade Presented

A couple of days ago I presented a trade possibility of Marcus Banks + Patrick O'Bryant + a second round draft pick for Morris Peterson. (see post below) There was a lot of reaction from the trade and most of it was negative, however reading through the comments there may of been people who may have misunderstood what I had presented. As such, I feel responsible for addressing some of the comments being made and bring some rationale for why I feel the trade might work. Ill list each subtopic by argument and try to answer it.

1. Trading Second Round Draft Picks are not the way to go, considering how many we have dealt away

I agree that trading away draft picks is not an effective way to build your team roster. In general, first round draft picks are set on the rookie scale and second round picks do not earn significantly more than the minimum which means that you usually get under-paid talent. However with respect to the Raptors situation, they are built to compete in the short-term (however flawed that strategy is) and need to compile enough depth for in-squad competition and in case of injury. Second round draft picks only sometimes evolve into rotation quality players and almost never contribute in their first season. For a team built like the Raptors, Peterson would derive more utility in the short (and probably long) term than a future second round draft pick.

2. Morris Peterson has two years left so bad trade idea

Because Marcus Banks is on a two year deal and is not even a rotation quality player, no GM would trade him for a shorter (expiring) contract. This is especially true with the 2010 off season coming up and GMs do not want to have contractual obligations going into the 2011 season. As such, the only way to move him would be for another player who has a two year or longer contract. Peterson has been marginalized in NO due to the signing of James Posey, and Peja and the drafting of Julian Wright. The team is over the luxury tax and needs to reduce salary to minimize the impact so they may consider trading Peterson for a smaller contract especially if there are enough incentives to make it worthwhile (second round draft pick, cash etc.).

3. Morris Peterson is a backing SG, not a SF

Morris Peterson has played both as a SG and SF in his career. He is 6'7 and 220 pounds, and has been in the league long enough to understand how to guard both position. Also, in the NBA the two wing positions are pretty homogeneous now with the rise of small-ball lineups.

4. Why trade for a "worse" contract?

As I stated before, the Raptors are designed to win now. They need all the depth they can get to sustain them in the long season and for insurance purposes. In addition, because the Raptors are under the luxury cap, this deal only adds roughly 500k this year and about 1.5 million next year. They will not fall into luxury tax concerns if they make the deal because they are shipping salary out. One person mentioned that the luxury tax figure might fall next year and this may pose some questions for the raptors. However, the difference would be 1.5 million (doubled up to 3 year) only for a 1 year period. I think the Raptors would consider having an asset like backup sg/sf like Peterson is worth that. In addition if the Raptors are really concerned about the luxury tax implications, the Raptors can trade the contract next season + an asset to a team under the salary cap for a draft pick or an salary exception (note: the same thing would have to be done with bank's contract).

5. There's no point wasting assets for the 15th roster spot

This deal is not so focused on filling the 15th roster spot as it is on creating a more balanced rotation. Currently, the Raptors' rotation is:

starters:
pg: jose calderon
sg: demar derozan
sf: hedo turkolu
pf: chris bosh
c: andrea bargnani

key reserves:
pg/sg: jarrett jack
sg: antoine wright
pf: reggie evans
c: rasho

deep reserves (probable DNP-CDs or getting no playing time)
pg: roko ukic
pg: quincy douby
pg: marcus banks
pf: patrick o'bryant

It is clearly obvious that we have too many dead weight point guards and too many inactive players in general. If this deal were to happen the rotation would change to:

starters:
pg: jose calderon
sg: demar derozan
sf: hedo turkolu
pf: chris bosh
c: andrea bargnani

key reserves:
pg/sg: jarrett jack
sg: antoine wright
sf: morris peterson
pf: reggie evans
c: rasho

deep reserves (probable DNP-CDs or getting no playing time)
pg: roko ukic
pg: quincy douby


Now the Raptors could now play douby (who is superior to banks) as their first option in their deep reserves. There would be 13 players on the roster so the team would not need to add any more players. But if they want to, they can now add players in other positions like: joey graham, pops or leon powe to really round out the roster.

6. Why trade another team's dead weight for our own?

When you consider this trade, please think back to the Rafeal Araujo / Kris Humphries trade. Both of these players were not contributing to their respective teams, so both GMs took a chance on a player to help them. The beauty of these deals are that they have little risk but the new addition could turn into a serviceable player. We can all agree that Aruarjo was not a rotation worthy player but he turned into Kris Humphries, an efficient player with rotation potential. This Morris Peterson deal is to trade two players who do not figure to be in our rotation for a 15-18 mpg guy who could provide significant value to the Raptors.

Conclusions

In all likelihood this trade is not going to happen, and I have probably spent way too much time on the topic, but I want to be sure that what I present is clear and understandable and the debate is focused on the issue.