The Analytics Have Spoken: The Raptors Will Survive Without DeRozan

Trivia: Other than DeMar DeRozan, who is the only NBA player whose full first and last names (meaning no acronym names like K.J. McDaniels)  each have two capital letters in them? (answer is posted at the bottom of this article)

I made a voluntary decision over Thanksgiving break to begin watching and covering the Raptors. They have intrigued me this season due to their hot start (both record wise and in terms of offensive ratings) despite the absence of a bona-fide superstar, and the fact that they are one of the few Eastern Conference teams to do well against the west (5-1). Plus in this, their 20^th anniversary year, they will play a number of games in those sweet throwback unis –

Does Kyle Lowry make this throwback uni look good,
or is it the other way around?

Things were going swimmingly for the 13-3 Raptors (who rank 1^st in the league in attendance) until Friday night, when DeRozan, the team’s leader in both scoring and minutes played, went down with a groin tear – which will sideline him “indefinitely”. Here is the video – disclaimer: not for the squeamish reader…

Several teams in the NBA this year have had to deal with injuries to a key player or players, with some of those teams (Pacers) faring better than others (Thunder). I wanted to explore through the use of stats and analytics to try and determine whether or not the Raptors could sustain their performance despite not having DeRozan in the lineup.

Generally, in doing these types of analyses, I like to look, to at least some extent, at four factor-type metrics (for more information about four factors and Dean Oliver –click here). These are the factors that Oliver, a stats Ph.D. who balled at hoops hotbed and later NCAA sanctioned Caltech as an undergrad and now works for the Kings, has most closely correlated with wins. Not surprisingly, in terms of metrics that are related to the four factors, the Raptors excel relative to the rest of the league in many of them. For this analysis, I took a closer look at how DeRozans injury will create a gap that needs to be filled with respect to some of these metrics, as well as a few other.

Metric 1: Personal Fouls Drawn

Raptors Rank: 2^nd most in league at 24.1 fouls drawn per game

DeRozan Stats: Leads team and is 10^th in league in fouls drawn per game at 5.4. The next closest on the Rockets is Lowry at 5.1. Also, DeRozan is fifth in league in fouls draw in the fourth quarter at 2.0 per game.

Synopsis: Getting to the foul line (as opposed to actually making the shots) is one of Oliver’s four factors. DeRozan does a great job at drawing fouls, especially 10+ feet from the basket (as John Schuhmann pointed out in his blog on NBA.com). Because he converts at an 82.3% clip from the FT line, this makes him an extremely valuable asset.