On March 03 2018 10:38 JimmyJRaynor wrote: they've now played 25 games without wall... 15-10. better winning percentage than with Wall. without Wall there are a bad match up for Toronto.
You will just pick whatever single number is enough to seemingly prove your point, regardless of any other thing....more of the same...
i've watched all 4 Raptors//Wizards games and i think the Wizards are a bad match up for the Raptors when they don't have Wall. its pretty much that simple.
i stated i wanted to see Derozan getting less minutes. Someone else then misquoted me and claimed i wanted Derozan on the bench. anyhow, Derozan has played less minutes per game this year than he has in 5 years. so, umm , ya.
we'll have 3 teams with 28 losses... 3 teams with 26 losses and 1 team with 27 losses in the west.
so its Crowder, Teague, and KAT ejected. this is like a hockey game.
so Minnesota plays Boston, Golden State, Washington , San Antonio , and Houston in its next 5 games. By the end of next week they might not even be in a playoff spot... ouch.
Wall has been playing on a bad left knee all year.. he has had 3 procedures on it in 18 months; Wall is slower and less explosive than in previous years. Satoransky has proven to be an above average point guard. These are big reasons why Washington is playing so well without Wall this year.
A 100% healthy Wall is probably slightly better than Satoransky. However, it isn't like Satoransky totally sucks and Wall is the 2nd coming of Steph Curry.
The Lakers during the Shaq/Kobe era routinely played better in the regular season when one of them was missing. The Warriors won 13 straight games in the regular season without Durant last year. It's not a good idea to extrapolate too much from small snippets. On pace is a terrible statistical metric.
Depends what you decide to call a "small snippet". its been 26 games without Wall. During those 26 games they've played ...Toronto 4 times,Minnesota,Philly twice,OKC ,Boston ,Cleveland ,Milwaukee , Golden State.
The Wizards look above average during that stretch and i think its real. They've earned their 15-11 record. They're 2 and 2 against the Raptors without Wall and its been real... they've played well. The 4 games against Toronto have all been dog fights. Kudos to the Wizards.
Here is teh Crowder//Thibodeau//Butler beef... and got both Thibodeau and Crowder a technical foul... After the game Butler and Crowder went at it on twitter. + Show Spoiler +
here is a more complete view of the whole thing + Show Spoiler +
Wall is somewhere between the 7th and 10th best starting PG in the NBA and Satoransky is around #13. Curry, Paul, Lowry, and Irving are all a big step above Wall.
you have yet to provide a counter assessment of Satoransky other than to say "you are wrong".
If Wall is hobbling around like he did in the Cleveland game before he missed teh 1st Raptor game of the year ... i'll take Satoransky over Wall every time.
i pretty much concur with Casey's assessment of teh Wizards. They are tough. + Show Spoiler +
lots of great games tonight. The Lakers//San Antonio game was great. the West should be great fun the last month of the season. Even the 3rd place Trailblazers can easily miss the playoffs
"Why was RPM's projection for the Toronto Raptors so wrong? Did RPM just love P.J. Tucker, Patrick Patterson and Cory Joseph so much? (Because I do too.) Is it because it didn't predict the growth of the bench?"
-- Norm
The projection by ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) that Toronto would win an average of between 44 and 45 wins this season, the sixth-best projection in the Eastern Conference, has been a source of much discussion recently in Raptors Twitter. As is typically the case when a projection is so far off, I think there are several factors at play.
You've identified a couple of big ones relating to the bench. While Joseph and Tucker didn't rate appreciably better by RPM than their replacements, Patterson's loss looked like a huge hit to the Toronto bench. In 2016-17, the Raptors were about a break-even team with Patterson on the bench (plus-0.9 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA Advanced Stats) -- and that was actually an improvement on getting outscored with Patterson sitting during 2015-16.
Patterson and Kyle Lowry got most of the credit in RPM for the success of Toronto's highly effective bench lineups the past couple of seasons, so the Raptors' revamped second unit projected as average at best. Instead, with Pascal Siakam developing into a capable replacement for Patterson, and Fred VanVleet emerging as the new plus-minus standout, Toronto's second unit has been better than ever despite that Lowry has played fewer minutes with this group.
Also interesting is the improvement of the Raptors' starting five. Their most common four-man lineup last season (Lowry, DeMarre Carroll, DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas) outscored opponents by just 1.7 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA Advanced Stats. This season, with rookie OG Anunoby in place of Carroll, and Ibaka solidifying the power forward spot, Toronto's starting five has a robust plus-12.1 net rating.
For all the talk of the Raptors' offensive changes, that improvement has come largely at the defensive end. Toronto's starting five has a 100.7 defensive rating, better than the Boston Celtics' league-leading mark this season (101.1). Anunoby, projected to play limited minutes before the season, has been a big factor in that defensive success.
The other question here is why the Raptors have continually outperformed their RPM projections. As I noted over the summer, Toronto has beaten them by an average of six wins over the past four seasons, which will only go up this year. I suspect part of what's happening is that the multiyear version of RPM used to build projections incorporates playoff performance, and naturally, the Raptors haven't been as effective there. We'll see whether their overperformance can carry over to the postseason this season.
EPT
