It seems that point-guard friction has followed the Toronto Raptors since Jose Calderon joined the team in 2006.
Be it T.J. Ford, Jarrett Jack or Jarred Bayless, Calderon has survived, as his ability to take care of the ball (his assist-to-turnover is perpetually at or near the top of the league) and his shooting percentages were consistently high, giving the Spaniard the edge for the starter’s job.
So why make a change this year to Kyle Lowry?
Let’s first have a look at the current Raptors’ point guard and their career statistics:
The statistics show what one may have concluded already: Calderon is a bit better of a shooter and has a significantly higher assist-percentage ratio. He is your prototypical “old school” point guard: pass first and be selective with his shot. We also notice Lowry has a little higher usage rate and also rebounds better.
If we look at last season’s raw box score data (and standardize it to “per 36 minutes”) we see a few other distinctions:
The incredible similarities in both three-point shooting percentage as well as free-throw percentages really stand out.
However, the most important data point is the dramatic difference in free-throw attempts. It begins to paint a picture of Lowry pushing the offense — being aggressive when it’s available, but still dishing dimes at a solid pace when it isn’t. And it’s not at the expense of a large jump in turnovers (3.1 per 36 versus 2.1 for Calderon).
Also of note, is the solid backup play of Lucas III last year in Chicago. His addition could create a good opportunity for the Raptors to move Calderon’s expiring contract to a contender that needs an asset to move to the next level to go deep in the playoffs o a team that underperforms and is looking to swap a multi-year deal with an expiring in order to rebuild. In Lucas III, the Raptors have an asset to easily fill in the backup role to Lowry.
The other key takeaway is Kyle Lowry appears to offer a true triple threat at the point and thus creates more opportunity — and variety — within the offence.
While the offence under Lowry will be different but similarly effective, equally important is examining his impact on defense. Defense is difficult to measure and certainly the box score does not give us much help. Fortunately, various adjusted +/- methods tease out lineup data to estimate a player’s impact on defense.
Advanced plus-minus measures, simply put, attempt to gauge a player’s impact if he was playing with four “average” NBA players against five “average” NBA players.
There are several versions of adjusted plus-minus. Most notably, Daniel Myers’ Advanced Statistical Plus-Minus (ASPM) gives a solid view into this as he parses offensive and defensive performance:
All advanced plus-minus measures suffer somewhat from data “noise”, as there often aren’t enough data points to properly extract individual performance. However, it is still a useful indicator. In this analysis, we selected who would normally be viewed as the top point guards in the NBA currently. I also added current and former Raptors’ point guards. The Y axis is offensive advanced statistical plus-minus, while the X axis is defensive (higher the negative number, the better). Thus the upper right quadrant is the best overall, the lower left quadrant is the worst overall.
Kyle Lowry is similar to Jose Calderon with respect to his offensive impact, but much better than Calderon on defense. Lowry is one of the few point guards that excels on both ends of the floor, in the same quadrant as all-stars such as Paul, Rose, Westbrook and Rondo. Note we included Lucas III in the ASPM chart, but emphasize his sample size is quite low – thus, we would not draw any conclusions here.
Age is also an important consideration. Lowry, at 26, should continue to improve for a few years, while Calderon, at 31, will likely see his performance decline.
Jose Calderon has been one of Toronto’s most valuable contributors for years.
But it’s now time for Kyle’s style.