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Adding nuance to Raptors’ depth chart – 13 positions?

By Brian Boake

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I hope my headline has intrigued you; it’s the essence of a presentation given at the MIT Sloan Sport Analytics Conference in 2012. The presenter postulates 13 basketball positions, which obviously upsets and complicates the traditional 1 through 5 worldview. While I expected to read about stretch-4 as one of the 13 positions defined, instead I found “defensive ball-handler, 3-point rebounder, role-playing ball-handler [huh?]” and the like.

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Apr 21, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas (17) tips in two points past Washington Wizards forward Paul Pierce (34) in the first quarter in game two of the first round of the NBA Playoffs at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Peter Llewellyn-USA TODAY Sports

Whether I like 13 positions and their descriptions or not is beside the point. What we need are more insightful shorthand descriptions of players and positions. I frequently write about the Toronto Raptors’ roster composition, and a primary guideline for me is “never have too many players with the same skills”; the corollary to which is avoiding the same weaknesses. Let’s consider Jonas Valanciunas. At centre, his talents are NBA-average to average-plus, in my opinion, except in one skill where he ranks high. JV made 78.6% of his 276 free-throw attempts last season, a hugely important stat for him and the team. Only Marc Gasol (and Zaza Pachulia, but he doesn’t really count) ranked higher among starting centres. If opponents can’t hack the centre with impunity (because he’ll make them pay at the line), spacing the floor becomes much easier. However, whether a backup centre can make free-throws isn’t much of a factor in determining who will get the job, and how much playing time he’s going to get. The rotation centre needs to be a paint protector, one of the 13 positions designated, whereas JV would be a scoring paint protector.

In the traditional power forward slot, there are 2 designations, 3-point rebounder and scoring rebounder. Patrick Patterson would be a reasonable example of the former, and I suppose Amir Johnson might be the latter. While the Raptors don’t suffer from redundancy, an upgrade in the skill level is overdue.

While Kyle Lowry is named as a defensive ball-handler, he scores and distributes, and even helps out on the boards, so to me the description falls short. His backup should be a tall, defensive-minded combo guard who is careful with the ball. If there’s a term for one of those, I haven’t found it.

The Raptors could use a glue guy, which is described colourlessly as a role player. Whatever he’s called, we don’t have one. Neither do most teams. FWIW: the draft has 2 glue-type players who might be available at #20, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Montrezl Harrell.

I applaud this work as a valuable first try, and I hope the clever people at Stanford refine and expand the positional definitions. We’re all better off when we can understand one another clearly.

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