The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

The Toronto Raptors were the feel-good story of the Eastern Conference last season, and a large part of the credit for this improvement was given to the trade of Charlie Villanueva for TJ Ford.  There is no doubt that Ford had a much better season statistically with Toronto than he had with Milwaukee in 2005-06.  But was he a much better player or was he just in a better situation?  Did he really improve? Does his game still have much more upside?  Are the Bucks worse off with Mo Williams than they would have been with Ford?

I’m not so sure.

First the stats: Ford’s IPM took a huge jump.  In 05-06 he was a pretty pedestrian .7372, ranking as the #41 guard. In 06-07  he shot to the #12 guard at .9870 — all-star level.  His defensive IPM was solid as well (no doubt helped by having two excellent defenders in Rasho Nesterovic and Chris Bosh behind him) and is propelled him to the #10 overall ranking among guards last season.

Ford’s stats:

05-06 with Milwaukee: 35.5 mpg, 41.6% shooting, 75.4% FT shooting, 12.2 ppg, 6.6 apg, 3 to

06-07 with Toronto: 29.9 mpg, 43.6% shooting, 81.9% FT shooting, 14 ppg, 7.9 apg, 3.1 to

So why did his IPM (and PER, if you have Insider) jump so much?  His per-40 minute numbers show much more improvement because he basically raised his game a little in every way while playing fewer minutes.  Per 40 minutes he scored almost 5 more pp/40 and had 3 more ast/40.

Defensively, I always felt TJ got a sort of bad rap because of his height.  Sure, he’s vulnerable to being posted up, so he looks bad on a couple of posessions a game when a 6′4″ guy goes right over him.  But with the direction the NBA has gone recently, you can’t use any physical defense on the perimeter anyway, and Ford is more than fast enough to stay in front of almost anyone. 

So TJ was better offensively, fine defensively, the team was winning.  So what’s the problem?  Why were Raptor fans in February making the same complaints about him that Bucks fans had made the season before?  Namely, that he shoots too much, dribbles too much, can’t run an offense, and the team runs more smoothly with the backup in (in this case, Jose Calderon).

Lets look a little deeper into the stats, courtesey of the real experts at 82games.com:

TJ Ford’s 06-07 stats

TJ Ford’s 05-06 stats

In 05-06 35% of his shots were from “in close” (non-dunks from 5 feet or closer) and he had an effective FG% (including free throws) of 47.7%.  In 06-07 only 31% of his shots were from in close, and he improved his eFG to 52.5%.  That’s not much of an improvement when you consider that he shot free throws about 7% better — he got to the line a little more and made more.  But that’s still not a great percentage from in close.  Steve Nash, for example, has an eFG of 67.7% from in close.

But what jumps out at me is that TJ still shoots too early in the shot clock way too often.  46% of his shots were taken in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, and he only had an eFG of 47.8% on those shots.  That’s actually an improvement on 05-06 when TJ shot fully 53% of his shots early in the clock (with a 47.7% efg), but it’s still too many low-percentage shots.  A point guard will get his share of early-clock shots on fast breaks, but the other early shots are a problem.  To compare with Steve Nash again, Nash took 42% of his shots early in the clock at an eFG of 64.2%.

So TJ didn’t shoot much better or reduce the bad shots much.  But what about the assist rate?  There is definite improvement there, right?

Once again, I’m not so sure.  He went from having a rookie Andrew Bogut and Jamaal “stonehands” Magloire as his frontcourt to a highly efficient all-star Chris Bosh and Rasho Nesterovic (who shot 55%).  Doesn’t it seem like any point guard would get one more assist a game by tossing it to Bosh instead of Bogut and also get one more by tossing it to Nesterovic instead of having it bounce off of Magloire’s hands?  Also Bosh and Ford were close friends growing up in the Houston area.  The chemsitry between them could also account for 1 more assist per game right there.

So maybe it was the same old TJ Ford transplanted into a better situation for his game, not that he really improved all that much.  To his credit, though, he has now played 2 full seasons and gone to the playoffs both times, while the Bucks have missed the playoffs last year and when he missed 04-05.

But is he really improving to the point that he will be an all-star this season?  Probably not.  Are the Bucks better off long term with Williams + Villanueva than with Ford?  Probably so.