Anthony Randolph, Examined

The prognosis is in: Anthony Randolph's ankle injury will keep him out of action for at least two months, and could (considering this team's recent track record, probably should) end his '09-'10 campaign. Bad, sad, depressing stuff. This will be a worse team, and a much less interesting one, without him.

But if we step back from our current miseries, the view is not nearly so grim. We have ourselves a pretty damn intriguing player here, one who's made real strides in his second season. Let's take a look at his production -- what he's done, where he's improved, where he could improve going forward.

Conventional Stats

We checked in on these recently, but let's give 'em another gander... Randolph's first two seasons, per 36 minutes:

Season FG FGA FG% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS

2008-09 6.3 13.7 .462 3.2 4.5 .716 4.1 7.5 11.6 1.6 1.3 2.4 2.6 4.5 15.9

2009-10 6.6 14.9 .443 5.2 6.5 .801 3.5 6.8 10.3 2.0 1.3 2.5 2.4 4.4 18.5

Randolph's rookie numbers were already pretty good. His FG% never quite recovered from a wretched first two months of play, and like many raw big men, he passed poorly and fouled a lot. But he scored with decent frequency, rebounded excellently, and blocked a lot of shots and picked off a lot of passes. His freshman line depicts a guy whose strong board work and defensive activity made up for a number of mistakes, which sounds about right.

His sophomore campaign has seen a number of shifts, most good, one disappointing. He has scored a good bit more often. His FG% is down, but he's gotten to the line much more often and upped his efficiency from there; we'll look at his exact scoring efficiency later, but suffice it to say that this has been a worthwhile trade. His passing numbers have improved a good amount -- you'd be hard-pressed to call them "good", but they're within an acceptable range for a big man. (Randolph's 0.86 assist/turnover ratio actually ties him with Chris Bosh, one of the many stars to whom he's been compared.) His rates in steals, blocks and fouls have barely changed; he still rates as a chaotic and overall helpful force on D.

The one disappointing dip has taken place on the boards... Randolph's rebound rate has dipped a bit both on offense and defense. He was not an elite rebounder in his one season at LSU, so it's quite possible that last year's rates were aberrantly high. Disappointing, but hardly cause for worry. At this year's lower rate, Randolph's still tied with Al Horford for the 18th-best rate in the league; even when you account for our fast pace, Randolph rates as a very good rebounder.

These are wholly encouraging numbers. Randolph's strengths still rate as strengths, and he has improved many of the weaker facets of his game. If there's one number here that he'd be best-served to improve, it's his foul rate, which places him in the league's top 30. A foul rate like his by no means precludes a good amount of playing time... Paul Westphal has been creative enough to find 34.9 minutes a night for Jason Thompson, who fouls only slightly less often. But if this team is still run by fools next year -- and let's face it, the odds are pretty good -- Randolph will need to stay out of foul trouble to avoid being iced for long stretches.

Advanced Stats

Courtesy of the fabulous BasketballReference.com (which provides a handy glossary of stats like the ones below)...

Season PER TS% OR% DR% TR% AST% STL% BLK% TO% USG% ORtg DRtg OWS DWS WS

2008-09 16.9 .506 12.4 22.6 17.5 6.8 1.8 4.5 14.0 21.7 102 108 0.4 1.2 1.6

2009-10 19.0 .521 11.2 21.9 16.5 8.6 1.8 4.9 11.7 23.8 106 106 0.8 0.8 1.6

Again, plenty to like here. Randolph's already-nifty PER has gotten niftier, and it turns out that his more free-throw-centric attack has raised his True Shooting Percentage; it's still below average (which tends to be in the .540 range), but not by much. His rebounding rate holds up just fine under closer statistical scrutiny, as his TRB% ties him with Tyson Chandler for 24th in the league. His Usage Rating has gone up -- no surprise, as he's both shooting and getting to the line more often. When on the floor, Randolph uses more possessions than any Warrior except for Monta and Maggette; while he doesn't currently score quite efficiently enough for this to be a big asset, he gets to the line (and gets us closer to the penalty) often enough so that it works out okay.

Randolph's greatly improved Offensive Rating shows that his new approach has been paying dividends. His finish there rates him in the middle of the pack for the '09-'10 Warriors; by Offensive Rating, he's been less effective on that end than Maggette, Biedrins CJ and Morrow, but more effective than Monta, Curry and the other bigs. Randolph's Defensive Rating has also improved, and he in fact leads the team in that category. That strikes me as a little much, but he's certainly held his own on D, as goofy as he's often looked. In sum, he's recorded 1.6 Win Shares, equalling his rookie total in only 66% as many minutes. By Win Shares, the only Warrior who's created more value on a per-minute basis is Corey Maggette.

Basketball Prospectus's metrics like Randolph even more than BBR's, owing mainly to a sky-high appraisal of his D; they peg him at a .625 Individal Winning Percentage, about the 30th-best mark in the league. That seems like an overstatement, and I doubt that any of the metric's inventors would actually rate him that high. But "30th-best player in basketball" is a less wild misappraisal than "not very good", "not ready" or most of the other dismissals of Randolph you'll hear. The kid is already very effective.

In-Depth Offensive Stats

Kick some knowledge, 82games.com...

Season Jumpers eFG Inside eFG Blk'd Ast'd DrawF

'08-'09 56% .333 44% .628 8% 48% 11.7%

'09-'10 56% .342 44% .578 9% 58% 16.9%

Here we unearth the source of Randolph's FG% dip. Randolph is shooting jumpers with the same frequency that he did last year, and with a tad more efficiency (though he still kinda stinks from out there). Instead, his FG% is down because he's missing many more inside shots than he did last year. A trip to the always-delightful NBA Hotspots confirms that most of his sophomore scoring struggles have taken place right around the basket. And indeed, he's getting blocked a bit more than he was last year; he was getting blocked with alarming frequency earlier in the season, in particular.

Randolph could use a few more big-man tricks underneath: a baby hook, a confident pump-fake, maybe an up-and-under variant. He obviously has the height and length to get his shot if he develops some technique and is patient enough to apply it. There's no particular reason why he couldn't get back to his rookie FG%, and really his ceiling is a good bit higher than that.

Plus-Minus Stats

More 82games.com goodness...

Season On Off Net ORtgON ORtgOFF ORtgNET DRtgON DRtgOFF DRtgNET

'08-'09 -4.1 -3.5 -0.6 109.9 110.1 -0.2 115.0 113.9 +1.1

'09-'10 -4.7 -4.1 -0.7 107.7 106.7 +1.0 113.9 109.7 +4.2

Randolph's net plus-minus is basically the same as it was last year; the Warriors are very slightly worse with him on the floor. The difference is not big, and when the minute samples are this small, there's often too much noise to be able to discern much. But if you sift through Randolph's component plus-minus data, a bizarre trend seems to emerge.

Both this year and last, our defense has been less efficient with Randolph on the floor. And both this year and last, our defense has been less efficient with Randolph on the floor because our defensive rebounding has been much, much worse. Last year, we grabbed rebounds off 67.3% of our opponents' misses with Randolph on the bench, but only 63.5% with him playing. This year, same thing -- we've grabbed 69.3% of all possible defensive boards without Randolph, and only 65.7% with him. Somehow, when our second-best defensive rebounder takes the floor, we become a lot worse at getting defensive rebounds.

This is... pretty weird. It doesn't hold true for Randolph on offense, where he helps our rebounding, as you'd expect; nor does it true for Biedrins, our other good rebounder. But it does hold true for another Warrior: in both of Brandan Wright's first two seasons, our defensive rebounding got worse when he played.

I'm guessing that this has to due with positioning. Both Randolph and Wright have such incredible wingspans that they've never really needed to learn how to box out; they've spent most of their basketball lives just jumping and snatching rebounds over everyone else's heads. And in the NBA, this is a fine strategy on offense, as you'll usually need to reach past a defender to get first crack at the ball anyway. But on defense, it's not a viable approach. It's not that you can't ever get rebounds doing that way; it's that if you snatch at the ball and miss, the guy you're covering is suddenly in great position to grab the rebound and lay it back in. We've seen our share of moments like that this year.

Like Wright, Randolph would be better-served to focus more on boxing out and earning defensive rebounds with his positioning, not his length and athleticism. The problem, of course, is that the current version of Don Nelson's about the last NBA coach you'd want to drill a skill like boxing out into a young guy's head... the old man seems quite disinterested in basketball fundamentals and defense. Randolph is not likely to get the clear, consistent instruction he needs under the current administration. Here's hoping that administration leaves town before he does, because Anthony Randolph is a very good young player. And if he comes back healthy, and makes just a few tweaks to his game around each basket, he could rise a good bit further than that.

So while this Warriors season has grown dark and stormy as they so often do, do not despair. The young man will be back someday. And with all due respect to #8, #4 is the one Warrior with the potential to someday part these clouds. As long as we have Anthony Randolph, we have hope.