I didn’t want to make a thread about JT with his name in the title, but unfortunately, this thread is about him. I like the kid. I really want him to do well, but we’d be better off if he was getting significantly less minutes. I decided to take a look at some season-long stats now that we are at the halfway point.
Looking only at guys with 20+ mins per game average, which happens to be 5 -
Patterson, Milicic, Graves, Jackson, Threadgill, I crunched the numbers on efficiency in three categories: Points per minute played, assists per minute played, and rebounds per minutes played.
JT is in last place in all three categories. I didn’t pick these to make him look bad, I picked these becauseI thought they were the most important. For what it’s worth, he is #1 in TOs (lack thereof) and middle of the pack in steals.
Not only is he last in the categories I reviewed, he is well below the average of the other 20+ min guys.
63% below their average in Points per Minute
41% below their average in Assists per Minute
52% below their average in Rebounds per Minute
For PPM - three guys who are getting less minutes are doing better and he’s statistically very close to four others, only significantly ahead of Berry.
For APM - every single person is doing better than JT who’s logged at least a single assist. (This was the most surprising finding to me)
For RPM - only two guys are doing worse that have played more than 3 minutes of total basketball.
I decided to do this analysis because we’ve seemed to do better every time he has failed to start, and, except for a couple of flashes here or there, we seem to look worse offensively when he is in.
All this to say, he has a place on this team, but it isn’t as a starter, and it would seem statistically to be as more of a role player and with significantly fewer minutes. Who knows what some of the other guys might do with more opportunity?
Again, I want to reiterate, that this is absolutely nothing personal, I’d love to see him be a sharpshooter off the bench or get it figured out to the point that he could start, but as it stands today, he should be seeing less PT in favor of more productive guys.