The Numbers Crunch: The Wizards defeat the Toronto Raptors with a solid team effort for their second straight victory.

Stats, analysis, commentary.

The Washington Wizards depended on Kyle Kuzma to lead the way in their victory over the Sacramento Kings last Thursday, with the rest of the team contributing just enough to seal the deal. For the third time this season, the team overcame Kuzma’s difficult game to win their second straight game against the Toronto Raptors.

Try not to grow too attached to this one. The Raptors are much more crippled by injuries than the Wizards have been over the past week or so, having lost two of their best players early in the season (since the club wasn’t all that good even with them). Immanuel Quickley (personal reasons), RJ Barrett (personal reasons), Chris Boucher (knee), Jakob Poeltl (thumb), Scottie Barnes (hand), and even a few more backup players were not present for this game.

Brian Keefe, the temporary head coach of the Wizards, did not have a full deck either. Tyus Jones (back), Bilal Coulibaly (wrist), Landry Shamet (calf), Eugene Omoruyi (ankle), and Isaiah Livers (hip) were out for the Wizards.

Marvin Bagley III returned to Washington, and Tristan Vukcevic, a 2023 second-round pick, made his NBA debut.

After the Recitation of Woes, the remaining players got into their suits and engaged in a real game. The entire time, it was quite close. When the Raptors’ advantage reached 11 points in the third quarter, it looked as though they would blow the game open, but with 4:52 remaining, Washington stormed back and regained the lead with a three-pointer from Corey Kispert.

A number of Jordan Poole’s trademark awful shots and perplexing blunders were made available. In addition, he recorded 12 assists against just 3 turnovers and 3 steals. Although this was one of his best performances while wearing a Wizards uniform, he still has a few simple things to work on to significantly increase his output.

Although Deni Avdija only had a 50.0% effective field goal percentage (8-19 from the floor and 3-8 from three), he was able to defend, drive the game, attack the paint (six free throws, though he only made three), pull down 13 rebounds, including three offensive rebounds, and dish out five assists.

With Avdija and four bench players, the Wizards held their own for the first few minutes of the fourth quarter. With his deft passing and strong defensive play, he took the lead.

I won’t disagree with you if you believe Richaun Holmes was the Wizards’ greatest player last night. With 15 points on 6-9 shooting and 14 rebounds, including 7 offensive rebounds, he was unstoppable inside. Raptors center Kelly Olynyk almost gave up trying to contain Holmes’ strength and physicality as he was unable to keep him off the glass.

Kispert took two sets of shots: four from deep and seven from the floor. Although I felt his defense was questionable and he didn’t create any opportunities for baskets or rebounds, effective scoring is important, particularly in a game where both teams had offensive difficulties.

In his 16 minutes after returning from back spasms, Bagley grabbed 8 rebounds and added a few blocks.

Johnny Davis played a good defensive game and broke loose for a few baskets. Until he can improve his shot, this is most likely the blueprint for whatever future success he may have as an NBA player.

With 16 points on 7–18 shooting, including 0–3 from outside the arc and 2-4 from the free throw line, Kuzma had a terrible game. He also committed four fouls and four turnovers. That’s a lot of drawbacks to go beyond. He did provide five assists and nine defensive rebounds.

Vukcevic played in his first NBA game for three minutes. All that can be said about his rebounding is that he grabbed it.

Four Elements

Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

Stats & Metrics

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 114.8. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by former Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points” is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.

Stats & Metrics: Wizards

WIZARDS	MIN	POSS	ORTG	USG	+PTS	PPA	GmSC	+/-
Jordan Poole	38	80	124	22.1%	1.6	156	28.0	7
Deni Avdija	36	76	114	25.2%	-0.2	147	24.7	0
Richaun Holmes	28	60	136	19.8%	2.4	174	23.1	7
Corey Kispert	33	70	131	15.7%	1.7	127	19.8	-1
Marvin Bagley III	16	35	132	20.6%	1.2	218	16.8	1
Johnny Davis	17	36	147	6.6%	0.8	121	9.8	6
Jared Butler	20	42	90	18.3%	-1.9	14	1.3	5
Patrick Baldwin Jr.	11	23	61	14.4%	-1.8	13	0.7	-1
Tristan Vukcevic	3	6		0.0%	0.0	43	0.6	-2
Justin Champagnie	3	6	50	19.6%	-0.8	-53	0.0	-3
Kyle Kuzma	34	72	77	27.2%	-7.5	-46	0.0	-4

Stats & Metrics: Raptors

RAPTORS	MIN	POSS	ORTG	USG	+PTS	PPA	GmSC	+/-
Gary Trent Jr.	34	73	113	32.9%	-0.6	142	23.0	5
Ochai Agbaji	32	68	102	18.8%	-1.8	121	18.2	-2
Gradey Dick	34	71	131	15.2%	1.7	89	14.0	-7
Kelly Olynyk	32	68	114	23.7%	-0.3	91	13.8	3
Jahmi’us Ramsey	18	38	167	10.2%	2.0	128	10.9	9
Garrett Temple	11	23	175	8.5%	1.2	132	6.7	0
Bruce Brown	33	69	83	22.8%	-5.0	26	4.0	-6
Javon Freeman-Liberty	23	49	74	17.8%	-3.6	24	2.6	-7
Mouhamadou Gueye	7	16	200	4.7%	0.6	70	2.4	-9
Jordan Nwora	16	33	87	19.8%	-1.9	8	0.6	-1