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I've been debating with (and mostly getting spat upon by) people in the comments and a couple of message boards about where I ranked Hedo Turkoglu in yesterday's post. Consistently, I'm being told that I'm severely underestimating Turkoglu's value was as a "point forward" for the Magic.
Nobody talked about Turkoglu as an impact player until he won the Most Improved Player Award in 2007-08. Over the past two seasons, he's averaged 4.9 assists (in '07-08) and 4.8 assists (in '08-09) per 36 minutes, which is unquestionably impressive for a forward. Looking at last season's assist per game leaders, the only player ahead of Turkoglu who played the majority of his minutes as a forward was Andre Iguodala — who is really a shooting guard playing out of position. Turkoglu is six-foot-10 and obviously uniquely talented as a playmaker.
On the Magic, it made sense to have Turkoglu play a point forward role because Jameer Nelson wasn't strictly a "pass-first" point guard and was also talented enough as a scorer that he could benefit from having another player setting him up. On the Raptors, Jose Calderon is very much a pass-first PG and he was fourth in the league in assists per 36 last season. However, many Calderon detractors believe that Jose's assist numbers are inflated because he happens to be surrounded by good shooters. Does this we should hand over the offence to Turkoglu in 2009-10?
I think this would be something very interesting to experiment with in pre-season, particularly because I'd like to see what would happen if Jay Triano told Calderon to develop more of a shoot-first mentality. Even in a season marred by injury, Calderon finished ninth in the NBA in True Shooting Percentage (a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws) last season. We've all witnessed how deadly accurate his shot has become over the past two seasons, and yet Jose only took 9.9 shot attempts per 36 minutes last season — the only rotation player with fewer FGAs per 36 was Jamario Moon.
To be clear, I understand that you can't just tell a player to shoot more simply because he has a high rate of efficiency and automatically expect his success rate to be maintained with the extra attempts — we learned this the hard way with Jason Kapono. But when I looked at games last season where Calderon took 12 or more shot attempts (compared to his season average of 9.5 attempts per game), the results were very intriguing. In 15 games where he jacked up 12 or more shots (he never took more than 15 attempts in a game), he shot .518 from the field and .452 from three-point range, averaging 17.5 points per game. His season per-game averages were .497, .408 and 12.8 points per game.
Did Jose shoot more in those games because his shots were going in more? Some of you will probably make that case, but I don't buy it. Say what you will about Jose, but he's not lacking in confidence and I don't think he typically thinks, "I'm not feeling it this game." I just think he typically considers it his primary responsibility to set up scoring opportunities for his team-mates. That's an admirable instinct, but I'm increasingly hoping he develops more of a selfish instinct and just looks for his own damn shot more.
This is where Turkoglu comes in. Let Turkoglu run the offence, keep Bosh as the first scoring option, and then treat Bargnani and Calderon as options 2A and 2B. All three of them are far deadlier pure scorers than Turkoglu and this strategy could potentially put the Raptors' top four offensive players in their best roles to help the team succeed.
With all this firepower, it seems impossible that the Raptors will repeast last season's dismal Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions) that ranked 22rd in the league. Let's let Hedo work that "point forward voodoo" and unleash Jose's inner scoring beast. I want to see a lot more of this next season...
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