Ray and D.J. – Early Season Check-In

With the Charlotte Bobcats about to kick off a home and home back to back with the New York Knicks, this seemed like a relevant time to check-in on how D.J. Augustin was doing replacing the production of Raymond Felton.  Off the cuff, without looking at numbers, it “feels” like D.J. has done a solid job matching Ray’s offensive output from years past (maybe a little more efficiently) and, while holding his own on D, coming up a little short of Felton’s defensive prowess.  The Bobcats have had to hide D.J. a bit defensively, with Stephen Jackson largely taking the task of guarding Deron Williams when Utah came to Charlotte, and Shaun Livingston getting big minutes in the second half as the Cats tried to come back in Miami this past weekend.  Respectable – not great, but not groan-inducing, season-sinking either.

Now, with some quick subjective observations laying a base to go from, time for a look at some more objective numbers – a great time to bring out the swap tool – D.J Augustin and Raymond Felton Swapped – there’s the link to try some other swaps or to pass along.  Here are the results with some interspersed thoughts:

And I was thinking D.J. was doing a pretty good job replicating Raymond’s offensive output – but compared to this year’s Ray, it’s offensively where D.J. falls short, not on defense. With both players managing about a point per possession used, it’s impressive that Ray is putting up an extra 5 points without decreasing efficiency. And no offense, but that’s not exactly how I remember Raymond performing in CLT. So, I looked back at last year’s stats – and I was right – last year was a career year – and his early season this year indicates Ray is well on his way to an even better one.

What to make of this? Well, maybe Raymond Felton is a better fit in a faster offense like D’Antoni’s in New York – or maybe Ray’s 35 points on 17 attempts night against Golden State recently is inflating his stats and they’ll drop a bit closer to his career norms as the season progresses. For now, Ray’s last season in CLT is quite comparable to D.J.’s current work – but Ray is making the swap look a little bad by producing even more and more efficiently than ever.

Here’s how Ray’s stats project into the Bobcats current team:

5 wins over the course of the season – and with Ray making $7million to D.J.’s $2.5mil (thank you ShamSports.com), at a cost of about $900k a win.  But’s that only if the Raymond (and D.J.) were playing every minute of the game.  Really, the impact on wins is decreased by the fact that Ray would only be in for a chunk of the game.  Here’s the final table from the swap:

Borderline playoffs in the East with Ray – at home with D.J. So far – we’ll see if that holds up for the year as the Bobcats have a chance over the next 2 weeks to improve their record a bit, and the last 2 games both showed some promise for better things ahead.