FanPost

The Rubio Effect

First sorry for the formatting issues, I have no idea how it decides to format stuff but I did my best to at least make it readable. I'm not necessarily trying to draw conclusions with this post but let the numbers speak for themselves and hopefully generate some discussion.

This is simply the impact he has on the team and game. Unfortunately Rubio got hurt and the season went downhill but I thought it would be interesting to look at what really changed with the team after the injury. To do this I took the hoopdata basic team stats and looked at the per game averages during different periods of the season. Originally I broke the season into two sections: with Rubio and without Rubio. The last few games of the season were pretty bad so I decided to break the "without Rubio" section into two more sections for people to compare: with Love and without Love.

Here's the basic info:

Pts Against Pts For Difference Wins Losses Games
w/ rubio 96.32 98.05 1.73 21 20 41
w/o rubio 106.00 98.36 -7.64 5 20 25
w/ love 107.44 100.78 -6.67 4 14 18
w/o rubio/love 102.29 92.14 -10.14 1 6 7

Slightly more in-depth info:

w/ rubio w/o rubio w/ love w/o rubio/love
Game Log Poss 95.49 97.12 97.50 96.14
OffEff 102.53 101.08 103.21 95.61
DefEff 101.17 108.85 109.96 105.99
Diff 1.36 -7.77 -6.76 -10.37
EFG% Own 47.74 47.80 48.77 45.31
Opp 48.06 50.77 51.20 49.67
Diff -0.32 -2.97 -2.43 -4.36
TOR Own 16.24 14.94 15.05 14.64
Opp 14.57 12.50 12.40 12.74
Diff 1.66 2.44 2.65 1.90
ORR Own 28.53 25.83 27.27 22.11
Opp 26.68 27.12 26.17 29.57
Diff 1.85 -1.29 1.11 -7.46
FTR Own 32.75 28.16 26.66 32.03
Opp 26.06 23.58 25.53 18.57
Diff 6.69 4.58 1.13 13.46



Shot location info:

w/ rubio w/o rubio w/ love w/o rubio/love
At Rim FGM 15.98 16.76 17.06 16.00
FGA 25.27 27.08 26.56 28.43
AFGM 8.15 8.16 8.11 8.29
eFG% 61.66 62.41 64.78 56.31
3-9 Feet FGM 3.68 3.72 3.67 3.86
FGA 10.46 10.84 11.33 9.57
AFGM 1.27 1.68 1.67 1.71
eFG% 35.81 34.58 33.16 38.24
10-15 Feet FGM 1.93 2.00 1.89 2.29
FGA 5.85 6.00 5.61 7.00
AFGM 0.66 0.68 0.61 0.86
eFG% 31.00 34.14 35.47 30.71
16-23 Feet FGM 6.98 6.00 6.28 5.29
FGA 18.95 15.92 16.39 14.71
AFGM 3.07 3.56 3.50 3.71
eFG% 36.51 37.83 38.44 36.27
Threes FGM 6.78 7.80 8.44 6.14
FGA 20.12 23.92 25.06 21.00
AFGM 5.83 6.36 7.00 4.71
eFG% 49.70 48.76 50.72 43.70

The most obvious:
Rubio's biggest impact on the team comes on defense, the 10 point difference in points against says it all. With Rubio was the only part of the season where we had a positive point differential, it was also the wolves lowest average points per game, this trend is also seen with the difference in offensive and defensive efficiency. Also the opponents TOR dropped without Rubio which I believe is a direct result of Rubio's ability to get in passing lanes and get steals.

The most shocking:
Rubio has almost no impact on offense, I think this has more to do with how well Ridnour played after Rubio got hurt and how well JJ played when Ridnour got hurt. We did have less possessions with Rubio which comes from his ability to know when to push it and when to slow it down, something that's not a strength of Ridnour and JJ. Aside from that the offense would appear to run smoother without Rubio: roughly identical efg%, less turnovers, less long twos, and even slightly less assists. My theory on the lower assists comes from the increases FTR, perhaps this was a result of some of his setups which didn't end with an assist.