wizenheimer
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It's honestly just as surprising to me that people are valuing Randle as a star. I'm not the biggest fan of CJ, but Randle was the definition of empty stats before this season. I feel like the optimism with him would fade quickly once you see him in Stotts's defensive schemes.
just how is it that Randle has empty stats and CJ doesn't?
Portland was 7-5 before CJ's injury, and are 11-6 since the injury. CJ has had two stretches of consecutive missed games over the last 3 seasons; 16 this season and 10 in 2018-19. In those 26 games Portland is 19-7. That's a .731 winning percentage which translates to 60 wins in an 82 game season. And 26 games is the kind of sample size that would tend to mitigate home/road and playoff-team/lottery-team skew
sure looks like Portland is as good, if not better, with Dame as the center of the core than with Dame/CJ as the center of the core
I've seen people say in this forum that Randle is playing way above his norms this season so you can't trust it. At the same time they will set CJ's value as that of what he did in just 12 games this season instead of his career norms. But Randle has been doing it for 26 games while CJ only did it for 12 games. But even that is inaccurate because in terms of PER, TS%, rebound rate, usage rate, and winshares, Randle has posted equivalent numbers before. The only two areas he's significantly upgraded over norms is assist rate and 3 point percentage. Assist rate is explained by an expanded role (and he increased his assists by 63% while keeping his turnover rate the same). CJ was playing much further above his norms than Randle is, meaning CJ is more likely to regress
I do think you should be skeptical of Randle's 3 pt shooting rate though
I'm not saying empty stats don't exist. I am saying I've never seen anybody come up with a consistent method of identifying empty stats. JJ Hickson had empty stats. I don't think Randle and him are equivalent


