Executive Summary
July 2015 marks the time when the Toronto Raptors will have six free agents on the team. In light of the fact that the center position is considered the most important position combined with the fact that the two center players that have been signed are rookies, there is an implicit problem facing Dwane Casey as well as the managers of the only Canadian basketball team in the NBA. That problem is what to offer Greg Stiemsma, the senior most center player currently playing for the Raptors, as an annual salary so that he signs with the Raptors for the upcoming season. Salaries in the NBA are restricted by the CBA by means of a salary cap system that works in …show more content…
During his time playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves he seemed to be creating more opportunities with an exceptionally high number of field goals attempted, 46% of which were successful. In that same year, ’12-’13, Stiemsma made a personal record high of free throws attempted of which 77% were successful. Between the ’11-’12 season and the ’13-’14 season the annual number of points for Stiemsma was 161, 307, 159 respectively; ’14-’15 season has yet to come to an end. Given his improvement of both scoring efficiency and shooting efficiency in the ongoing season, it looks to be a promising year. The most commonly used metric used to measure the performance of an individual player in professional basketball is efficiency (EFF), which is the sum of the points, rebounds, assists and blocks per game minus unsuccessful field goals and unsuccessful free throws minus turnovers all divided by the number of games played. i.e. EFF= [PTS + RBS + AST + STL + BLK - Missed FG – Missed FT – TO]/GP. While the individual metrics that comprise the EFF metric are available for Stiemsma, and other players, the EFF itself is not included in his career statistics. There exists an alternative metric to the EFF measurement known as the Player Efficiency Rating (PER), which is a rating of statistical performance developed by John Hollinger; this would have come in useful if it weren’t too excluded from the summary of players’ statistics. Likely this measurement is not listed given its several limitations. One key limitation is that it primarily measures offensive performance thus not applicable to a major portion of the game as well as unevenly values players if it were used as a principle comparison measurement. In terms of points per game, Stiemsma averages a 3.2 overall well below