New Orleans Hornets 2012-13 Power Rankings – Week 7

Another four games for the Hornets over the past seven days, with three of them coming on the road. The team suffered a tough, close loss in Oklahoma City, a double digit loss at home to Minnesota, a buzzer-beater defeat in Portland, and at Golden State. Here are this week’s rankings with so many Hornets players struggling to achieve consistent production.


*Week 7


1) Ryan Anderson, PF - 23 GP, 33.3 MPG, 60.0 TS%, 17.7% DRR, 5.6% TOR, .168 WS/48, 21.6 PER; Last Week: 1

Career high true shooting percentage + career low turnover rate = career high PER and overall production that would be deserving of an all-star nomination if the game were to be played tomorrow. Chalk last night’s zero rebound performance up as an aberration, one that is even more surprising given his free throw total in that game (8).
2) Robin Lopez, C - 23 GP, 26.3 MPG, 10.3% ORR, 56.7 TS%, 12.0% TOR, .111 WS/48, 19.1 PER; Last Week: 2

His defensive rebounding has been downright horrid as of late, but Lopez has been a solid contributor otherwise when called upon. His play would not be worthy of a #2 ranking on nearly any other team, but on this Hornets team (at least until Davis gets closer in total minutes played), it’s enough. The Hornets’ coaching staff really needs to get him to work on his effort on the defensive glass, or he could become difficult to play despite his success from an offensive perspective.
3) Greivis Vasquez, PG*– 23 GP, 33.3 MPG, 48.2 TS%, 13.2% DRR, 34.8% AR,* 13.5% TOR, .020 WS/48, 14.2 PER; Last Week: 4

Despite more turnover woes, Greivis played well enough to reclaim his spot in the top three. The turnovers are sometimes forgivable due to how often he is charged with creating offense for this team, but another area in which he has really struggled is defense. Despite his height and length, he struggles to stay in front of opposing point guards who are even just a little faster than he is. Offensively though, apart from the turnovers, not a bad week at all for Vasquez.
4)*Anthony Davis, PF*– 10 GP, 28.5 MPG, 57.7 TS%, 21.3% DRR, 11.8% TOR, 0.161 WS/48, 23.0 PER; Last Week: 5

It’s downright amazing how efficiently Davis is scoring just 11 games into his rookie season; over his past three games, he has totaled 41 points on just 22 shots. Add that to his impressive outing from last night (16 of the team’s 33 total rebounds and a team-leading 4 steals), and it looks like he’s finally getting back into a groove after returning from his foot injury. It’ll be fun to see what he can do against Blake Griffin and the Clippers tonight.
5) Jason Smith, PF - 21 GP, 17.7 MPG, 50.9 TS%, 7.6% ORR, 12.2% TOR, .055 WS/48, 15.2 PER; Last Week: 3

After injuring his right shoulder in Oklahoma City last Wednesday, Smith will be out at least another week, if not more. Given the Hornets’ front court depth, there isn’t any reason to rush him back to action.
6) Brian Roberts, PG - 23 GP, 16.6 MPG, 53.0 TS%, 23.7% AR, 9.59% TOR, .070 WS/48, 16.4 PER; Last Week: 7

Roberts started off the most recent 4-game stretch averaging 12.5 points on 11 shots in 24.5 minutes in the first two games, but finished it with a total of just 18 minutes over his last two. I’m not quite sure that I understand the drop in minutes for Brian, but hopefully it’s just a blip, because Roger Mason Jr. certainly should not be getting 14 more minutes than him (which is what happened in Portland on Sunday night). Otherwise, Roberts continues to keep the turnovers down, posting an assist/turnover ratio of 5.0 over his past 5 games.
7) Al-Farouq Aminu, SF - 22 GP, 28.2 MPG, 50.9 TS%, 21.9% DRR, 13.5% AR, 17.2% TOR, .029 WS/48, 12.8 PER; Last Week: 6

It’s starting to look like Coach Williams is getting fed up with Aminu. Though he has been posting elite defensive rebounding numbers for his position recently, he has failed to do much else to earn the respect of his coaching staff, resulting in his total of 12 minutes over the past two games. If someone could teach him some ball control, he may still have some value to another team, but he appears to be less and less a part of the Hornets’ future plans as each day passes.
8) Austin Rivers, SG - 22 GP, 28.4 MPG, 44.1 TS%, 21.3% AR, 10.6% TOR, -0.026 WS/48, 6.4 PER; Last Week: 10
Big scoring efficiency jump for Rivers, as he raised his true shooting percentage almost a full 4% from his 40.3% mark last week. He seems to be figuring things out a lot better on offense, especially in terms of what is and isn’t within his talent level. Production in other areas of the game still has to come, but he is definitely trending upward at this point.
9) Lance Thomas, F -*17 GP, 12.1 MPG, 52.8 TS%, 10.9% ORR, 4.7% TOR, .107 WS/48, 13.3 PER; Last Week: 8

With Aminu on the bench, Thomas drew the start last night at small forward and held his own, making both of his field goal attempts in 20 minutes of action. He’ll need to be more active on the glass in order to keep getting those kind of minutes, but as long as he does a good job on defense and isn’t taking shots that he shouldn’t take, he’ll keep playing.
10) Roger Mason Jr., SG - 21 GP, 20.2 MPG, 53.0 TS%, 11.6% DRR, 16.6% AR, 10.6% TOR, .027 WS/48, 8.5 PER; Last Week: 9

After receiving as many minutes as the Mason writing this column in the first two games of this past week, Roger recorded 35 minutes in the most recent two and scored a whopping one point per 5 minutes. Add that to no real other quantifiable contributions and you have one very confused writer about why he keeps playing.
11) Darius Miller, SF - 21 GP, 14.1 MPG, 51.0 TS%, 30.4% AR, 11.6% TOR, .040 WS/48, 6.5 PER; Last Week: 11

There are some good signs from Miller; his 36.4% 3-point percentage suggests that he should be able to develop a reliable shot from long range, and his assist rate of over 30% implies good court vision. However, he really needs consistent minutes for us to determine whether or not he can sustain a reputable NBA career, and I continue to be stumped in regards to why this is not being allowed to occur.
12) Xavier Henry, SG - 15 GP, 13.8 MPG, 46.4 TS%, 13.8% DRR, 10.7% TOR, -.014 WS/48, 9.2 PER; Last Week: 12

The two numbers that you need to know from Henry this week are 10 and 5. He took 10 total shots, scoring 10 points on those shots, while also adding 5 rebounds and 5 turnovers in that 33 minute span. The dude just isn’t a credible NBA player.
13) Dominic McGuire, SF - 1 GP, 11.0 MPG, 25.5 TS%, 21.6% TRR, 14.5% TOR, -.221 WS/48, 6.1 PER; Last Week: NR
For those who know nothing about the Hornets’ most recent addition, he is a defense-first, 6’9″ SF who passes and rebounds decently for his position. The one thing he does not do, however, is score. As a result, his PER or other scoring efficiency numbers will never be very high, but he should hold his own in some of the secondary statistical areas. He habitually produces an insanely low usage rate, so don’t hold his seemingly low per-game averages against him. It’s pretty clear that he was added to push the team’s current wings and ensure they are giving maximum effort on a nightly basis.
NR) Eric Gordon, SG -Last Week: NR

All season long, these player power rankings will be presented alongside various*“advanced stats”*in order to more accurately evaluate each Hornets player’s impact (click here for a glossary of the statistic abbreviations). In addition,*we also have created a chart*with the goal of standardizing advanced stat categories to distinguish the good numbers from the bad ones. Hopefully, these tools give each of you the means to comprehend the advanced statistical metrics used in these rankings as well as other columns throughout Hornets247.com.
For historical power rankings,*click here.

All stats were obtained from Hoopdata.com and are retroactive to before Tuesday night’s game against Golden State. WS/48 stats are a product of Basketball-Reference.com.


More...