Washington Wizards: Where the team stacks up in terms of depth

The Washington Wizards have had issues with their depth for years now. Is this year any different? For the most part no. In fact, it might even be worse.

Here is a look at how many players each NBA team has with plus/minus rating of +1.0 or better:

Toronto Raptors: 14
Golden State Warriors: 13
Boston Celtics: 10
San Antonio Spurs: 10
Oklahoma City Thunder: 9
Houston Rockets: 9
Portland Trail Blazers: 8
Utah Jazz: 8
Detroit Pistons: 7
Cleveland Cavaliers: 6
Minnesota Timberwolves: 6
Atlanta Hawks: 5
Brooklyn Nets: 5
Los Angeles Clippers: 5
Memphis Grizzlies: 5
Dallas Mavericks: 5
Milwaukee Bucks: 5
New York Knicks: 5
Washington Wizards: 5
Denver Nuggets: 4
Indiana Pacers:  4
Philadelphia 76ers: 4
Charlotte Hornets: 3
Miami Heat: 3
New Orleans Pelicans: 3
Sacramento Kings: 3
Los Angeles Lakers: 2
Orlando Magic: 1
Phoenix Suns: 1
Chicago Bulls: 0

While this isn’t the number one indicator of a good or bad team, it is helpful in figuring out where a team stacks up against the rest of the league.

Perhaps the first and most obvious deduction from this breakdown is how deep a team is. While there are some exceptions to the rule, generally the more players a team has with a net positive rating, the deeper their team goes.

For instance, the Toronto Raptors, who sit atop the league with 14 players on their roster with a plus/minus of at least +1.0, have gotten some fantastic performances from their bench this year. The likes of Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby have made the Raptors one of the deepest team in the league. In fact, all of the Raptors best plus/minus lineups include one of those three players.

In this aspect, the Washington Wizards are right about where most of us would expect them to be: almost dead in the middle. Five players with a +1.0 plus/minus seems to be the middle ground for most of the NBA. A total of eight NBA teams have five players with a plus/minus over +0.9. What might come as a shock to a Wizards fan is that those five players aren’t the usual starting lineup. The fifth man of the group is Jason Smith, who has only played in nine games this season.

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This is why these numbers can be a bit misleading. Jason Smith is averaging under 10 minutes per game this season, barely enough time to really make an impact on the game. For that reason, it’s tough to really say he really helps the team at all. So if we exclude Jason Smith, the Wizards are left with four players fitting the category: John Wall, Bradley Beal, Otto Porter Jr. and Marcin Gortat. Four players puts them tied for 20th according to this criteria.

What this breakdown can also do well is show just how devastating an injury can be to a team. John Wall, who has missed six games now with injury, is the leading guy on the Washington Wizards in terms of plus/minus with a +6.2. That puts him tied for 22nd in the league.

If we take out the injured Wall and discount Jason Smith, the Wizards are now looking at three players with a plus/minus of +1.0 or higher. This would tie for 23rd in the league. Of the teams that would be underneath them, only the New Orleans Pelicans would make the playoffs as an 8-seed if the regular season ended right now.

What this criteria doesn’t account for are things like strength of schedule, minutes per game and probably most importantly, mean plus/minus score per positive players. The Oklahoma City Thunder are most likely much higher than anyone projected to be considering their record. Most people would argue that trading for Paul George and Carmelo Anthony destroyed their depth.

But if you look at their numbers, Nick Collison leads the team with a +5.3 plus/minus. He’s only played in three games this season. Regardless of minutes, the Thunder have a mean plus/minus of +3.1, which is incredibly low when looking at a team with the same number of players in the Houston Rockets, who have a mean plus/minus of +14.0. For reference, the Wizards have a mean plus/minus of +3.3, which is on the lower side for sure.

Next: 2017-18 Week 8 NBA Power Rankings

When all is said and done, this is a long-winded way of saying that the Wizards are a bottom-third team without John Wall and that the team may have actually lost depth from the 2016-17 NBA season. This will be something that will probably become more of a problem once the playoffs come around and starting lineups see more minutes. The team desperately needs Kelly Oubre Jr. or Markieff Morris to step up and become positive players on the floor.