The mantra coming from the fan base of the Toronto Raptors – and its front office, too – is that the Raptors are a deep team and that depth will cause severe match-up difficulties with the opponents' reserves.

After three exhibition games, however, the Raptors were looking about as deep as a puddle.  And the major source of that supposed depth, the wing positions, are causing major concern for the future of this team.  Looking at their offensive efficiency numbers, their failure to date is rather striking:

Player	PtsPrd/Gm	%TmPs	ORat
TJ Ford	16.3	27.4%	128.1
Chris Bosh	16.1	30.8%	107.2
Andrea Bargnani	14.0	30.4%	108.4
Jose Calderon	10.2	22.0%	121.4
Jorge Garbajosa	9.5	16.7%	124.5
Jason Kapono	9.1	19.9%	109.0
Rasho Nesterovic	7.6	14.9%	122.4
Anthony Parker	4.8	12.0%	98.7
Carlos Delfino	4.3	12.2%	89.5
Kris Humphries	4.1	26.5%	92.3
Jamario Moon	4.0	24.9%	67.0
Joey Graham	3.4	15.9%	78.2
Juan Dixon	3.4	14.6%	71.2
Luke Jackson	2.5	28.0%	69.0
Maceo Baston	0.5	39.2%	8.9

To briefly explain, what's being described in this chart is some basic offensive production numbers. "Points produced per game" is a metric that measures how much individual responsibiilty in the offensive production a player is contributing. It is a weighted measure that divvies up credit for assists and field goals, and assigns credit for offensive rebounds (which explains how Maceo Baston can have credit for producing .5 point, when he has scored 0 points so far). "%TmPs" stands for "percentage of team possessions" – meaning, what percentage of the team possessions did an individual use while he was on the floor? This is a rough way of measuring how much of the offensive load an individual has to carry. As you can see, Ford, Bargnani and Bosh bear the brunt of the offensive load for this team while they're on the floor. Lastly, "ORat" is the "offensive rating", meaning, how many points does an individual produce per 100 individual possessions? (Individual possessions, just like individual points produced, are also weighted and divvied up so that the team offense is a zero-sum statistical game: 2 points is only two points, and the players sharing credit never exceed the amount of the score.) To give an idea of the numbers, last year's average in the NBA was 106.2.

‘The disappointments so far for the Raptors, offensively, have been their wing production.’

So what does this tell us? Ford, in particular, has been both remarkably efficient and productive with a large offensive load to shoulder. Last year, he was notoriously inefficient (ORat = 103), but as you can see, this year to date he has really been a night-and-day player as far as the Raptors' offense is concerned. Calderon and Garbajosa have both been quite efficient, although Garbo's offensive load has not been that substantial. Calderon's efficiency isn't much of a surprise, but the extremely offensively-handicapped Garbajosa's is. Last year, he was one of the least efficient players on the team (Orat = 101). Another pleasant surprise is Nesterovic, who has both increased his production, usage, and efficiency from last year.

The disappointments so far for the Raptors, offensively, have been their wing production. Kapono has been passably efficent, although somewhat off his pace of last year, but Parker, Delfino, Graham, Dixon, Jackson and Moon have all been terrible. In fact, apart from Nesterovic, Garbajosa and Calderon, the bench has been mostly a large flop for the Raptors so far, challenging the fans' premature confidence in their depth, the myth being that it is the "depth" that will carry the Raptors over Boston and New Jersey in the Atlantic division. So far, the numbers show that if the Raptors want to make a deep run, it will be on the strength of the production of Ford, Bosh and Bargnani, with supporting contributions coming from a few complimentary players, and not the broad contribution that the Raptors' fanbase imagines that its bench is capable of putting up.

To the Raptors' credit, though, their key players are distributing the possessions around rather wisely. Very few of their key players are using a lot of possessions and not producing. Both Parker and Delfino, who have not been creating offense for others nor shooting particularly well, are mostly refusing to use a lot of possessions, deferring to the more efficient and productive players. This is why their team offensive rating (106.3 points per 100 possessions) is mostly unchanged from last year (107.0), despite extremely weak performances from Parker (who was the Raptors' most efficient player last year) and the bench. The fact that Bargnani and Ford have both seemingly improved dramatically obviously helps offset some of the loss of bench production from last year, as well.