The Bulls just lost to the Magic, it's after 11pm, and I'm drunk. Let's look up some fucking stats.
John Lucas III hasn't been awful this season. I've always just assumed he was just a shitty, undersized chucker, but this season he has filled his position relatively well in a time of need with Rose and C.J. missing sizable chunks of the season. In the random arbitrary number of 20 minutes played (6 games), JLIII has averaged 13.2 PPG on 48% eFG%. Pretty okay, right? The Bulls are 4-2 in those games, which is also pretty okay. But how much better is C.J.?
The easiest way to compare the two is just a straight head to head comparison of the two. Lucas has actually played in two more games than Watson this year (29-27, Lucas starting 2 games and Watson starting 8), but Watson has played 237 more minutes.
The per game comparison looks like this:
| Player | G | GS | MP | FG | FGA | FG% | 3P | 3PA | 3P% | FT | FTA | FT% | ORB | DRB | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Lucas | 29 | 2 | 11.9 | 2.1 | 5.6 | .383 | 0.8 | 1.8 | .431 | 0.5 | 0.6 | .824 | 0.4 | 0.9 | 1.3 | 1.7 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 5.5 |
| C.J. Watson | 27 | 8 | 21.5 | 3.4 | 8.5 | .400 | 1.4 | 3.3 | .432 | 1.6 | 2.0 | .796 | 0.4 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 1.7 | 1.9 | 9.8 |
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
C.J. looks like the obvious favorite here. This doesn't exactly tell the whole picture though. C.J.'s higher minutes per game yield higher per game numbers (obviously). Yes I think C.J. is the better player thus justifying him getting more minutes, but let's take a look at each player's per-36 numbers.
C.J. looks like the obvious favorite here. This doesn't exactly tell the whole picture though. C.J.'s higher minutes per game yield higher per game numbers (obviously). Yes I think C.J. is the better player thus justifying him getting more minutes, but let's take a look at each player's per-36 numbers.
