http://clipperblog.com/2012/09/03/the-chris-paul-bump/

The Chris Paul Bump
Posted by D.J. Foster on September 3, 2012 at 4:09 pm

When evaluating the offseason for the Clippers, it’s become commonplace to assume that every player will see a “bump” in their production, simply because they’ll be playing next to Chris Paul. This requires little explanation — Paul is one of the best “pure” point guards to ever grace the floor, and by definition, he makes everything easier on his teammates.

The question isn’t whether Chris Paul helps his teammates, it’s how much he helps his teammates. That’s a tricky thing to quantify for a variety of reasons (coaching, other teammates, injuries, etc.), but let’s give it a shot.

With apologies to Kirk Snyder and Devin Brown, let’s start in 2007-2008, when New Orleans had a regular starting shooting guard (Morris Peterson) and Paul was entering his third year and playing at a level similar to how he is now.

This was the year the Hornets went 56-26 and finished one game away from reaching the Western Conference Finals. You may remember Morris Peterson from his Flintstone days at Michigan State, or from his time next to Vince Carter in Toronto. At 30 years old in 2007-08, Peterson was on his last legs, but it didn’t stop him from starting all 76 games he played in.

Here’s what Morris Peterson did in his season sharing a backcourt with Paul:

Shot a career-best 39.4 percent from the 3-point line
Posted a near career-low in free throw attempts per-36 minutes
Recorded his third-best True Shooting Percentage at 54.9 percent
In Paul’s next season with the Hornets, Rasual Butler would assume the starting shooting guard position for the Hornets. In addition to being quite possibly the worst interview in professional sports, Butler was a volume shooter from behind the arc. Still the Clippers’ single-season record holder for most 3-pointers made, Butler earned his future playing time for his performance during the 2008-09 season, his first as a regular starter next to Paul. For continuity, we’ll only judge Rasual Butler’s seasons where he played over 700 minutes (8 seasons total):

Highest career field goal percentage at 43.3 percent
Highest 3-point percentage at 39 percent
Best True Shooting Percentage at 54.1 percent
Highest career PER at 11.8
Since the Hornets trotted out Devin Brown, the corpse of Mo-Pete and a young Marcus Thornton in 2009-10 and more importantly, since Paul missed half of the year with injury, let’s move on to the 2010-11 season — Paul’s last in New Orleans.

Starting next to Paul in 69 games that year was Marco Belinelli — a guy getting his first chance at real starting time. Like Peterson and Butler before him, Marco Belinelli experienced the best percentages of his young career in the 2010-11 season.

Career-best 41.4 percent (!) from the 3-point line
Highet True Shooting Percentage at 56 percent
Second highest season PER at 12.1
Before we move on, let’s look at Paul’s backcourt mate for the majority of the season last year, Randy Foye.

Second best 3-point percentage at 38.6 percent
Career worst 1.8 FTA per 36-minutes
Second highest True Shooting Percentage at 52.2 percent
Through four years of players and data (Peterson, Butler, Belinelli, Foye), we can see that starting next to Paul provides a substantial “bump” in 3-point percentage and True Shooting Percentage. These four players often remained average or declined in free throw attempts per-36 minutes — a function of having the ball in their hands less and spending more time as a spot-up shooter.

Again though, we already knew that. Now let’s get to the good part — what is the exact “bump” in shooting percentages when starting next to Paul?

Here, we’ll find the combined 3-point shooting percentage for the four players (Peterson, Butler, Belinelli, Foye) in all of their non-Paul seasons. Then, we’ll compare that number to their combined percentage while starting next to Paul.

Without Paul: 36.1 percent from behind the arc (2144 3PM – 5924 3PA).

Starting next to Paul: 39.5 percent from behind the arc (514 3PM, 1299 3PA).

At least from this sample size of four players, the 3-point shooting percentage bump when playing next to Paul is a whopping 3.4 percent. That’s an incredible difference. The league average 3-point percentage for shooting guards last year was 35.8 percent, according to Hoopdata.com. What we can gather from this sample size (albeit limited) is that starting next to Paul can bump a player from being a league average 3-point shooter to a Top 10 guy at the shooting guard position.

Although this study has Stanley Roberts impersonating the Kool-Aid Man type holes, it gives you a general idea of the benefits that come from having an elite distributor at the point guard position.

Although it’s dangerous to automatically assume Jamal Crawford (for example) will leap to a 38.2 percent three-point shooter instead of a 34.8 percent shooter, you can reasonably accept that whoever starts next to Paul this season will receive that “Chris Paul bump” that’s very, very real.