Who is Lance Stephenson? (I don't know)

(This is more of a stream-of-consciousness post of how I got to my possible conclusion, do if you want to skip there rambling and cut to the chase, click here)

On Twitter Saturday morning the esteemed @TimDonahue8p9s asked who does Pacer Lance Stephenson compare to? My immediate and uninformed (Well, only informed by Lance's irrational confidence) made me think of J.R. Smith. However as Tim pointed out, that's a terrible comparison.

Tim Donahue ‏@TimDonahue8p9s21 Sep

@CowboyOnPatrol Lance got 43% of his looks in the RA, while JR only 21%. Lance's eFG% outside of RA was only 39.6%, JR's 48.9%

Tim and his stupid data was right. J.R. doesn't like to play in the restricted area. Let's look at the charts, shall we?
(Quick Note: I'm using the third season or career of every player to try to get a comparison for who and what Lance is and might become. I'll try to note which is used in each one.) 

J.R. Smith

Lance Stephenson

While the two have similar eFG% numbers (50.92 vs 50.97), Lances come from inside much more the J.R., and Smith likes to use his range.

You win Round 1, Tim.

So other than being knuckleheads and irrationally confident, J.R. and Lance are nowhere near the same player. Then who is Lance Stephen (potentially) going to be?

This isn't meant to be definitive, end-all, who-is-Lance, but maybe it gets us closer to it. I don't have SynergySports scouting and stats (yet), but this should help draw us closer.

With a quick jump to basketball-reference.com, we can see some the advanced numbers for Mr. Stephenson.

Here are some of the other suggested comparisons.

So instead of me taking some more wild guesses at this point we'll see who BR thinks Lance might be.

Smush Parker, Don Chaney, and Ernie Calverley pop up as possible suspects (through 3 years), even Jeremy Lin shows up as a career comparison.

Let's start by looking at the shot selection because that's where many of the suggestion begin to show cracks. Don Chaney, Ernie Calverley don't have shot charts available on NBAStats, but their TS% and eFG% are available. 

For their careers, Chaney his eFG and TS% is .482 and .427, while Calverley's are .388 and .291, so we can cross Ernie off the list. Chaney and Lance's rebounding are somewhat similar (7.7 to 7.4). There is a divide between their ORB% and DRB%. Lance's numbers are 2.4 and 12.2 vs Don's 7.4 and 8.0. However I will partially dismiss this because Lance isn't suppose to be a factor in the Pacers offensive rebounding at times. The Pacers use the bigs and the weak side wing to crash while the other drops back for transition defense, so Paul George and Stephenson's numbers are going to get hurt because some plays the aren't even trying to take part.

Both are also decent assist guys.with Chaney at 14.4 AST% compared to Lance's 16.7. Another thing is their STL% and USG% are exactly the same.
Enough Chaney for now, but his numbers are similar so let's keep that in mind.

Let's look a some of the other suggestions short charts with Lance in mind. Remember that Lance shoots almost half his shots in the restricted area, and about 17% from the right side from 24+ feet.

Jeremy Lin

Latrell Sprewell

Smush Parker

Tyreke Evans

At a glance, it looks like we can toss Spre because he both of the 8-16 feet areas to the right and left, where as Lance goes almost exclusively through the middle. Smush is gone because he wasn't jamming it through the middle all the time and shot a decent bit from range.

That leaves us with Lin and Evans so let's look at the numbers again, this time through three seasons.

Here is what I can see

• Stephenson is a better finisher, he shoots above the league average in the RA, where Lin and Evans are more close to the league average.
• One thing I notice is Lance has two-thirds as many shots from each man's third seasons. Tyreke and Jeremy shoot almost 900 times each, Lance shot 598 times. 
• Lin works in a the league's most fast pace team with Houston's 98.6 Pace, while the Evans worked in Sacramento's seventh ranked and 96.3 paced team. The Pacers were one of the league's slowest at 92.8. 
• Lance is the least used of the three. Lance is used on 15.2 of the Pacers possessions while Lin is used 20.8% and Evans 23.8. Even though Lance was part of the league's best 5-Man unit (+288), he was often the last option as far as usage tells us.
• Lance's assist percentage when he gets the ball is in the teens while Evan's and Lin's are in the mid and high 20's. Possessions end in Lance Stephenson.
• Even is you try to calibrate all the numbers with the Per 36 min stats, Jeremy and Evans still are doing more.

I'm going to be honest, all this isn't making it much clearer. He may take his shots from the same areas as Lin and Evans to a certain extent, but his role within the team is obviously different. As shooters they may be similar, but that isn't telling us much. I don't have some of the Synergy Stats that maybe could tell us more, but that isn't happening (yet). Chaney seemed to have similar numbers, but I don't have a shooting chart or anything to really tell me where those shots were coming from, and honestly, that's just a different era of basketball entirely, he shot one three in his NBA career. So let's go back to the modern era, with Lin, Evans and company.

Back to the charts!

Lance Stephenson

Jeremy Lin

Tyreke Evans

As you can see, Lance is a better shooter up the middle. He's above league average in shoot when he's at the top of the arc, key, or in the paint.

Yup, I'm still lost on who Lance Stephenson is, but maybe he is closer to Jeremy Lin and Tyreke Evans, or somewhere in between. 

That's the most important thing to remember. Lance is Lance. He's isn't going to be J.R. Smith, even if he's got that sort of Swagger. He isn't the distributor than Lin or Evans is, but he's a better shooter when he drives straight ahead. He's going to be hard to quantify because the Pacers play a different brand of basketball than many NBA teams. The Pacers play big, like the Grizzlies. Wait, is he Tony Allen? These are career numbers for both.

Wait, did I waste all that time on Red Herrings? (Yes, and your time too)

Let's take a look at this closer at this last season.

Both guys are shooting guards that are more likely to shoot than to pass, as they have lower assist percentages than Lin and Evans. Both are starts playing around 30 mins of time, Allen a little less than Stephenson.

We may be on to something here. I'm going to explore this more in my next post.
Or ya know, skip to Part 3, where I just clean this all up.