The question was designed to be complicated in its simplicity. Patrick Patterson’s contributions to the Raptors tend to defy traditional metrics.



He has a career player efficiency rating of 13.4 — below the league average of 15. It has fallen to 11.7 this year, which is in Jonas Jerebko-Dion Waiters-Kyle Anderson territory. Yet, heading into Monday’s games, he is part of the top two three-man combinations in the league, and he is part of the top two five-man lineups that have played a minimum of 100 total minutes going into Monday’s play. There are just five players who have better total plus-minuses than Patterson: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Kyle Lowry. Of players that have played a minimum of 500 minutes, he trails only Curry and Houston’s Patrick Beverley in plus-minus per minute. It is clear that Patterson is an essential piece to the Raptors performing well as a team.



So, then, I asked Raptors...