What Will Duke Transfer Joey Baker's Impact Be For Michigan?

Also, a few transfer targets go off the board elsewhere and a 2022 overseas prospect emerges.

Jun 21, 2022

∙ Paid

Michigan entered the offseason broadcasting their desire to add shooting via the transfer portal. On Friday, they secured a commitment from Duke grad transfer Joey Baker, a career 38% three-point shooter.

A 6’6, 206-pound wing, Baker is a former top-50 recruit who came off the bench all four seasons he played for the Blue Devils. Mike Krzyzewski pretty much just asked him to shoot, and that’s pretty much what Baker did: 63% of his field goal attempts came from beyond the arc.

Meanwhile, he has the following career highs:

Rebounds: 5 (South Carolina St., 12/14/21)
Assists: 2 (Gardner-Webb, 11/16/21)
Blocks: 1 (South Carolina St., 12/14/21)
Steals: 3 (Gardner-Webb, 11/16/21)

So, yeah, Joey Baker is gonna shoot. As long as you don’t expect him to do much else, this is a welcome pickup for Juwan Howard.

The Bucket Problem

Analyzing the Big Ten Schedules for Men's and Women's Basketball

The Big Ten dropped conference basketball schedules for both the men and women yesterday. Since the league is too large for every team to play twice, single plays — and where they take place — can make the difference in close title races. The men play a 20-game conference schedule, so each team faces seven opponents twice and six once (three home, three away). The women play 18 Big Ten games, so those numbers shift to five double-plays and eight single-plays (four home, four away). I don’t understand why there’s a disparity; feel free to enlighten me in the comments…

a year ago · 3 likes · Ace Anbender

How Baker Fits

Baker’s projection is complicated by a couple factors. For one, he played on mega-talented Duke squads. Last season he backed up potential top-ten pick AJ Griffin and likely first-rounder Wendell Moore. In the years before that he was behind either Moore or, in his freshman year, Cam Reddish and RJ Barrett.

The other issue is a hip injury that limited him in some unknown capacity for 2021-22:

Baker has spent the summer recovering from hip surgery. That hip ailment — about which few details were made available — almost certainly limited Baker in the closing stretch of the 2021-22 season, when his playing time cratered. The Blue Devils believed he would recover in time for his fifth year.

As long as he’s fully recovered, he may have more to offer than he could show last year.

I tried to gauge Baker’s impact on Duke from on/off stats. At first it appeared he had a negative impact on the team’s overall efficiency; after adjusting for lineup quality — i.e. checking his numbers when playing with Moore and Paolo Banchero — that changed to a neutral impact. While sample size caveats apply, Baker fit in with a very good team as long as he was a tertiary option.

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