Actually if you follow Boston, Leon Powe has probably been their most effective bench player. Boston's Carl Landry. Slightly undersized at the PF position, but very strong and athletic with an excellent motor and works real hard to get more playing time. He's been producing more as of late. Remember how he killed us last week? In T-Mac's best season (02-03) Orlando, he had the best PER (30.3) in the league. Here's some interesting stats: Career PER leaders As of the 2005–06 NBA season (Courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com) (* denotes active) Rank Player PER --------------------------------------- 1 Michael Jordan 27.91 2 Shaquille O'Neal* 27.63 3 David Robinson 26.18 4 Wilt Chamberlain 26.16 5 Bob Pettit 25.41 6 Tim Duncan* 25.17 7 Neil Johnston 24.78 8 Charles Barkley 24.63 9 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 24.58 10 LeBron James* 24.24 11 Magic Johnson 24.11 12 Karl Malone 23.89 13 Tracy McGrady* 23.88 14 Dirk Nowitzki* 23.84 15 Kevin Garnett* 23.84 16 Hakeem Olajuwon 23.59 17 Julius Erving 23.57 18 Larry Bird 23.50 19 Kobe Bryant* 23.49 20 Yao Ming* 23.22 21 Oscar Robertson 23.20 22 Jerry West 22.92 23 Elton Brand* 22.75 24 Elgin Baylor 22.72 25 Dolph Schayes 22.02 Through THIS season: (* denotes Hall of Famer) Rank Player PER 1. Michael Jordan 27.91 2. Shaquille O'Neal 27.21 3. George Mikan* 26.82 4. David Robinson 26.18 5. Wilt Chamberlain* 26.13 6. Bob Pettit* 25.37 7. LeBron James 25.20 8. Tim Duncan 25.12 9. Neil Johnston* 24.67 10. Charles Barkley* 24.63 11. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar* 24.58 12. Chris Paul 24.26 13. Magic Johnson* 24.11 14. Dirk Nowitzki 23.94 15. Dwyane Wade 23.91 16. Karl Malone 23.90 17. Kevin Garnett 23.87 18. Hakeem Olajuwon 23.59 19. Julius Erving* 23.57 20. Kobe Bryant 23.54 21. Tracy McGrady 23.51 22. Larry Bird* 23.50 23. Oscar Robertson* 23.18 24. Yao Ming 23.12
With a PER like Landry, you want to put the ball in his hands as much as possible. That's like having Elton Brand on your team. Just give him the ball and let the dude score.
This is....exactly what i'm talking about... I know how good Leon Powe is but I was trying to make it clear that his PER doesn't show how good he is. If he were a go to guy on a team and had defenses keying on him it would be much lower (as well as Landry). All of these young active players seem to be pretty high on this list because they haven't had enough time for their careers to decline yet, making their PER numbers go down. As Hollinger himself has reiterated, PER becomes less accurate the smaller the sampling size. I don't think it should even be acknowledged until a player has played about 3 seasons or its equivalent minutes wise.
