The PER's pretty much reflected how I think the Rockets played in the playoffs. Nobody could ask much more from McGrady. Rafer Alston dominated the brief minutes he played. Landry was dependable. I know Battier did not shoot much during the playoffs, but give him some credit for hanging in their with a bruised foot. I believe he would not have dropped if he were healthy.
And the reason behind that logic is the fact that for the most part bad teams with bad players have been eliminated from the playoffs. That's why for several years I've been trying to get you to discard...or at least discount...what Rocket players do against bad teams. IMO, when we take overall stats as a measure of performance, it's a false positive. Correct evaluation should be stats and observations from games against playoff caliber competition. Then again... It's interesting to note that Hollinger gave Stro Swift a higher regular season PER than Battier... http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/holl...tistics?sort=per&qual=true&pos=c&seasonType=2
I think that's a fair point. But, as you know, the conclusions you can draw from stats become weaker as you reduce the sample size. For instance, what do you think is more relevant for evaluation -- stats over 5 games against really good teams, or stats over 30 games against a mix of teams? Perhaps a fair compromise would be to weight stats against the good teams more heavily? Swift has always put up nice per-minute numbers. Even as a Rocket, his PER was better than what Battier has given us the last couple seasons. But no observer in his right mind would conclude that Swift was a better player for us that Battier has been. PER can be a useful evaluation tool in certain contexts, but as you noted one can't rely solely on box score stats.
I'm not sure how you can criticize PER as a statistic and then in the same paragraph use it as evidence to support your opinion on Battier. If it's "not the end all be all," as you said, then it doesn't illustrate much of anything.
There's nothing wrong with PER its actually one of the few stats that i give a crap about because it is not so linear. The PER stat does not include defense though and that is what Battier is great at. If you take away Battier's defense i think Swift is marginally better than Battier.
