Synergy provides numbers like shooting and turnover percentages for the guy he was defending in different types of defensive scenarios. Then there are +/- stats, including adjusted defensive +/-, though those tend to be less useful for 1-year players. Another stat worth taking a look at is defensive statistical +/-.
This PER argument is getting old. With that said let me jump right in and throw in my 2 cents. PER is dumb. Look at the all time leaders of PER and you will find that it is misleading. David Robinson is number 2 of all time in PER yet do you guys really think he is the 2nd most efficient player in the history of the NBA? He isn't even top 10.
This. Honestly I was one of the guys who couldn't understand why we drafted Cbud the 2nd, but now I think he's one of the guys we have who has legit superstar potential.
PER shares the same problem any NBA box score does... there is a good amount of game theory/team dynamic stuff it doesn't account for. It's basically just a way of condensing the box score into one number for each player. People who whine about it inevitably don't understand the metric and criticize it for not doing things it was never meant to do.
CP should add the granny (Rick Barry) free throw to his arsenal this off-season, put on a little muscle weight, and plan to attack the rack relentlessly for the rest of his career. If he can hit 80+% FTs, he will blossom into Morey's first superstar. He's already an elite defender, and his offense has been improving...
2012-13 Most Improved Player Chandler Parsons. If he keeps studying (NBA) videos and improve his shooting especially FTs, he will be our franchise player that other team covets. Thank god, we didn't trade him for DHo for a 1/4 year rental.
Interesting to look at those numbers. Kawhi Leonard has a higher DVORP, but when you look at the defensive FG% between him and Parsons it's not even close. Kawhi is at 41.8% over 285 FGA against him and Chandler is at 36.2% over 370 FGA against him. That puts him on a level of like a Kobe/Lebron/Wade type defender. Now if he could only play offense like those guys . However, Parsons' effective field goal percentage defense looks like it is better than both those guys since both Kobe and Lebron have more 3 pointers taken against them and defend the 3 pointer worse than Chandler. I decided to add this... Lebron's FG defense - 127/329 38.6% Lebron's 3pt defense - 58/149 38.9% Kobe's FG defense - 158/430 36.7% Kobe's 3pt defense - 61/166 36.7% Wade's FG defense - 88/258 34.1% Wade's 3pt defense - 35/96 36.5% Parson's FG defense - 134/370 36.2% Parson's 3pt defense - 32/100 32.0%
No, PER is genuinely useless. According to Dave Berri: "Hollinger argues that each two point field goal made is worth about 1.65 points. A three point field goal made is worth 2.65 points. A missed field goal, though, costs a team 0.72 points. Given these values, with a bit of math we can show that a player will break even on his two point field goal attempts if he hits on 30.4% of these shots. On three pointers the break-even point is 21.4%. If a player exceeds these thresholds, and virtually every NBA player does so with respect to two-point shots, the more he shoots the higher his value in PERs. So a player can be an inefficient scorer and simply inflate his value by taking a large number of shots." And the links I've provided go into more detail, but basically it encourages volume shooting and high usage. If you can achieve a better than 33% FG%, you want to shoot the ball as much as possible to inflate your PER. So what is it meant to do? Make pointless stats "simpler" to understand for casual fans? Because it doesn't do anything for any useful analysis. Sauce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Efficiency_Rating http://wagesofwins.com/2012/03/04/wayne-winston-simplifies-pers/
Stats are not intrinsically hollow, the way we CURRENTLY use them is however. If you think about it, you could have a stat for every single motion or movement a player has on a court: how often is a players hands up during defense, how many times does he box out his man, how often he gets set up on time for a play, how fast he gets down the court both offense and defense etc... Our stats we see today needless to say are not detailing anything that specific. Its really a physicalistic vs. dualistic philosophical argument - "is there something more to the game of basketball besides the physical actions we can measure (wether or not we are currently measuring them)?"
PER is a better version of box score stats, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. PER is always more relevant than looking at pts, rebs, etc. This is what he was talking about, the only people bashing it don't know what it is.
I don't see a problem with this. Usage is important. Usage is why Kobe Bryant is a superstar even though his efficiency is not super-elite. It's definitely another thing you have to keep in mind when evaluating PER though. Doesn't make the stat useless.
Berri's criticism is technically accurate and I think there's a good argument that PER overrates high-usage players, but on the flip-side his preferred metric totally ignores the benefits of high-usage players. According to Berri, a player like Allen Iverson was a liability on the offensive end because of his below-average efficiency. PER, appropriately I think, rated Iverson as a very good player but maybe not the superstar that some people thought he was. It certainly didn't peg him as a HOF-caliber player, even though a majority of fans probably think he's deserving of that honor. PER does a good job of rating players about where we would expect them to be. Where there are major deviations even with a good sample size, those are situations that either (1) PER just misses the boat on, or (2) the player is doing something very well/poorly that people are overlooking for whatever reason. To me, that's not useless. One just needs to recognize the limitations.
