Hollinger admit he's full of shite (sort of)
I have said time and again that PER is the most useless stat in basketball and that it doesn't mean a damn thing when evaluating players. Even John Hollinger finally had to admit that his stat is flawed. While he didn't go so far to admit that his favorite formula is a load of crap, one can't help but read between the lines. His defense for PER is as ridiculous as a stat. He says that Eddy Curry is a monster but can only play 20 minutes per game because of fouls and conditioning. However he defends his rankings by insisting that Curry being "better" isn't a shock.
Curry, for instance, projects to average 22.0 points per 40 minutes and shoot 56.5 percent from the floor; since he averaged 21.0 and 56.3 percent last year, this shouldn't be controversial. The fact this gives him a better projected PER than Kidd may strike some folks as odd based on the two players' reputations, but if he outrated Kidd on this metric this season it wouldn't shock me at all.The key phrase is "if he outrated Kidd on this metric". Hollinger believes that this is a defense of his system when in reality it is the final proof that this metric has no value to basketball fans. What's the point of projecting a player's stats per 40 if they have no chance of playing 40 minutes a game. Better yet, what guarentee is there that the player would be able to keep up their performance if they had to stay on the court longer? This is like the NFL having a per snap ranking or if track and field aficionados took a person's 400 meter time, multiplied it by 4, and claimed that number would be the sprinters "per mile" ranking. In the end, by Hollinger's rationale, if NBA games were 20 minutes long, Eddy Curry would be better than Jason Kidd. I really don't think there are many non-Knicks fanatics out there who would agree with that. Hollinger can cop as many pleas as he wants but his preseason projections simply show how ridiculous PER is. At best, this is a fantasy basketball stat. It has no validity when it comes to how well a person plays or the impact a player has. If you have a metric where you wouldn't be surprised if Eddy Curry was ranked better than Jason Kidd, Mike Bibby, Rip Hamilton, and Joe Johnson and claims that there are 107 players projected ahead of Ron Artest, then you need to find yourself a new metric.
Comments
I don't think you're grasping what PER is. Start here.
Posted by: Tom | October 20, 2006 03:24 PM
I understand PER completely. It's a useless formula that Hollinger uses to define how efficient a player is even though it doesn't effectively show a damn thing. In the case of Eddy Curry vs. Jason Kidd, it doesn't take into account Kidd's game management nor does it factor in the rebounds that Curry lets opposing players grab while he's on the floor. To say that Eddy Curry makes more of his time on the court than Jason Kidd is beyond defensible. PER addresses efficiency as if stats are the be-all, end-all of what happens on the court. It is a pointless metric and the fact that it uses per 40 min's stats in its equation makes it a complete joke. There's a thousand ways that this statistic is laughable.
Posted by: SoulHonky | October 22, 2006 05:08 PM
"PER addresses efficiency as if stats are the be-all, end-all of what happens on the court."
It definately does not do that. It tries to encompass all things that can be measured on the court. So whatever 'intangibles' that Kidd has that can't be measured isn't included in
PER, or position defense, and a host of other things. Nobody claims that PER is a definitive way to rank players, it's just a tool, among others, to use.
Posted by: Matt | October 23, 2006 04:34 PM
It takes all things that can be measured on the court and then extrapolates them using an artificial formula, per 40 minutes. That makes it useless IMO. What someone does do on the court in five minutes and what they can do in 40 are two completely different things but they are one and the same in PER. One look at Hollinger's projected ranking is pretty much all you need to know about how useful a tool PER is. (And to say it is just one tool amongst many is fine, but Hollinger often uses it in his defense of players as if it is definitive)
Posted by: SoulHonky | October 23, 2006 06:10 PM