Taking Stock and Getting to the Point

The last four NBA champs have had either Posey or Bowen on their teams. Each of these guys have had PERs consistently well below average (15 is considered an average player). These guys were not drags on their teams but in fact a very valuable role players who contributed a ton to their teams.

PER is great, and I use it a lot. It helps to compare two similarly situated players within the constraints of what PER demonstrates (which is statistical production heavily tilted toward scoring, and secondarily towards defensive stats including rebounds steals and blocks, but doesn’t consider good positional defense). What I don’t think it does is help you aggregate a good team just by pulling together the highest average PER for each position. For one thing, PER is partly determined by how many possessions the player uses, so it awards gunning. You can only build a team up so far based on stats that rewards gunning — see Melo/AI era nuggets.

I hope KP isn’t thinking the way you’re outlining things — looking for the position of weakest average PER and trying to fill that hole. That’s kind of like the drafting strategy of drafting to fill needs, instead of looking for BPA.

I hope what KP is doing is trying to figure out the absolute best player we could possibly get with our fistful of expiring contracts, good cheap young roleplayers and secondary guys, and shiny beads, no matter what position they play. Not because I think we have needs that need filling but because we have assets that we can’t use to their fullest (RLEC, the players 9-12 on the bench), and to let them wither on the vine would effectively be GM malpractice.

Just for kicks here is how the scourge of the NBA roster looks

player, rank, PER, minutes
PG
Famar, 23, 15.75, 21
Fisher, 47, 11.37, 27
SG
Bry@nt, 2, 24.82, 33.5
Vujacic, 41, 12.4, 15.3
SF
Ariza, 4, 21.45, 23.9
Radmonovic, 46,10.34, 21.3
PF
Gasol, 7, 21.22, 34.1
Odom, 24,16.42, 25.5
C
Bynum, 5, 21.54, 29.3
Mihm he’s not on the list

So there you go the expected “best team” in the west has crappier PG production than the Blazers with a ranking of 23 and 47 to our 26 and 35. Now mind you the less productive Fisher gets 6 more minutes per game than Famar. With the exception of Famar and Odom no other bench player is better than average for the L@kers. We also have to bench player above average in Pryz and Rudy. Of the Blazers ten deep, the average PER for Portland is 16.821 while the L@kers nine deep average is 17.257 (non-minute adjusted for either team).

Now mind you these are stats for a quarter season and the L@kers have played the ten home games (eleven if youcount the away game at the clippers) and only 5 road games which should give the L@kers a slight edge, having more home court advantage in games played and more rest between games than the Blazers so far. Yet our team stacks up very well in a side by side comparison. They have higher number at the top by their best players, yet their bench players have lower PERs than the Blazers bench players. They have 3 players (Fisher, Vujacic, and Radmonovic) below a per of 12.5 while the Blazers only have one in Frye. That’s right their starting PG is one the second worst productive player on the court.

My main point is to show that even the elite team has sub-par production at PG just like us, but it is more than made up by the overall play of other guys on the team. We do not need an upgrade at PG. Blake is slightly better than average, but most importantly his strengths (few TO’s & great spot up shooting) are exactly what we need until we groom the young guys behind him to play the right way. I’m quite confident both Sergio and Bayless will someday make Blake expendable, until then we need not trade any player as we have a very solid team.

Arenas, Billups, Davis, Kidd and Nash represent 1/2 the bold list, yet Arenas is often injured, Billups will end his career in Denver, Davis will end his career in SCal where he wanted to be (and hasn’t always been that consistent), and Nash and Kidd are good for a few more years – at best.

Which is why, I suspect, that the idea of getting an ëlite"point guard is a little over-rated. Teams win championships, and that means having 2-3 stars and 8-9 solid players. How the players complement each other becomes the critical issue. A solid if not spectacular or "bold"PG can work very well if he’s surrounded by other superior talent. Everyone who keeps harping on the PG position equally ignores the fact that we have an exceptional talent in Roy, and Roy – in clutch time – is as good a PG as any one of those that are bolded. Which is why his assist ratio is so high. In fact, it is better than a number of those "PG’s"on the list – yet he’s not on the list. If Roy focussed purely on the PG slot, and handled the ball all the time rather than only part of the time – he’d be near the top of the ässist"list.

Yet he’s not. Portland, in this context, does not need nor want one of those bolded players because of this fact. After all, Roy is not – as so many seem to want to insist – a pure SG. Therefore, you have to ask yourself. Do you want the ball in Roy’s hands during “crunch” time, or someone elses. On thing, after all, that makes Roy so effective, is that few can stop his shot, even fewer PG’s have the size to handle him, and he’s a heady and superb passer. We will trade or draft to complement Roy – not to replace him. That’s my prediction.

He might. After all, Detroits not going anywhere up this year, as they’re proving. Dumars refused to budge after the finals last year, then did the Billups for Iverson swap. And, right now, it looks like they were a better team with Billups – than they are with Iverson. So, he bought one more year. But what do they really have now in Detroit? Age is catching up – and they simply aren’t going to contedn with this group. And next year, this group will be worth less than they are now – given they’ll be one year older. Dumars will have to bite this bullet sometime.