Playoff PER

by usmcr3049 on Apr 23, 2009 3:05 PM PDT

Just thought I would point out something that many on here might not have noticed. According to Hollinger's PER rating, the Blazer playing the best in the playoffs is Brandon Roy at 29.93. Ya ya, no suprise there, but did you know that Greg Oden has been the second best Blazer at 29.23?

LMA is the next closest Blazer coming in far below at 16.64, below even his seasonal PER. It seems that only Greg and Brandon have stepped up so far this playoff season, hopefully after games 3 and 4 we will see other Blazers pick up their play.

For a frame of reference, Roy's Playoff PER is the 8th best in the NBA, and Greg's is the 9th best. Two of the top 10 are Blazers, but the next Blazer, LMA, is 54th.

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Small sample sizes FTW

this will be fun to track, but they should be taken with a huge handful of salt, even when the whole playoffs are over. Aaron Brooks currently rates as the #4 player in the playoffs, heavily aided by his barrage of threes in the final minute of game 2.

by jksnake99 on Apr 23, 2009 3:08 PM PDT reply actions

You are correct, but neither Roy or Oden appear to be playing out of their minds, or anything like that.

Roy’s point avg. has jumped, but his assists have fallen. He almost always has super low turnover rates too.

Oden just had a ‘not that great’ game last time.

They may both fall in relation to others as the others improve, but I think is a somewhat realistic showing of what we’ve got. We’re playing a super slow defensively oriented team and still managing some PER number near the top of the pack.

You’re right that our team could fall apart tomorrow, or that Roy or Oden may just be suprising us. But we got these guys for the playoffs and it is no surprise to me.

by staylost on Apr 23, 2009 3:18 PM PDT up reply actions

I will say this again

Give me a guy with a PER of 20 who can play 36 minutes over a guy with a PER of 29 who fouls out in 12.

by Zaig on Apr 23, 2009 3:24 PM PDT reply actions

Oden can't control all the foul he gets

so if the league continues to call it closely on him then it will be otugh. Refs tend to lighten up on big men during their second or thrid season.

Just think about the other night…one of the Rockets jumps into his stomach elbow first and oden gets called. Ming hooks oden’s arm drags oden around and oden gets called…that stuff will go away at some point…

I would agree, we need Oden to get about 28-30 mins a game at his current PER to meet expectations in a season or two…I don’t think you will ever see him go 36 consistently.

The other thing we need to do is actually run some offense through him…not going to be able to fix effectively for the playoffs but next season they got to work on that…right now, the rare occassions they do get it to him the placement of the pass is often to low for him to work with effectively causing him to gather and get stripped…he needs it shoulder high or higher so he can just roll to the hoop and put it in…

Goodbye Deke. The NBA will miss Mt. Mutombo

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by PDXBuckeye on Apr 23, 2009 4:42 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

Beautifully stated

and spot on. Those fouls as it happens were key. They helped to frustrate Yao and intimidated Houston. The Rockets are FAR more intimidated when Oden is in the key then any other Blazer even Joel who is obstensibly the better defender.

"Death is not final," Gita says. "If any man thinks that he slays, and if another thinks that he is slain, neither knows the truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die. The soul in man is neither born nor does it die. Weapons cannot cut it; fire cannot burn it; water cannot drown it.

The Bhagavad Gita

Rudy is amazing to have survived not only the Ariza flagrant but also several attempts by snipers to end his life (look for it at second 30 and again later. Credit to Norkstroll for this incredible documetary footage!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siKWh0DkCz8

The sage commentary of Rocket's fan Aaronisaproblem:

"You have to understand tho, its like you guys watching Scola…we understand he can be viewed as a flopper… But you really honestly cant see why we would think Pryz is a flopper? Granted, he isnt a full fledged flop artist like AK or most of the Jazz who should be attending Floppers Anonymous."

by Idog1976 on Apr 23, 2009 5:47 PM PDT up reply actions

hmmm.

Refs tend to lighten up on big men during their second or thrid season.

I bet if you talk to a ref, they’ll tell you that big men begin to learn how not to foul all the time in their 2nd or 3rd season.

by Blazin' on Apr 23, 2009 7:44 PM PDT up reply actions

maybe so

but in these two playoff games I have seen the same defensive plays by oden and yao, oden gets the whistle yao does not…The easiest one to point to is the guard jumping into oden’s stomach not really even trying to shoot, whistle foul oden, brandon takes it straight at yao, yao jumps into roy, no call.

officials are human, they give more well known entities the ‘benefit of the doubt’, i agree that is true…it just makes a big rookie like oden suffer

Goodbye Deke. The NBA will miss Mt. Mutombo

Support families in crisis in Portland www.give10tell10.org

by PDXBuckeye on Apr 23, 2009 7:54 PM PDT up reply actions

i think you would have a stronger argument for favoritism with Yao

had greg not picked up fouls quickly all season long. It’s how he uses his body. He leaves the floor readily and he swats. He is used to having the athleticism at lower levels of competitiion to get it done without having good form. So he has never learned the fundamentals. Yao on the other hand, like the Rockets in general, is quite disciplined with his defensive form. Straight body. Straight arms. In fact, those two players are like night and day as far as body control. So comparing their foul totals without taking that in to account seems like homerism to me. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it’s hard to take it as anything but that.

by Blazin' on Apr 23, 2009 10:14 PM PDT up reply actions

Holinger normalizes PER so the league average is 15. For playoff PER does he normalize according to the previous regular season or normalize with respect to playoff performances only? I saw Roy’s PER go down after not playing so I assume the latter is the case, which everyone should keep in mind when comparing to the regular season.

by trailblazersfan on Apr 23, 2009 3:27 PM PDT reply actions

Does PER only use TS%?

I know there’s a lot going on behind the scenes in the PER calculations, but it TS% essentially the only scoring mark on there? If so, I’m not sure how much I agree with that.

Would you rather have a guy who shoots insane percentages at low quantities (i.e. Joel for the first half of this season) or a guy who shoots lower percentages, but actually SHOOTS (Travis, LaMarcus).

It’s like the difference between a guy in football who averages 8 yards a carry in 6 carries per game versus the guy who gets 5 per carry and 25 carries. One guy is actually doing the heavy lifting and the other looks really good on paper.

by Twith on Apr 23, 2009 3:39 PM PDT reply actions

PER uses a lot of stats

Points per 40, reb per 40, assists per 40. Then some of hollingers own stats, like Reb rate, assist rate, turnover rate, etc…

by usmcr3049 on Apr 23, 2009 3:44 PM PDT up reply actions

"usage rate" is a factor in PER- so a guy who is counted on to do a lot might have a higher PER even if he's less effecient

Otherwise, Joel’s PER would be sky high with his awesome TS%.

by jksnake99 on Apr 23, 2009 3:49 PM PDT up reply actions

For the Blazers...

the adjusted R^2 between PER and the two predictors TS% and USG% was somewhere like 85%+. PER as an offensive stat isn’t that far off because TS% is a pretty good indicator of offense, and usage obviously says how important that TS% is. Because of this weighting towards scoring/shooting, PER doesn’t really say anything about defense.

by poster on Apr 23, 2009 5:00 PM PDT up reply actions

Per says something about defending

If you consider rebounding part of defense.

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by Clevelander among roses on Apr 23, 2009 9:47 PM PDT up reply actions

and shotblocking and steals

by jksnake99 on Apr 23, 2009 10:00 PM PDT up reply actions

Well, the correlation between PER and defensive adjusted +/-...

has been found to be practically 0. The very heavy weight on scoring/shooting makes the other things in PER overshadowed relatively speaking. A simple example is Eddy Curry, who had a very good PER despite only being good statistically at scoring at a high shooting percentage.

Saying that PER doesn’t say anything about defense is stretching it, though. I went a little too far.

by poster on Apr 24, 2009 8:02 AM PDT up reply actions