He's almost where I was hoping he'd be as a rookie: 12pts, 10rebs. If he can grow at the rate we've seen lately, we could see something like that, too.
I believe it stands for player efficiency rating. Basically the higher it is the more effective the player is on the court.
It's an overall measure of productivity, that uses points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers and scoring efficiency. It adjusts for pace and minutes and also for opportunities (like, rather than straight rebounds per game, it uses percentage of possible rebounds that a player got). Here's a more detailed explanation, with the formula: http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/per.html
Well if you consider the facts that most basketball games are fairly close, and that the Blazers are now getting production not 1 deep, but 2 deep out of the center position instead of playing a PF out of position, it doesn't surprise me even with the even keel numbers he is putting up. What he does, is dominate the middle. He makes players afraid to shoot inside. He gobbles up boards. He is getting better on defense, in fact I would go so far as to say he is ahead of schedule in the foul trouble department, I figured he would be much worse off. Now he just needs to add the offense (which IMO is him just getting settled down and used to the speed of the game.). More wins? Definitly, he has improved the team. I figure he will get his explosiveness back next year (most dudes with microfracture take a year to get it back) and we will see where this goes.
