I have no problem with your saying that I did not 'prove' that Lamarcus can't play defense against opposing fours, since I neither said that I was 'proving' anything, nor did I say that he 'can't' play defense. What I did say is that he is not a great defender or rebounder for a four, and that is true, regardless of what your PER rating is. The PER rating, as far as I understand it, is not a measure of a player's defense, it is more of an aggregate measurement of efficiency, as near as it can be measured according to Hollinger's methodology. I give his statistical analysis the same credence I do the BCS computers, which are not as you have described them at all, with apologies. They take into account all of the statistics and contexts that are available, just like Hollinger does, and, like Hollinger, they often come out slightly off. I don't care if Hollinger believes that Kobe is a less efficient player than Dwyane Wade, I would take Kobe any day, and twice on NBA Sundays. I also disagree with your opinion about Joel. There are many ways to win a championship, so we could both be right, but there is no way Oden is able to fill the center spot for a championship contender with only Lamarcus for help. Right now, Oden is very glad for Joel's presence on the team, and we should be too. Trading him right now would be complete lunacy.
While I admit that I posited only anecdotal evidence, I have read many posts on this site that proffer much less. Basketball forums are more or less the appropriate place to express one's opinion, are they not? And besides, if statistics were the end all in basketball, then Zach Randolph would not have been traded by so many teams. By the way, he is #25 on the PER list, but I don't see anyone jumping in line to trade #32 Lamarcus for him. In fact, he was basically given away for almost nothing. Why is that? I wonder what Dennis Rodman's PER would have been? Maybe we should take all those rings back from him.
That's probably because LMA actually plays defense, and that PER doesn't rate defense. The only PER comparisons I've seen between LMA and his opponents while oncourt, however, have LMA winning a landslide.
Hee hee. The per doesn't rate defense. Classic. I have been taken to task repeatedly in this thread because I did not bow the knee to the mighty PER analysis when I said that Lamarcus is not a great defender. Now I am told that Lamarcus is a much better defender than Stat-Bo, PER be damned. Oh also, I don't have enough evidence in MY posts. I like this site for the news you guys can find so quickly, but honestly, I think my pretend GM skills are as good as anyone on here. And speaking of pretend GM skills, this is the awesomest quote in this whole thread: "The shine is off of Pritchard. This summer is looking like a disaster at this point. I can't disagree with anything written about him in that piece." I think that's all I need to know about you, with all due respect. Cheers
I think you're a little confused. PER doesn't measure defense, but PER-against is a measure of defense...that's the PER that the player gives up to his opponent. Nikolokolus used Aldridge's PER-against to show Aldridge did well defensively.
I am not a worshiper of Pritchard but I think the opinion piece was unfair. I have no problem with offering the same deal over and over; thing s change, other options for a team may disappear. Pritchard has always beena guy who makes a lot of proposals, he is a proponent of if you don't ask, you never know... I agree with the posters who said Odom probably doesn't want to come to Portland, and I'm guessing that Milsap maybe does, he may not like living in SLC. this information is pretty simple to obtain by talking to their agents. I totally disagree with the idea of a rift between Nate and Pritchard. The author is too cynical to take Nate's statements at face value, but I do. I have seen many quotes by Nate about how much he admires and respects the talent evaluation by Pritchard and other Blazer execs.
So...PER itself doesn't measure defense, or take into account critical elements of defense, but by measuring how well someone's offense is against your offense, I can tell how good your defense is? This is circular reasoning. Here is my problem. When LaMarcus is in, he is one of the two primary offensive options. How many of his counterparts at the four enjoy that same designation? Does not the fact that he is a primary offensive option increase his PER rating in relation to the people that he guards? What does this have to do with defense? I noted several posts ago that Lamarcus's offense probably made up for his weakness on defense. I don't think the PER rating can see beyond this. Let me put it another way...who will score higher on the PER chart, a guy who plays great offense and no defense, or a defensive specialist? I think we can see the answer to that, since Tracy McGrady has one of the all-time highest career PER ratings, and he is far from a defensive stopper. Here is Hollinger himself on the subject: "Bear in mind that this rating is not the final, once-and-for-all answer for a player's accomplishments during the season. This is especially true for players -- such as Bruce Bowen and Jason Collins -- who are defensive specialists but don't get many blocks or steals. " In posting about the necessity for Joel to remain on the team, I argued that LaMarcus was not fit to guard NBA centers, given that he is not big enough or shrewd and experienced enough to check even some power forwards. I mentioned Scola, but Kevin Garnett would be another well-chronicled example. You can argue these if you like, but it seems clear to me that just citing the head-to-head PER number is far from conclusive, since the number isn't even designed to measure defense. The guy who confidently told me I was 'wrong' by copying and pasting LaMarcus's PER numbers was not really demonstrating anything other than that LaMarcus is a better scorer than the majority of the power forwards that he guards. Well, guess what? I agree with you, that's why he is the go-to guy on offense! The problem was, I was talking about defense.
I have no idea what you're talking about. You don't play offense against your opponent's offense, you play defense. How well your opponent does on offense against you is a measure of your defense. How is that not clear? That might be relevant if what was being used was (PER / PER-against) ratio. That isn't what is being used. His PER and PER-against are being quoted independently. One shows his offense, one shows his defense. His offense doesn't affect his PER-against at all. You're still confused. That is about PER. PER does not measure defense in any meaningful way. But the PER a player gives up to his OPPONENT (PER-against) measures his defense, because it's measuring how productive his opponent is against his defense. Forget Aldridge's PER for a moment. The PER he gives up to his opponent, when he plays power forward, is 15.5. That's approximately average for a starter. So his defense at least average, since his opponents (counting all the players he goes up against) come out to about league average for a starter against his defense.
You are right, I am confused. I am confused because you are claiming something for the PER numbers that even the author of them does not claim for them, namely that they effectively gauge a player's defense. Basketball is not a game where five guys match up with five other guys like mating geese. You play off the ball, you contain prolific scorers, you switch onto other guys, you play other team's second units, and your defense is rated by how well you do these things, not necessarily by how well the guy who plays your same position scores or doesn't score. If I send Travis in to check Kobe and Brandon only has to guard Trevor Ariza. that will affect the PER against numbers for both players. Kobe is going to get his points, but maybe Travis can hold him to 25 instead of 30, even though maybe Travis only scored 15. Well, his PER against ratio might not look good, but if Brandon was able to go off on the other end, the net gain could be enough to win the game, but it will never show up on Hollinger's stats, at least not accurately. This is not a one-time occurence, it happens every day. Travis is the better defender in that scenario, even though Brandon's per against numbers are going to look more favorable. I am not the only one who sees this weakness in the PER stats, it is a common criticism. I even just found it on WIKI: "PER largely measures offensive performance. Hollinger freely admits that two of the defensive statistics it incorporates -- blocks and steals -- can produce a distorted picture of a player's value and that PER is not a reliable measure of a player's defensive acumen. For example, Bruce Bowen, widely regarded as one of the best defenders in the NBA (at least through the 2006-07 season), has routinely posted single-digit PERs. Bear in mind that this rating is not the final, once-and-for-all answer for a player's accomplishments during the season. This is especially true for players such as Bruce Bowen and Trenton Hassell who are defensive specialists but don't get many blocks or steals. Neither PER nor per-game statistics take into account such intangible elements as competitive drive, leadership, durability, conditioning, or hustle, largely because there is no real way to quantitatively measure these things, which are often based on opinion. In addition, some have argued that PER gives undue weight to a player's contribution in limited minutes, or against a team's second unit, and it undervalues players who have enough diversity in their game to play starter's minutes."
That is a great line. Although I didn't know that homosexuality was so rampant in geese. I am picturing John Wooden on the court, telling his players that. barfo
The important element in that comparison was their fidelity..sorry if that wasn't clear and you got a disturbing mental image from reading the post.
Yes, there is a team defense dynamic not captured by opponent's PER. But it's a bit silly to claim that players don't have individual defensive responsibilities. Opponent's PER is a valid metric of individual defense. Not a perfect measure, but it's more evidence than "I don't think he's a good defender." I don't know why you keep on and on repeating this. This has zero to do with the argument. No one in this thread has said PER measures defense well. What has been said is that opponent's PER is a measure of defense. Keeping on quoting Hollinger's saying that PER doesn't do much to encapsulate defense isn't relevant to that. Looking at the opponent's PER that a player gives up measures how much production the other player generates against the defense of the player you're interested in. No one has argued that they do. But there are some reasonable metrics of defense, like opponent's PER and defensive +/-. They're not perfect and observation is always valuable...but dismissing them completely is silly. Observation isn't objective. The numbers are objective, at least, even if not perfect.
A while back I calculated defensive ratings using a linear regression based on data since 2005. My model supports LA being a very good defender. The only data this model looks at: 1) which 10 players were on the floor 2) how many major possessions did each team have 3) how many points did each team score 4) who was the home team The regression works against a set of hundreds of thousands of linear equations of this form: Points = Possessions x [Sum(5 Offensive Player Ratings) + Sum(5 Defiensive Player Ratings) + HomeCourtRating x (1 if home, 0 if away) + constant] An advantage of this method over PER is that it takes all the intangibles about a player into account (all that I can think of anyway). The biggest drawback of this model is that it assumes a player's ability is constant over the time period being analysed and the time period has to be multiple seaosons due to the need for lots of data to reduce random noise and separate the players from each other. Even then the standard errors are rather annoyingly large. If the model is valid then 95% of the players should have a rating within 2 standard errors of their true ability. So two or so players on this list are expected to be off by 4 points or more. 25% of the players on this list should be off by between 1 to 2 standard errors. 70% of the players should be off by less than 1 standard error. Code: PlayerName Def StdErr Poss Min Teams Garnett, Kevin -10.3 1.6 37,956 9,838 BOS, MIN Hayes, Chuck -8.2 1.9 17,164 4,440 HOU Mutombo, Dik -8.1 2.3 11,002 2,915 HOU Ming, Yao -7.3 1.8 29,298 7,625 HOU Horry, Robert -7.2 2.0 11,185 2,878 SAN, SAS Hilario, Nene -6.7 1.8 16,423 4,092 DEN Haywood, Bren -6.6 1.9 22,669 5,834 WAS Camby, Marcus -6.5 1.6 35,827 8,671 DEN, LAC Bogut, Andrew -6.5 1.7 32,841 8,449 MIL Duncan, Tim -6.5 1.9 38,495 10,217 SAN, SAS Thomas, Kurt -5.9 1.6 20,623 5,247 PHX, SEA, SAS Ratliff, Theo -5.9 2.2 8,067 2,118 POR, BOS, MIN, DET, PHI Collins, Jarron -5.7 2.0 13,354 3,474 UTH, UTA Artest, Ron -5.7 1.4 35,051 8,865 IND, SAC, HOU Mourning, Alon -5.4 2.2 12,797 3,258 MIA Przybilla, Joel -5.2 1.8 19,849 5,444 POR Rondo, Rajon -5.1 1.9 23,674 6,113 BOS Martin, Kenyon -5.0 1.7 22,493 5,552 DEN Kirilenko, And -5.0 1.6 32,249 8,277 UTH, UTA Iguodala, Andre -4.8 1.7 46,148 11,873 PHL, PHI Balkman, Rena -4.7 2.0 10,109 2,588 NYK, DEN Collins, Jason -4.7 1.8 20,043 5,215 NJN, MEM, MIN [COLOR="DarkRed"]Aldridge, LaM -4.6 1.9 23,941 6,477 POR[/COLOR] Wallace, Ben -4.6 1.4 34,760 9,050 CLE, DET, CHI Varejao, And -4.6 1.8 22,572 5,859 CLE Songaila, Dari -4.5 1.6 18,834 4,839 CHI, WAS Wallace, Rash -4.5 1.9 34,745 9,393 DET Pavlovic, Sasha -4.4 1.7 17,008 4,377 CLE Westbrook, Rus -4.3 2.5 8,597 2,174 OKC Battier, Shane -4.3 1.5 39,198 10,233 MEM, HOU
I was referencing PER AGAINST as a comparison tool. Your pretend GM "skills" seem to be that of a John Nash. Lots of words, many of them confusing, and all of them display at least some level of ignorance.
