BREAKING: Chris Paul is Really Good
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Jason posted 5/22/2008 from ballhype.com |
The Hornets fell just short of advancing to the Western Conference Finals, but Chris Paul's play was surely one of the highlights of the first two rounds. There's been a lot of talk about Paul's ascension to the NBA elite, and John Hollinger named him as his early playoffs MVP. In only his third season in the league, and at 22 years old (an age at which many of the all-time greats hadn't even begun their careers), Paul finished 2nd in MVP voting.
Given this, how much better can we expect CP3 to get? One way of guessing is to look at the careers of other NBA stars, as TZ ran a couple of weeks ago (spoiler alert: the title says that he has no ceiling). Here, I extracted a list of elite NBA players for comparison using data from basketball-reference.com. The list includes all players who achieved a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of at least 20.0 through at least 820 minutes in at least 3 seasons over the past 50 years. 106 players fit that criteria, and here's the average PER by age for these stars:
The basic shape is of course what you would expect - young players improve, and old players decline. The average peak age is 27. As it turns out, you can slice this data in a number of ways with these stars but still end up with the same peak. Players who enter the league before they turn 21, players who enter the league after they turn 21, players shorter than 6'4", players taller than 6'8" ... all peak at just about the same time:
That's not to say that there aren't differences, though. As you can see from this chart, shorter star players are outperformed by taller stars on average for most of their careers, but the ones that last into their late 30's contribute more than aging giants. This height-performance trend applies to NBA players in general as well as the elite players, although John Stockton's efficiency at the later stages of his career was a big factor in this relatively small sample. Stockton's per-minute output was amazingly consistent throughout his 30's; he just played less as he got older.
Given that shorter players tend to have a tougher time posting big numbers, we'll first show the 6-footer Paul's career trajectory compared to other shorter stars. Here he is vs. other players from the list of 106 stars who are 6'1" or shorter:
Impressive. Compared to similarly-sized players, he's already better at age 22 than any of them hit at any point in their careers. Here he is against 6'2" players, ...
... and against 6'3" stars (Fat Lever and Sidney Moncrief missed full seasons due to injury--this is reflected in gaps in their lines):
In fact, only one NBA player shorter than 6'6" has ever posted a single season PER score higher than the 28.3 score that Paul achieved this year: Dwyane Wade, who hit 28.9 as a 25-year-old. Or maybe two, if you don't buy Charles Barkley's official height—he posted a 28.9 as a 27-year-old.
Perhaps even more impressive is the way that Paul stacks up against the taller greats. CP3 already has the 10th-higest career PER in the history of the league. Here are the top 10:
Looking at these numbers, it's easy to claim that he's off to a Jordanesque start in terms of overall production (as is LeBron, for that matter: believe the hype).
Finally, here's a tool you can use run your own PER comparisons among top NBA stars. Choose up to 5 different players from the select boxes to add them to the chart below. Some examples to get you started: [2003 draft], [1984 draft], [2008 Celtics], [all-time Grizzlies greats].
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Comments (23)
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Zorgon +5LOL All-Time Grizzlies greats.-
truthaboutit Whatever...where's Big Country?
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Zorgon Shareef Abdur-Rahim? White Chocolate?
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tziller It's nice to see a reminder that Wade is three years older than LeBron every now and then.
Tremendous work, Jason. All-time Grizzlies greats... here I was, expecting to find some Shareef and Big Country...
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ygbfkm So who are the best "late 30's" guys ever? Doing a quick search, Karl Malone kept his PER above 24 until he was about 37. I hate the guy, but that's impressive.
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Jason You're right--the Mailman actually has the two best old man seasons from this group (27.1 at 36 and 24.7 at 37). Stockton has the next-best post-35 average, with the comebacks from Magic and MJ not far behind. Roger Murdock kept it together for quite a while as well.
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ethanator1088 Who else thinks that Jason and Erin are secretly competing who gets the most hype? They both broke great posts at the same time. Someone will be stuck washing the dishes for a few nights I am sure. :-)
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Erin All true except there's nothing secret about it... Chris Paul, you're dead to me.
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David Friedman These are interesting numbers and Paul is obviously a great player; I'd rank him behind only Kobe Bryant and LeBron James right now.
However, I charted all of his officially recorded assists in game seven versus San Antonio and the officially recorded assists that he had to David West in game one of that series--21 assists total. Of those 21, eight were clearly scored incorrectly and a ninth was marginal. You can read the details here:
http://20secondtimeout.blogspot.com/2008/05/manu-is-man-as-spurs-eliminate-hornets.htmlI realize that this is a small sample size but I hope that I am not the only person who finds it more than a little odd and disturbing that more than a third of his officially recorded assists during this span were not truly assists. Paul supposedly set various records relating to how many assists he had in his first playoff games but I wonder if he achieved those marks under the same scorekeeping standards that his predecessors did.
Paul's assist totals and his assist/to ratio have a lot to do with how highly he ranks in PER and other systems. What I found did not change my opinion of Paul one bit--I evaluate players by skill set and he is an outstanding decision maker who has great quickness, shoots well, rebounds well for his position and is a good defender (despite what some say). However, those who elevate Paul purely based on numbers should really give some consideration to how subjectively assists are recorded.
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Jason It seems unlikely that there's a league-wide conspiracy to score assists more liberally with Chris Paul than with other players. Paul's home/road splits are fairly close (11.9 vs. 11.2 APG), and are partially offset by the fact that the Hornets average more field goals per game at home. So if there's home cooking at the scorers table, its effect is minor.
I agree that assist scoring has probably changed over time, but it isn't a recent phenomenon--people made the same arguments (and conducted the same kinds of breakdowns) with John Stockton 20 years ago.
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David Friedman I don't say that there is a "conspiracy," let alone a league-wide one, and I don't say that Paul's numbers are the only ones that are affected. I think that assists are scored too liberally in general and that the players who handle the ball a lot and are primary playmakers are the main beneficiaries of it. In that sense, I think that Paul, Nash and some of the other top apg guys are overvalued statistically. Like I said, what I found does not change my evaluation of Paul because my evaluation was not done strictly by "the numbers."
I don't think that any objective observer could look at the plays that I cited and conclude that Paul deserved assists on them.
If one takes just the eight incorrect assists that I found off of Paul's playoff numbers how much lower is his postseason PER?
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Jason I agree that assists are probably dished out more liberally now than they were 50 years ago--boosting the numbers for recent players. But on the other hand, today's point guards are penalized for two statistics that didn't exist back then: turnovers (common for PGs) and blocked shots (uncommon for PGs). What's the net effect? Hard to say.
League-wide assist/field goal ratios hovered at around 50% in the 50's and 60's, then averaged close to 60% in the 70's, 80's, 90's, and 00's. In 2008 it was 58%, down from 61% 10 years ago. Has assist scoring been largely consistent for the past few decades, or are today's players passing less while enjoying more favorable policies? Hard to say.
The bottom line is that right now he seems to compare favorably to all other PGs, past and present. And as Ziller said, that puts him in the running for G.O.A.T.
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ethanator1088 I was just impressed with all of the different colors on the charts.-
And One What he said.
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David Friedman I agree that Paul is the best pg in the league today. It's the all-time comparisons that I am leery about for two reasons: one, it is obviously very early in his career and the all-time greats sustained their excellence for long periods; two, it is one thing to compare Paul to other pgs, past or present, on a skill set basis and make a case that he is equal to or better than player x, y or z but I am suspicious of a case that is purely built on interpreting boxscore numbers that may not be accurate. Let me be clear that I am not dogging your post or the work that you did to put it together; you did a great job compiling the info and presenting it in a manner that is very appealing visually. I like the feature where you can toggle different players' names and see how they fit in the mix. All I'm saying is that one of the dominant stats in Paul's portfolio is assists and if his assist totals are inflated then by definition his PER is inflated, too.
I've been to a lot of Cavs games during LeBron's career and while I have not charted his assists with as much detail as I charted Paul's assists in the Spurs' series, I make a conscious effort to watch the live scoring and follow his assists (the scorekeeping of this stat has interested me for a while, probably going back to when Stockton was breaking Magic and Isiah's records). I never noticed anything anomalous with LeBron's assists, certainly not to the extent that I did with Paul's--that is why I never have charted LeBron's assists the way that I just did with Paul's.
The reason that I went back and charted Paul's game one assists to West is that one of the elements that I planned to write about was the versatile one on one game that West displayed--and then I noticed that in the official play by play Paul was credited with assists on many of those plays. So I went back and watched each of those plays again and wrote about what I found. Same thing with game seven--watching the game, I thought that Paul played well but not great and when I saw 14 assists in the boxscore that just did not seem right.
By the way, in Kobe's nine assist game one performance versus the Spurs, eight of the assists were obviously correct, leading to dunks, layups or catch and shoots. One assist was a 50/50 call but even that one better fit the definition of an assist than any of the eight questionable ones for Paul.
What if someone checked the tapes and it became apparent that Dwight Howard's league leading rebound total and/ or LeBron James' league leading scoring average were wrongly inflated? Would it be right to just take an attitude of "That's how it goes" and rank players strictly by a PER number that includes those stats? There is a lot more subjectivity in the tracking of assist totals then there is in the tracking of other stats (even though I think that some other stats can be iffy at times, too). A big deal has been made about Paul averaging 21.1 ppg and 11.6 apg, making him one of a small group of 20-10 pgs--but what if he was really a 20-9 pg? Like I said before, that would not change my evaluation but I don't think Paul would be leading the PER brigade in that case.
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WatchAgainMr.Friedman Something about your argument seems really biased there Mr. Friedman. First off, you said that you've been to many Cavs' game and yada yada and you never noticed anything anomalous with LeBron's assists, but you have with CP3's, so you never charted LBJ's like CP3. Wait, so let me get this straight, the NBA wants to inflate CP's portfolio and not THE MOST HYPED ATHLETE'S EVER'S portfolio? Funny also how you want to deeply investigate CP3's PER but LBJ should never be questioned. Because again, the league would never try anything to inflate his image of greatness.
Did you also miss the part about how today's pgs are penalized for turnovers and blocked shots which didn't happen in the past? Just as you say that CP's PER is potentially inflated, then perhaps some of the past greats were inflated.
You say the PER of CP and Nash and other pgs who handle the ball alot are overvalued. Humm, let's see, from CP handling the ball as much as he did the Hornets won 56 games, were the #2 seed in the west and were a game away from the conference finals. Yes, from handling the ball so much they may have potential for higher numbers, but they also have a potential for LOWER numbers if they don't play well. AND THE PER SHOWS HOW WELL THEY DID OR DIDN'T PLAY!! Look, take your arguement to the statisticians if you don't like how the numbers come out, but keep your arguement to yourself for now. I bet you also made a big fuss about the Dwight Howard Superman dunk from the dunk contest. "His hand didn't touch the rim, so it's not a dunk! Wahhhhh!!!!"
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David Friedman Nowhere in your rambling message did you address my central point: I charted 21 of Paul's assists and eight of them were scored incorrectly. It is very odd that people who believe so much in PER don't care at all about how meaningful and accurate its constituent numbers are.
We have been breathlessly told that Paul set all kinds of playoff records for a first year pg regarding his assists but those records seem bogus when Paul is getting assists on plays when the recipient of his passes makes multiple dribbles and goes through half of Kevin McHale's arsenal of fakes before taking a shot. The fact that Paul passed to David West and West eventually scored after a series of one on one moves proves nothing about Paul's value as a player. Again, to be perfectly clear, based on my evaluation of his skill set I ranked Paul as the third best player in the NBA this season, so I am not "hating" him to quote a very tired expression.
The reason I charted his assists in the first place is that from watching the games it was apparent that he was getting credit for many more assists than he should have. When I cover Cavs games and watch the live scoring I have yet to see LeBron's assist totals climbing as a result of similar plays; if I had then I would have done similar charting. I never said that James' stats should never be questioned; I just said that in following his games I never found any sign of similar irregularities.
I never said that the NBA is increasing Paul's assists. I merely charted the plays and reported what I found. My point is not to "blame" someone for these mistakes but merely to point out that assist totals are somewhat arbitrary and thus stat rankings that rely on those totals are subjective.
How exactly do you determine how much Paul's ballhandling is responsible for the Hornets' success as opposed to West's scoring and rebounding, Chandler's defense and rebounding and Peja's return to health? Last year, that core group of four players hardly played any games together. Would it change your opinion of Paul if he actually averaged 8 apg instead of 11.6 apg? I don't know why it is hard for you to understand that PER includes assists and if Paul's assists are inflated by 30% then his PER is also inflated and is thus not really telling us "HOW WELL THEY DID OR DIDN'T PLAY!!"
Why do i have to keep my "arguement" to myself? Who put you in charge of what "arguements" are fit for public discussion? My "arguement" is that one of the stats at the very heart of PER is not being recorded accurately. That seems pretty significant.
I have no idea what Howard's ASG dunk has to do with any of this.
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WatchAgainMr.Friedman Ok, first off, you shouldn't have to keep your argument to yourself, and if that sounded rude I apologize. Not that I am in charge of anything, just saying that these boards are for people to discuss things and if everyone keeps their "arguments" to themselves then there wouldn't be much going on here. My rambling and misspelled words were due to me writing that post at 3:30 in the morning.
I would like to point out that I never said that you are "hating" CP and I also do not think that you are. I just think because you witnessed 8 incorrectly scored assists out of 21 you are assuming that he is given free assists on a consistent basis. Now, you are saying that 8 of 21 PLAYOFF (look, capitalization) assists were scored incorrectly. Do the playoffs equate into the PER that Jason used on the charts? I don't believe so.
If you are right about these wrongly scored assists in the playoffs, fine. If what you are saying is true then his playoff PER may be inflated. But it seems you also have a problem with the 28.2 PER from the reg. season. I understand that assists are at the very heart of PER and if they are not being recorded accurately then that is significant, but do you really, really believe that the stat keepers screw up so much that his PER could be inflated by up to 30%? If so, then I can assure you it did not start with him and that in the long run all things equal out between the players' stats.
As far as CP's ballhandling being responsible for the Hornets' success, that's just as simple as checking how the offense did with him in the game as opposed to how they did when he was out, right? As far as the other factors you mentioned, they are no doubt a large part of the Hornets' success as well, but consider this: D-West only averaged 2 more points and .8 more rebs. than last year, Chandler averaged 2 more boards and .7 less blocks. Peja does not create his own shots and I would venture to say a good portion of his makes came off of passes from Paul. Don't get me wrong, the four core guys all staying healthy and the play of the rest of the team are huge, especially D-West with his All-Star season, but since you are so concerned about stats I wanted to point that out, especially since 2 points seperate my boy D-West from not being talked about to being an All-Star. The offense runs primarily through Paul and that contributed and will continue to contribute immensely to the Hornets success. And no, IF he averaged 8 apg as opposed to 11.3 my opinion would not change, just his PER :-).
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WatchAgainMr.Friedman To close my previous post, unless we can chart ALL of his assists throughout the season, it is wrong to assume that because you seen 8 assists you feel were incorrectly scored that his PER of 28.2 cannot have possibly been that high. That is really what you are trying to say, right? Once again, if the scorekeepers are incorrectly scoring assists then it has to be happening across the board and did not start this year. So, let me rephrase what I said in my very first post: if you have an "argument", it really seems like it should be with the scorekeepers and not Jason and all of us who are highly impressed with CP's PER and can only reasonably work with what we have.
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WatchAgainMr.Friedman "it is wrong to assume that because you seen 8 assists "
meant to say "saw" 8 assists, and you didn't respond to how I restated the point made earlier below:
I agree that assists are probably dished out more liberally now than they were 50 years ago--boosting the numbers for recent players. But on the other hand, today's point guards are penalized for two statistics that didn't exist back then: turnovers (common for PGs) and blocked shots (uncommon for PGs). What's the net effect? Hard to say.
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David Friedman Unfortunately, I don't have the resources or the time to systematically chart all of Chris Paul's assists. I watched as many playoff games as I could (not just of the Hornets, but in general) and wrote in depth recaps of those games. What drew my attention to how Paul's assists are scored is that in game one of the Spurs series I noticed that West scored on a number of nice one on one moves. I was very surprised to look at the play by play sheet and see that assists were awarded to Paul on these plays, so before I wrote my recap I went back to the tape (well, TIVO, but you know what I mean), looked at each of those plays and simply described exactly what I found. I did the same thing with game seven, only I looked at all of Paul's assists in that game, not just his passes to West. Obviously, this is a small sample. On the other hand, these are egregious errors and I doubt that these were the only games that were scored incorrectly. That is why I question CP3's regular season PER.
I don't understand how you can blithely suggest that all of this--wrongly scored assists, TOs, blocked shots, etc.--simply evens out in the end. How can you possibly know that? More to the point, this PER business is supposed to replace subjective rankings with an objective evaluation, but how objective can PER be if its constituent parts are subjectively put together?
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WatchAgainMr.Friedman I don't think everything totally evens out in the end, but it probably does to a certain extent. What I mean is, if we were to go back and make 100% sure that every stat for every player was absolutely correct, every players PER would be different. So, if CP's PER would drop because of some wrongly rewarded stats, others would as well. Perhaps some players would drop more than others, so it wouldn't completely even out. I'm just trying to say it is not really fair to point the finger just at CP. You obviously(like everyone else in the world) can't watch every second of every game ofthe season to see if flaws were made across the board. But it can't just be going on with him. I do see your point though as far as PGs go, because the main stat that can be wrongly rewarded is assists and of course they are the main ones dealing them out, or as you feel, wrongly being credited for dealing them out.
To be honest, even though from our discussions it doesn't seem like it, I agree with you that the PER is not something that we should wholly trust and say, "Hey, look at that PER, that means etc, etc." I also have to admit that you make very many good points, for the record. But if we are going to stop and look at a PER, it's too hard to criticize because there's too much info. we need to make sure it's 100% correct. Could be too high, could be too low. I know CP's draws your concern because you saw those two games, but again, that's two games compared to 82. PER is just a novelty stat, and probably should be treated as such. It does obviously make for some good discussion though.
If you didn't guess, I am from New Orleans and love my boy CP. GO HORNETS!!!!
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David Friedman I have yet to see anyone refute my account of what is wrong with CP3's officially credited assists in those two games nor have I heard a convincing reason to believe that only those two games were scored incorrectly but the other games were scored correctly; it seems obvious that the opposite is more likely the case. At the very least, isn't that worthy of some investigation? If somebody presented you with some economic figures or some other statistics and a third party pointed out that there is reason to question the veracity of some of the basic numbers that were plugged into those formulas would you just shrug and have the attitude that it all evens out? It is exasperating that on the one hand the stat heads think that everyone should accept what they say without question but on the other hand they appear to have little interest in critically examining their own methodologies.
The supposed value of PER over the allegedly subjective evaluations of someone who "merely" scouts games is that PER is objective--and yet you are saying that things "probably" even out although the numbers "could be too high, could be too low." Honestly, I don't understand why this type of thinking is such an improvement over the player evaluation done by a trained NBA scout or personnel guy. Such a person could underestimate a player and he could overestimate a player but at least he has some idea what the heck he is watching. Other than one or two APBR people who commented on my initial post about CP3s stats I have yet to hear any stat heads say that maybe faulty scorekeeping has some kind of effect on these player rankings that they act like are some kind of Holy Grail.
I love stats as much as anyone--but I love accurate, meaningful stats and I think that it is vitally important to consider information critically and not just accept something blindly because it is in a pretty chart or because a lot of people think that it is cool.
Links (6)
Chris Paul Can Play Basketball
Published 5/22/2008 at ESPN.com - True Hoop - Blog
Fantastic charts showing the PER of his career so far compared to other historical greats. He's up there with the best names ever.
Reading is Great! Thursday’s NBA Rumors, Breaking News, and Blog Links
Published 5/22/2008 by Brian Spencer at Empty the Bench
- Upside and Motor - The Spurs can’t win this series if Manu Ginobili keeps playing like that.
- Red’s Army - Glen Davis takes a break from the buffet to enjoy the finer things in life.
- Hardwood Paroxysm - The Spurs don’t want to double-team Kobe, but they need to.
- BallHype - Squiggly lines and comparisons have confirmed it: Chris Paul is really good.
- Need4Sheed - Sayeth Rasheed ...
NBA Essentials: Chris Paul, Still Awesome
Published 5/22/2008 by Tom Ziller at FanHouse
Filed under: Celtics, Knicks, Mavericks, Hornets, SpursNBA Essentials ranks our six favorite stories of the day. 1. BallHype: A graphic-heavy ode to Chris Paul and his youthful awesomeness. 2. Straight Bangin': A passionate and incredibly well-reasoned summation of why the Knicks should consider Chris Douglas-Roberts with the sixth pick. 3. foodcourtlunch.com: The post title says it all: "Tim Duncan Returns ...
The 10-man rotation, starring Tim Duncan and a pair of pants
Published 5/22/2008 at Ball Don't Lie
A look around the league and the web that covers it. It's also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren't always listed in order of importance. That's for you, dear reader, to figure out. C: Food Court Lunch. Tim Duncan would like to speak to your manager, please. He has some pants to return. PF: Ballhype. This just in: Chris Paul is pretty good at this little sport we like to call basketball. SF: Charlotte Observer. For the one-thousandth time, ...
BULLETS
Published 5/23/2008 by noreply@blogger.com (Docksquad) at Docksquad Sports
Here are some of the best posts, videos, and reads from today, enjoy... An amazing article about RB Warrick Dunn, and how he is giving back to the community. Marquette's Mcneal is returning to school. Thank GOD!!! GO MARQUETTE! A great article about Chris Paul. This is a must read for all you Cp3 fans. Jason Terry: The Ball Don't Lie Interview. DraftExpress' exclusive Interview with Memphis Guard Chris Douglas-Roberts. Our ...
NBA Top 50: Chris Paul (No. 2)
Published 10/15/2008 by Tom Ziller at FanHouse
... , John Hollinger's linear weights metric with takes your common box score and adjusts for minutes, team pace, league average performance and a few other anomalies which cloud our view of pure production. BallHype's Jason Gurney did a similar project at the time, building a tool to compare Paul to similar players and rivals and showing just how dominant Paul had been in '07-08. (That tool still blows my mind, check it out.) ...
