Love and Mathematics Pt. 2: The Paul Millsap Quandary
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tziller
posted 9/12/2007 from
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Over the past few days, there's been lots of discussion about advanced basketball metrics -- and specifically per-minute statistics -- among bloggers. Skip this paragraph if you know what's going on. Otherwise: It started with Carter Blanchard of Plissken at the Buzzer, who refuted the usefulness of John Hollinger's PER and the basic per-minute statistic. I defended PER on Saturday, here at Ballhype. Thank You Isiah and We Rite Goode jumped in, followed by a response at Plissken, followed by a controversial entry at Free Darko, which set off any number of responses and mini-battles. All the while, we've had some terrific conversation in the comments to my post. Awesome.
But one of the things which kept popping up was this assertion I'll hereby credit to Free Darko: "Insofar as the problem here is one of rotation, small-scale adjustments in minutes played shouldn't create major distortions. [...] But when PER catapults bench players into the starting five (or vice-versa), be on the look-out for inflation. Call this the Silverbird-Shoals Hypothesis, or the THEOREM OF INTERTEMPORAL HETEROGENEITY (TOIH)." Shoals and Silverbird are arguing that because low-minutes high-PER guys typically play against fellow bench players, their PER is higher than it would be if they played starter minutes. They aren't arguing (as some surmised) that PER is useless, just that it is prone to inflation. The argument, from seemingly everyone on the 'anti per-minute statistics' side, is that if you increase a player's minutes, his efficiency will suffer.
There's a problem with this oft-repeated claim: It's not true.
Thanks to the data-collection efforts of Ballhype's own Jason Gurney, I'm going to try to ensure this claim never gets stated as fact ever again. Using seasons from 1997-98 to the present, we identified all players whom played at least 45 games in two consecutive seasons and whom saw their minutes per game increase by at least five minutes from the first season to the second. The players must have played between 10 and 25 minutes per game in the first season, to ensure we were not dealing with either folks who went from none-to-some playing time or superstar candidates who took over an offense and thus got a minutes boost. This is aimed at roleplayers whose role becomes more prominent -- exactly the candidate FD's Theorem of Intertemporal Heterogeneity implies will suffer from increased minutes.
Since I seem to express myself more clearly via Photoshop, here is the result of our mini-study.
No, increased minutes do not seem to lead to decreased efficiency. In fact, the data indicates increased minutes lead to... increased efficiency. More than 70% of the players in the study (there were 251 in total) saw their PER (which is, by definition, a per-minute summary statistic) increase with the increase in minutes. Players whose minutes per game increased by five saw an average change of +1.38 in their PER. The correlation between increased minutes and change in PER in this data set was +0.20.
One step further: Players who had at least five years of experience including their first-season in this study and got the requisite 5-minute increase (106 such players) saw an average change of +1.26 in their PER. It's not just young kids who happen to improving and getting more minutes all at the same time -- vets who get more minutes typically see their per-minute production rise. A full 67% of these players so positive changes in PER with the increased minutes. (And this answers one of Carter's concerns with existing studies.) Let's bump this up to players who had at least eight years of experience going into their minutes increase; we had 52 such cases. The average change in PER: +1.31. Of these players, 69% saw their PER increase with more minutes.
One concern I had: Players who started with above-average PERs and then saw a big bump in their minutes; call it The Paul Millsap Quandary. (Ty Keenan of Plissken also alludes to this problem here, though he brings up a separate issue which I don't intend to address... mainly because I don't think value quantifications must be coupled with some static unit of measure. 15 is better than 14, 20 is a lot better than 15, etc. I depend on sheer logic in these cases, and I don't think there's a problem with that.) ANYWAY, Paul Millsap. So I looked at players who had a PER of at least 15 in the first season and then saw at least a 5-minute increase. There were 53 such players, and the average change in PER was -0.22. Ooh, ouch. But critics, don't seek shelter here -- the negative average is completely erased when you take out Malik Rose's barely viable (600 total minutes) 1998-99 season and Nazr Mohammed's inexplicable career. But we don't even need to tamper with the evidence to feel sure our theorem that increased minutes does not necessarily lead to decreased efficiency for even above-average players is correct: Look at the reported decline here (-0.22) when compared to the reported performance increases above (+1.26 to +1.38). An average drop so small is negligible. More proof: of those 53 players with over-15 PERs who get the big minutes increase, 27 saw their PERs decrease (range of -0.1 and Malik's -6.5) and 26 saw their PERs increase (range of +0.1 and David Lee's +4.8). In fact, for over-15 PERs who then got at least 10 extra minutes per game the following season, the average change in PER was +0.18.
So how do we settle The Quandary? By admitting it is highly contextual and case-based at this level. The data does not say whether Millsap's per-minute production would suffer, improve or be maintained given more playing time. The data is inconclusive -- even if it were more conclusive, such as the previously highlighted notes -- we cannot ascertain motive from these relationships. As the adage goes, correlation does not mean causation. Or in terms I prefer: We don't know.
I want to emphasize this again: We don't know. We cannot look at any of this data and say "Increased minutes leads to increased per-minute production (aka efficiency)" just as we cannot and should not say "Increased minutes leads to decreased per-minute production." But this data does indicate a positive relationship between minutes and efficiency. The factors and/or causes of the relationship aren't known to us at this point -- some folks deeper in the muck might have private inklings; perhaps deeper investigation has been hashed and fried in the bunkers of Quicken Loans Arena or the Pepsi Center, or even in John Hollinger's basement. Who knows? All we do know -- based not only on this study, but the previous (exemplary) work of Basketball-reference.com's Justin Kubatko and Hollinger (via Knickerblogger) -- is that an increase in playing time DOES NOT cause a player's efficiency to falter as a rule. So stop saying it does.
Tags:
NBA
Paul Millsap
Comments (16)
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carter_blanchard You beat me to it; halfway through reading this I was all rearing up for a 'correlation does not mean causation' rebuttal, but you're on top of it. Great analysis as always. For someone who "hates stats," I sure do love reading about them. I agree with most everything you say here. I won't be surprised at all when Millsap gets increased time and efficiency next year. I will maintain, though, that typically the improvement of a player over time is what leads to the increased playing time, but a case for players having more time to get in the flow of the game works as well.
Aside from that, what you're talking about here generally is the career trends of individual players. What I think FD was discussing more (and Silverbird/Shoals can correct me if I'm wrong) is that PER being used for cross-comparisons within a season leads to low-minute guys like Nazr being inflated with respect to high-minute guys like Lamar (uh oh, my fandom rears its ugly head again). As Matt and other have pointed out though, that "inflation" issue only really becomes a problem when you view PER as value instead of effeciency. But to say that that's not the way its commonly treated, I don't buy. That's exactly how Hollinger's "rankings" are designed to be viewed, and the view behind much of his analyses, such as his take on the Indiana/GS trade (Ike > Harrington+Jax because of PER).
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BullsBlogger I will forever hate ESPN for putting up PER as a 'ranking' when it shouldn't be intended as such. Especially the projections, which are a work in progress. I guess this may happen yearly from now on.
As far as Hollinger's analysis of the Indy/GS trade, as I remember it he was just pointing out that Ike was a potentially underutilized player who shows great potential as a scorer, and in the coming years Ike may be the best player in that trade. It wasn't anything resembling 'Ike's PER is higher than Jackson and Harrington, Indiana wins.'
If you don't buy my perception that PER is commonly treated as merely a tool and not gospel, I guess that's a fundamental discrepancy that we'll have to settle on having. I still consider it a flimsy argument to start this whole discussion, but as a silver lining the results are pleasant enough for all involved.
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carter_blanchard I'm glad we can at least come together in agreeing that Ziller's The Man. And you're probably right that I should be blaming the WWL instead of Hollinger for their presentation of his results, but regardless of whose to blame, I'd maintain it's the common use (ie, Player A has higher PER than Player B, therefore A is better). How to prove which of our perceptions of the common perception is right is beyond me. I'd believe you a little more that it wasn't treated as gospel if a fairly sizable faction hadn't gotten so up in arms that anyone dare question any aspect of it in the first place.
As far as the mentioned trade, I no longer have Insider anymore, but this recap from ESPN summarizes my recollection of his article at the time:
"Acquiring Ike Diogu from the Warriors makes this trade a winner for the Pacers, writes John Hollinger"
Someone with Insider feel free to go back and correct me, but I do remember him arguing that the Pacers came out on the better end mainly because Ike was the top rated player involved.
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Doctor Dribbles You don't have Insider? Plissken needs to spring for a corporate membership, stat. Think whatever you will of the WWL--there's a season worth of CBB posts in just poking holes in Fran Fraschilla's "articles."
You're both right. Hollinger keyed on Diogu's high PER, but got into the qualitative aspects of the deal too. Here are a few excerpts, provided that I'm not violating copyright and in line for Ballhype punishment:
"Per 40 minutes, [Diogu's] numbers jump off the page -- 22.2 points, 11.4 rebounds and 2.0 blocks. He's shooting 53 percent from the floor and 79.6 percent from the line, with the last number particularly important because he draws so many fouls in the low post. Overall, his PER of 18.8 is easily the highest of any player in the trade."
"As a Pacer, [Diogu]'ll be paired with one of the best frontcourt defenders in the league in Jermaine O'Neal, and when O'Neal checks out another elite defender, Jeff Foster, will check in. As a result, Indiana should be much better positioned to mask Diogu's defensive shortcomings than Golden State was.
"Also, the Pacers' post-oriented attack is much more in keeping with Diogu's skill set than the freewheeling system Nellie ran in Golden State. So if anything, his already prodigious output may increase now that he's joining the Pacers, at least on a per-possession basis."
There's a little more on how Diogu should be the best player in the deal, and how the PERs are balanced in Indiana's favor, but Hollinger definitely goes into the aspects of how the players fit the teams. In retrospect, maybe a bit too much PER for my taste, but like BullsBlogger says, the stat's used as a tool and not as the center of the article.
Also, great point by BB--while I strongly felt the original post on this topic was unnecessary, I now feel like I'm actually learning something on sports blogs. Miss Teen South Carolina feels like such as a lifetime ago...
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tykeenan I voted this comment up just for the Fraschilla remark. ("My" insider account is a fickle beast; it works in general but isn't without its problems.)
I'm not math-smart enough to deal with TZ's post on anything approaching a Silverbirdian level, so I will just say the following: I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the real argument here is philosophical rather than observational. For instance, I feel Hollinger's Diogu argument is based more in PER than Dribbles and Matt, but I completely understand how they got where they did. So I'll grant them their biases as long as they grant me mine.
Other than that, I'd just like to say that I've really enjoyed this whole discussion and hope we can all get a theoretical beer together in Blogburgh.
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FreeDarko Amazing that the best argument against FD's point came from someone who did not call us smelly, fat, stupid, or inept.-
BullsBlogger correlation does not equal causation :-p
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silverbird5000 Nice post.A couple of points. First, it seems like you are using season-level data here (please correct me if I'm wrong about this). This presents several problems. One that has been mentioned already is that players improve, so there will be covariance between quality and minutes increased (this is something you try to account for, I recognize). Another reason is that season-to-season increases in minutes often result when players are traded/signed to weaker teams, and thus are sharing the ball with weaker teamates. Likewise, players who join better teams and play fewer minutes may see an increase in efficiency, e.g. Matt Bonner (one of the players on our list) who, when he joined the Spurs, saw his playing time fall sharply but his PER jump 20%. Both of these cases are consistent with our original argument, which is that PER inflation reflects imbalances between teams. Career level data just doesn't work here. Better would be intra-season data on large mpg increases, but here you'd have to control for things like quality of opponent (since bench players generally see more time against crappy teams). Maybe I'll try to do this at some point, when i have the time.Second- I'm not sure why you restrict your data set only to players whose mpg increase from the previous season. What about the players whose mpg decrease? (i.e. Matt Bonner). Maybe your results will be the same. Regardless, it seems like an odd restriction. After all, the relationship you're testing for is between minutes played and efficiency, not minutes increased and efficiency.Third- We never claim that "if you increase a player's minutes, his efficiency will suffer". I'm sorry if you interpreted it this way. What we said is that very large increases in mpg - the kind that change a bench player into a starter - will decrease efficiency, all else equal (the "else" here being age, the team played for). Again, the only way to really evaluate this claim is with within-season data.Finally, since our entire argument was about players with above-average PERs (the group we looked at was the top 150 - that is, players who should be starters, according to Hollinger), it seems a little odd to present your overall coefficients as somehow refuting us us. Your subgroup of players with 15+ PER is really the group we're talking about. And although I certainly wouldn't claim the negative coefficient (-.22) as some vindication - it is, as you say, still very small - it certainly seems inconsistent with the triumphalism of your post, no?-
Jason Thanks, Silverbird. Ziller will undoubtedly chime in tomorrow, but here's what I know ...
1) Correct, it's season-level data. And I agree that an intra-season analysis should be more meaningful (and time-consuming). You'd still have coaching changes, team changes, and injuries to contend with, but to a lesser degree. Still, I wouldn't reject Ziller's "we don't know" conclusion from the season-level data. Minor aside: do we know that a player's PER should increase (or decrease) with a transfer to a superior team? Intuitively, I'd guess that assists and shooting percentages would increase, but rebounds and points might be tougher to come by.
2) Bonner's in the minority for this study, as we saw PERs decrease with reduced playing time: avg 1.26 decline, 68% decreasing overall and avg 1.80 decline, 74% decreasing for players with 5+ years of experience. This is roughly consistent with what Justin Kubatko found 2.5 years ago as well.
If you can find the time for an in-season study, I'm sure it would be well received.
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tziller As Jason notes, I think what we can get out of this (as well as Kubatko and Hollinger's previous studies) is that we cannot make generalized assumptions about how per-minute production will be effected by changes in minutes, regardless of other changes. If anything, we can generalize vaguely that per-minute production seems to have a positive correlation with an increase in minutes played... across nearly all subsets. (And that -0.22 from +15 PER guys wasn't a correlation coefficient -- it was the average change in PER among the 53 players. The correlation coefficient is actually +0.23.) And as I wrote in the post: "over-15 PERs who then got at least 10 extra minutes per game the following season, the average change in PER was +0.18." You say this is whom your theorem is after -- good players who see a huge increase in playing time.
So that finding is just as valid as the -0.22 finding, which is to say not very valid at all. If I posted the list of players in each case, we could both sit here and justify every single one based on age, team, situation. But that's not what this is about. It's about trying to address widely-held assumptions and finding out if they are right or wrong. In this case, I think we've shown pretty conclusively (especially combined with the previous studies) that increased playing time does not lead to decreased per-minute production universally. (I know you're after a smaller subset -- one we don't have in large enough fashion here -- but the claim has still resonated.)
I look forward to any work you end up doing with in-season data. But until then, there's no way I can reasonably assume TOIH is correct -- the evidence thus far just wholly disagrees.-
carter_blanchard I think you're being a little inconsistent here. The evidence can't both "wholly disagree" with the hypothesis and tell us nothing about it. You acknowledge that "We don't know" while maintaining that "an increase in playing time DOES NOT cause a player's efficiency to falter," when it's entirely possible that, all else equal, an increase in minutes would cause a drop. Until we (and I'm by no means clever enough myself) find a way to control for everything else, conflicting intuitive explanations will be all we have to rely on. And for now, the intuition of, "not all PT is created equal" still makes sense to me.-
tziller "Making sense" and "supported by any shred of data investigated to this point" are more than a little inconsistent at this point.
The 'we don't know' is in reference to individual cases, namely Millsap. I think we've conclusively proved no universal direct negative relationship exists between increased playing time and per-minute productivity. As stated, we haven't been able to control with a specific in-season subset -- that could change the game. But until then, how on earth can my assumption that there exists no universal negative relationship between increased playing time and per-minute production be shown as wrong?
(I agree my reply above was poorly worded and confusing. What I'm saying: We don't know if Millsap would stay the same, improve, or decline if given more minutes; we damn sure know it is not factual to say he would decline as a rule.)
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silverbird5000 I just want to reiterate that we never meant to suggest a "universal negative relationship" between mintues and PER.-
carter_blanchard These points have been hinted at before, but I wanted to nail them down a little more clearly while it's on my mind. Your knock on coaches aside, we still have to assume that the general trend is players are rewarded with more playing time as they improve, and players see a decrease in minutes if their abilities diminish, right? As long as that relationship exists, it will always obscure efforts to identify silverbird's TOIH.
Even in-season data would suffer from this same limitation. How many times have you seen a guy on your bench get hot in the second quarter so he stays in longer than the usual rotation because he's clearly in the zone? In this case, it's clearly the performance that's being rewarded with extra minutes. Conversely, we've all seen the guy who needs a lot of touches before he can find his rhythm, in which case the higher minutes leads to better productivity. Separating those narratives will always be difficult with the data, but I really like silverbird's (difficult-to-execute) suggestion of using the natural experiment of player injuries to see what happens when a player is catapulted into a starting spot independently of changes in his ability.
Breaking away from the numbers briefly, basically I think for our competing intuitive explanations we're relying on two basic prototypes: the energy guy, and the streak shooter. The "energy guy" would be someone who can provide short burts of awesomeness, but according to the TOIH would be less effective in an extended role. The "streak shooter," on the other hand, needs minutes to heat up. I guess I'm curious, it seems like for you to argue against the TOIH, you have to believe that the "energy guy" is a myth, right? In your honest opinion, Ziller, do you really believe if you moved someone like Ronny Turiaf into a starting role, he could maintain his level of efficiency? For starters, his 7.5 fouls per-40-minutes would probably prevent this experiment from ever happening, but if it ever did happen, I have a very hard time believing that he'd be able to hustle after every possession the way he does now if you ever relied on him for more than 20 mpg.
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Brian M The problem with this data is that minutes are not randomly assigned. They are assigned by coaches, presumably as a function of how well a player is playing, among other things. So a compelling deflationary interpretation of the data is readily available: of course PER correlates with an increase in minutes played; if a player plays better, the coach tends to notice this and reward the player with more minutes. In fact, the observation that PER decreases with reduction in playing time as well seems to offer additional support to this interpretation of the data.
The PER/efficiency claim is presumably something like this: holding a player's overall level of ability constant, his efficiency tends to decrease with large increases in minutes. Crucially, the player's overall level of ability must not systematically covary with minutes played, or else it could very well be level of ability, not minutes played, that explains the changes in efficiency as a function of minutes played. That potential confound looms large, rendering the analysis here completely inconclusive. Yes, you show minute increases correlate positively with PER in the set of players anayzes, but this data really supplies no traction on the debate over whether the factor of minutes played has an effect on efficiency, because of the mpg/ability confound.
This is the case with game-by-game data as well as season data-- one might reasonably hold that players tend to get more minutes on the nights where they're playing better or have a more favorable matchup. So a more fine grained analysis will still be susceptible to the same critique.
Links (17)
Bling Blogs - Marion for Kirilenko?
Published 9/12/2007 by Chad at HoopsBlogging
... A must-read article by BallHype analyzing John Hollinger’s PER system and whether it is effective or not…the debate continues. I would love to post my take on this, but need time to organize all my thoughts. Feel free to leave your response to this, or other links, in the comment section here at HoopsBlogging. ...
Paul Millsap better have a heck of a year
Published 9/12/2007 by Doctor Dribbles at We Rite Goode
Sequels almost never live up to the original, but The Empire Strikes Back, Dr. No, and High School Musical 2 just got company: Tom Ziller is back at Ballhype with "Love and Mathematics, Pt. 2," and it's a doozy. The post is notable not for what it proves but what it disproves: The fallacy that more minutes equals decreased production. ...
Bank of Maimonides
Published 9/12/2007 by Bethlehem Shoals at freedarko.com
And so the Great Mainstream Stat Wars of Summer 2007 continue. Ziller fires back with his critique of ...
Be Prepared
Published 9/12/2007 by Ty Keenan at Plissken at the Buzzer
... Now that all that's out of the way, make sure to check out another excellent article on stats by Tom Ziller at Ballhype. The commenters have done their jobs once again, so I'd advise you not to stop with TZ's post. Thanks to anyone who's commented anywhere on the internets about this issue over the last few days -- it's been fun and we feel privileged to have been a part of it. ...
[Insert clever link title here]
Published 9/12/2007 by Pradamaster <info@bulletsforever.com> at Bullets Forever: Front Page Posts
... More stat talk: Ziller lays the smackdown on anyone who questions the importance of PER. Well, not really, but he reminds us that, in most cases, a players' PER actually increases when they get more minutes. Please read. ...
Wednesday Bullets
Published 9/12/2007 at ESPN.com - True Hoop - Blog
... The latest salvo in the PER wars, from Tom Ziller writing at Ballhype, who seems to be disproving the idea that one of PER's flaws is that, as a per-minute measure, it inflates the value of the work scrubs do in their short work against other scrubs: "We cannot look at any of this data and say 'Increased minutes leads to increased per-minute production (aka efficiency)' just as we cannot and should not say 'Increased minutes leads to decreased per-minute production.' But this data does indicate a positive relationship between minutes and efficiency. The factors and/or causes of the relationship aren't known to us at this point -- some folks deeper in the muck might have private inklings; perhaps deeper investigation has been hashed and fried in the bunkers of Quicken Loans Arena or the Pepsi Center, or even in John Hollinger's basement. Who knows? All we do know -- ...
Daily Dimes 9/12
Published 9/12/2007 by Sebastian Pruiti at Half Court Heave
... Hype] ...
Houston's Morey On NBA Moneyball
Published 9/12/2007 by Tom Ziller at FanHouse
... as the heir to the franchise's general manager throne was premature. Baseball is endlessly different than basketball, and while strides are being made (and hotly debated) among fans, real progress on analytical side is less prolific than in MLB. ...
Do Players Decline When Given More Minutes? No!
Published 9/13/2007 by Brian Cronin at KnickerBlogger.Net
Poster Caleb put the following link in a comment to the Isiah Thomas report card, and I think it is interesting enough to get its own thread. Here is the link, which is a piece written by tziller for BallHype, exploring the results of players who are promoted from the bench to starting. Thanks to the data-collection efforts of Ballhype s own Jason Gurney, I m going to try to ensure this claim never gets stated as fact ever again. Using seasons from 1997-98 to the present, we identified all players whom played at least 45 games in two consecutive seasons and whom saw their minutes per game increase by at least five minutes from the first season to the second. The players must have played between 10 and 25 minutes per game in the first season, to ensure we were not dealing with either folks who went from none-to-some playing time or superstar candidates who took over an offense and thus got a min ...
FanHouse's Top Five: Love and Basketball (And John Hollinger and PER)
Published 9/13/2007 by PostmanE at FanHouse
... , one of which responded to ...
Afternoon Linkage: Eliminate Kickers!
Published 9/13/2007 by Larry Brown at Larry Brown Sports
... Breaking down the NBA stats per minute debate [Tom Ziller at Ballhype] ...
One More Nail In the Anti-Per Minute Argument’s Coffin?
Published 9/17/2007 by Mike K. (KnickerBlogger) at KnickerBlogger.Net
... s that it assumes the homogeneity of court time. It assumes that if a player scored 20 points in 20 minutes, he would also score 40 points in 40 minutes. That there will by systematic differences between these two situations is almost too obvious to point out. It s the difference between sharing the ball with Jordan Farmar while being guarded by Kenny Thomas, and sharing the ball with Kobe Bryant while being guarded by Ron Artest. Insofar as the problem here is one of rotation, small-scale adjustments in minutes played shouldn t create major distortions (it isn t unrealistic to think that if Tim Duncan played 5 extra minutes per game, his per-minute production, as influenced by the level defense he d face, would basically be the same). But when PER catapults bench players into the starting five (or vice-versa), be on the look-out for inflation. Call this the Silverbird-Shoals Hypothesis, or the THEOREM OF INTERTEMPORAL HETEROGENEITY (TOIH). Enter Sactown Royalty s Tom Ziller, ...
Using Stats to Gauge Player Ability
Published 10/1/2007 by Mike K. (KnickerBlogger) at KnickerBlogger.Net
... : I did a small study using player-seasons from 1978-2004. To be included in the study, a player had to (a) see an increase of at least 50% in minutes per game from one season to the next and (b) play at least 41 games in each season. These criteria gave me 465 player-seasons. In 346 of these seasons (74.41%), the player s PER increased with an increase in playing time. And this : No, increased minutes do not seem to lead to decreased efficiency. In fact, the data indicates increased minutes lead to… increased efficiency. More than 70% of the players in the study (there were 251 in total) saw their PER (which is, by definition, a per-minute summary statistic) increase with the increase in minutes. Players whose minutes per game increased by five saw an average change of +1.38 in their PER. ...
A Layman’s Guide to Advanced NBA Statistics
Published 10/29/2007 by Mike K. (KnickerBlogger) at KnickerBlogger.Net
... , after study , ...
Scott Skiles is playing Ben Wallace
Published 12/5/2007 at Ball Don't Lie
... on Monday. Now, the overwhelming majority of NBA players see their per-minute numbers rise with an increase in per-game minutes . But we can t think of a single player, with the possible exceptions of youngsters ...
The known unknowns: Early questions and answers in the NBA
Published 12/6/2007 by Crucifictorious at We Rite Goode
... season? Dirk. Carmelo. Zach. Carlos. Yao. Five of the best basketball players in the NBA--so great that fans don't need last names to catch the references. But the NBA's five best players, in that order? See for yourself. That list appeared on ESPN one year ago today, using John Hollinger's PER statistic as an arbiter of success. Granted, a great PER doesn't automatically equate to basketball greatness, but debates over the stat's effectiveness aside, PER does confirm that the five were among the ...
Kwame Brown: A Bust But Not Wholly Unproductive
Published 3/22/2008 at CelticsBlog
... about for a number one pick, but not terrible numbers either. In fact, over the course of his career, Brown's per minute production has stayed in the same relative area, as he has compiled career averages of 12.4 points, 9.6 boards and 1.2 blocks per 40 minutes while shooting upwards of 48 percent from the field. Those figures aren't great by any means, but they are at least close to respectable on a 'workmanlike' level. Further, as certain studies have indicated (particularly this one by Tom Ziller), per-minute efficiency tends to remain constant with increased minutes ...
I agree with you, although I used to have my doubts, and will probably mention this on my blog as well.
The reason players get more minutes is because they get better. As a player gains confidence, they become more efficient and earn more minutes in the meantime.
Sure, you still have the odd case where a player is always playing against scrubs and can't handle the starting role - but for the most part they earn the extra minutes for a reason. Coaches don't just hand out extra time...