What Does PER Really Tell Us?
15
|
tykeenan posted 9/7/2007 from westcoastbasketball.blogspot.com [flag] |
Tags:
NBA
John Hollinger
Comments (2)
-
Doctor Dribbles +3It's a good idea to question sacred cows like PER...but only if you can then question the criticism, too. And as this argument uses Pape Sow and Dajuan Wagner to make its case--well, let's say it's interesting, but hardly flawless.-
tykeenan Legitimate point. I didn't write this one--my cowriter did--but let me rebut. I think Carter used those examples to show that not knowing anything about the players' situations makes PER hard to read. When I look at a players' points and minutes, they tell me something about his situation. Because PER relies on so many stats, it's impossible to know exactly what's affecting the stat just by looking at the one number. We know the limitations of something like points, but I'm not sure we know the limitations of something like PER yet. Again, I guess that's on us to figure out, but looking at the formula just hurts my head. All I know is that every time I look at PER, I look at the player's common stat line to explain it.
You wrote a good comment on our site, so I'll try to get to that one next. I'd let Carter do it, but he's unavailable, and your comments deserve prompt responses.
-
Links (15)
Reconsidering Advanced Basketball Stats
Published 9/7/2007 by Bethlehem Shoals at FanHouse
... Because today's been fairly slow, I was able to read all the way through this gigantic post from Plissken at the Buzzer. The subject is ...
People Hate Statistics
Published 9/8/2007 by Hot Shit College Student at Thank You Isiah
... Owning an Odom jersey doesn't make you right, and goofy statements like "a player's height should be considered when looking at rebounds" aren't going to lead to rational conclusions. You know what we should look at when considering a player's ability to rebound? ...
Hollinger Predicts Slides For Martin, Artest; More of Same From Bibby
Published 9/9/2007 by TZ <info@sactownroyalty.com> at Sactown Royalty
... While we're talking about PER, you should check out a conversation happening on the merits of Hollinger's favorite stat as well as APBRmetrics as a whole. Start with Carter Blanchard's post at Plissken at the Buzzer, and follow with ...
No stupid questions, just confused bloggers
Published 9/9/2007 by Doctor Dribbles at We Rite Goode
... Anyway, what's this all about? Why question PER, a stat increasingly trusted by basketball fandom, in the middle of a football weekend? Well, Plissken at the Buzzer begged to differ with the formula. Here's the gist: ...
The Interpretation of Symbols
Published 9/10/2007 by SilverBird5000 at freedarko.com
A Joint-post by Silverbird5000 and Bethlehem Shoals Some of you may be following the latest blogosphere contretemps over Hollinger's Player Efficiency Ranking (PER)- that great Rosetta Stone of NBA statistical analysis, whose benevolent tyranny over our league it is our duty as fans to periodically resist. The argument comes down to the wisdom of the per-minute adjustment, which is a central part of PER, along with pretty much every other Ultimate Metric in the marketplace. On the one hand, adjusting for minutes played seems like a good idea, insofar as it immunizes our judgment from the folly of coaches. If a player who should be getting 40 minutes a game only gets 20, his per-game stats will understate his true value. What per-minute adjustments do is control for mismanagement, as Ziller ...
Tuesday Bullets
Published 9/11/2007 at ESPN.com - True Hoop - Blog
... Lots of discussion of John Hollinger's PER. A criticism that started the debate, ...
[Insert clever link title here]
Published 9/11/2007 by Pradamaster <info@bulletsforever.com> at Bullets Forever
... . The original post that started this charade can be found here. I fall more along the view of WRG and HSCS, and Free Darko's argument seems mostly speculative with a lack of empirical proof, but I do think Shoals/Silverbird and Carter Blanchard raise good questions. ...
Paul Millsap better have a heck of a year
Published 9/12/2007 by Doctor Dribbles at We Rite Goode
... With data support from Ballhype founder Jason Gurney, Ziller goes deeper on what he calls "The Paul Millsap quandry," in honor of the Utah Jazz rookie (the test case we keep returning to) who put up sterling production in about 18 mpg last year. ...
I Like PER (and other thoughts)
Published 9/12/2007 by Kurt at Forum Blue And Gold
... If you haven’t been following this, there has become a heated debate in the hoops blogging world about the value of PER, John Hollinger’s all-encompassing hoops stat. Carter at Plissken at the Buzzer fired the first salvo, questioning the usefulness of PER, Tom Ziller (of Sactown Royalty and writing for Ballhype) ...
On Second Thought...: Using Statistics to Re-do the All-Defense Lineup
Published 9/12/2007 by Ben Q. Rock at Third Quarter Collapse
... The statistics discussion began over at Plissken at the Buzzer, where Carter Blanchard poo-pooed John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating (PER) because it rated the likes of Brent Barry and Earl Boykins more highly than it rated Lamar Odom. Tom Ziller of ...
Abraham Linking: Lords of NBA Math, Cheating Pats...
Published 9/12/2007 by Stop Mike Lupica at Stop Mike Lupica
... Quick shoutout to the NBA discussion of the week - Carter Blanchard of Plissken at the Buzzer set it in that post, and Free Darko has been posting about it all week. Also get involved are in this discussion of the big dawgs are the honorable ...
FanHouse's Top Five: Love and Basketball (And John Hollinger and PER)
Published 9/13/2007 by PostmanE at FanHouse
... 1) If you have any interest in professional basketball and advanced statistics at all, the past, oh, three days have been a boon. It started with a thought-provoking post at Plissken at the Buzzer arguing against John Hollinger's PER. And the knowledge has since turned from a drizzle to a cascade: ...
Time to punch the numbers
Published 10/4/2007 by Crucifictorious at We Rite Goode
... * An important caveat: Jamison's shooting percentage shrunk when other teams increasingly keyed on him, shooting only 40.9% in the NSBT games, compared to 46.4% in those 54 other games. And who knows--that FG% decline may be enough of a counter to the other performance gains. (Honestly, we don't know, and will defer to Ty Keenan and Carter Blanchard to load all of this data into the PER formula.) ...
The known unknowns: Early questions and answers in the NBA
Published 12/6/2007 by Crucifictorious at We Rite Goode
... 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 most brilliant offensive ...
I'm Judging Me
Published 3/28/2008 by Carter Blanchard at freedarko.com
... reason he couldn't be in New Orleans in a league where Mehmet Okur can be an All Star,' and 'That's going to be embarrassing when February arrives and he's still wearing that ridiculous star.' Sure enough, when he returned from the break, he was back to his pristinely bald head. I imagine there was quite the awkward moment between him and his barber as they were forced to finally concede that this wasn't going to be the year he made the leap. Over the summer I wrote a fairly-derided post aimed at tearing down Hollinger's numbers, in part because they failed to depict Lamar in ...
