Great thread!
Beware of the drz. Hes a dedicated Bonner troll who won't hesitate to declare that everyone in the thread is stupid and that he is smart. He'll also bail out of arguments prematurely because he claims that we are no longer worth his time.
He brings a certain entertainment value though. Like KillBill still does with anything Greek or "Tiago Euroleague MVP!" Or goPaTTY's obsession with Patty Mill's. Like clockwork, you can expect an appearance out of him in any Bonner bashing or Bonner celebration threads. Based on his history, I can only assume that Bonner being lower on the PER ranking irked him so he decided to incorrectly bash the system.
This is a good point. That's also why power forwards have the highest replacement level PER. In other words, if you sign one player at each position off the scrap heap, it's expected that the power forward will have the highest PER.
For the record, IIRC, small forwards have the lowest expected replacement level PER.
NASF run rampage in the game threads so I kind of dig that moniker for them.
GNSF are most obvious in the NBA section of Spurstalk where they're trolled by the elders and are flies to in obvious troll threads.
Yeah. It's most prominent in the NBA section, but you'll see this phenomenon up here on occasion as well. I think lakaluva made a rare appearance up here a couple of days ago with the most blatant troll thread imaginable, and he caught 3 or 4 posters legitimately insulted and seriously responding to his claim that no player on the Spurs' squad could start for L.A.![]()
I didn't think I hinted at much. If 15 is a legit starter and Bowen's best is 9.5, it's safe to say PER underrated him. I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that Bowen is at least a legit starter, which means PER underrated him by more than 50%.
As far as Bowen being "tremendously overrated", I'm not going to even start typing my disagreement with that sentiment with a game about to start. I'd be typing through halftime, tbh
All I have to point to is how the Spurs defense has collapsed since Bowen left. And how the Spurs haven't done anything in the playoffs since Bowen left. And, oh yeah, how horrible a fit RJ was even though every traditional measurement would have predicted RJ would be a much, much bigger asset than Bowen.
I agree the Big 3 were all much better than Bowen but Bowen at the very least was a key cog who deserved to have his jersey retired.
PER was accurate for Bowen. His strength wasn't really his production but the ability to take away production from the other team. A better way to measure Bowen would be by the opposing player's PER which likely would be lower.
I don't disagree that he deserved to have his jersey retired, but ask yourself if the Spurs defense has suffered to the degree that it has because Bowen is gone or because the big three have aged as they have, especially Duncan.
Suppose you have a 2005 Duncan/Rasho/Ginobili/Parker out there with 2005 Horry as the third big and the 2012 Jefferson as the SF. You really think the Spurs wouldn't have a top-5 defense?
As for them not doing much in the playoffs, the biggest factors have been
1) Manu's injuries
2) Duncan's slippage
3) Not that they replaced Bowen, but like you said who they replaced him with.
A fair enough statement I suppose. My point was that if I have to choose an all-star defensive big man with a crappy defensive wing or an all-star defensive wing with a crappy big man, I'll go with the former every time. It's why the Orlando Magic have been a contender for years.
I really think Pop just sees Duncan and Splitter as centers. For a team that has to score to win, Pop doesn't want to bog things down by playing two centers. I don't think it's more than that, tbh.
But perhaps Pop is a fan of WP48. While almost every stat in existence says Splitter is a stud, WP48 says Splitter has regressed quite a bit from last year. Rookie Splitter had a .204 WP48. This year, Splitter's number has slipped to .149.
It probably has nothing to do with Pop's thinking but who knows. Leonard has the best WP48 on the team (.290) and he's starting.
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So is this the best PER team in the Duncan era?
And will that actually matter come playoff time?
Couldn't he just play Duncan at the 4 on offense? I mean even though Tiago plays the 5, he's also a bit of a power forward in a way.
If Pop was a fan of WP48, he would've played him more last year. So I'm going with the can't play 2 centers/isn't very skilled theory.
Although I think those reasons are hogwash.
Yeah, the Spurs are probably still a top-5 defensive team in the NBA without Bowen that season. However, do the Spurs win the championship with RJ instead of Bowen? RJ had a PER that was about double of Bowen's so he should have made that team even better, right?
We all know that wouldn't have been the case. I can't even comprehend how horrible RJ would have been in that Suns series or that Pistons series.
Think of it this way: If RJ replaced Bowen, Ginobili would have been forced to chase around Rip Hamilton in the Finals. With Ginobili expending so much energy on defense, there's no way he could have been the offensive hero he was that series. And without Ginobili having such a great series, there's no way the Spurs win the championship.
Even if all Bowen ever did was allow Ginobili (and Parker in certain matchups) to save energy on defense, he was invaluable to the Spurs.
Yeah, has to be because none of the teams that had Bowen on it would be able to compete since PER hated Bowen.
Hopefully. But it's far from a guaranteed, obviously.
The Mavs won a championship last year even though they had pedestrian PERs outside of Nowitzki.
Dirk Nowitzki 23.4
Tyson Chandler 18.4
Shawn Marion 17.0
Jason Terry 15.9
JJ Barea 14.8
Jason Kidd 14.4
timvp
What have the regular season PERs been of other recent NBA Champs?The Mavs won a championship last year even though they had pedestrian PERs outside of Nowitzki.
(Do not include rigged Laker years).
Damn. I've never seen anything like that. I know it's not a full season, and you got a little selective with the dates, but still. I know I've never seen a team with that many high-performers. Since the beginning of March, these Spurs have been really strong.
At first I thought that part of it was the fact that so many people have gotten minutes. But teams always have top subs who get the minutes. They just don't can't produce that much. Yeah
We staaacked!
I don't know about 15 = legitimate starter... I'm pretty sure 15 = average NBA player...
I love how you used three posts to come around to what I had posted, but you still seem to think I'm wrong. At best you can nitpick the semantics of my post since production is an indicator of performance, but I stand by what I said. I also stand by the idea that "practically speaking," it's obvious (to people who've done even basic research on PER) that if the metric is inflated by taking more shots, which affects nearly every player in the NBA as has been covered in this thread, then that is a very practical issue with the metric.
That was cute when you talked about eFG% and advanced metrics, by the way.![]()
PER overrates mostly-offensive players and underrates mostly-defensive players, due to the lack of defensive statistics in the box score; lots of blocks and steals doesn't necessarily make someone a good defender.
Bruce vs. RJ is the definitive argument of why PER should never be looked at in a vacuum.
Bonner troll/lover...check.
Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid... check.
I am smart...check.
Bails out prematurely because arguments aren't worth my time... check.
Entertainment value... that ones a little iffy, but I'll give it a check. Overall, pretty insightful.
I've thought about changing my username to "The Bonner Signal" and getting a sig like the bat signal, but with a sandwich. I lurk here and read stuff every 1-2 days, but I only ever post in Bonner-related threads.
And since you brought Bonner up, I was sad no one responded to my mind-shattering post in the last Bonner thread, so I'll repeat it here to blow minds again:
Spurs 2011 Playoffs Leader in Win Shares per minute?
MATT F**KIN' BONNER
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/2011.html
IF you're going to use PER at all, then 15 is a reasonable cutoff point for legitimate starter.
Last season, 186 players met the standards on basketball-reference.com to qualify for the scoring le. Of those 186 players, 92 had PERs of 15 or higher.
With 150 starting slots in the NBA, the 92 players with a per of 15 or higher would seem to pass the test to be considered legit starters.
That is, IF you're going to use PER to make that sort of distinction at all.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...=&order_by=per
To me,
Subjective Evaluation (indepth, not limited scouting)> Adjusted Plus Minus+ (adjusted with box scores even - Rosenbaum/Barzilai, Ilardi etc) > Raw Plus Minus> BR's Win Shares (based on Bill James)> PER (Hollinger) > Wins Produced (Berri)
The reason why I put up APM+ high is that it combines player performance by point differentials with regressions both for replacement player as well as box scores. Bruce Bowen for e.g. will score far higher on APM+ than PER, which is box score limited.
15 is intentionally set to be league average every year.
This should be required reading for all thread participants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Efficiency_Rating
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