Video: Kobe's Lesson With Olajuwon

Not sure about you but I was a late bloomer as far as being introduced into the game of basketball. I barely knew how to speak english. Besides, unlike most fans in here there is absolutely no history in my family of Laker fans. I was introduced to basketball in the early eighties which is why I had a lot of favorite non Laker players at the time. I did always root for the Lakers but was not by a long shot a die hard fan and was too young to understand what it meant to be a true Laker fan but have always been my favorite team. I became a die hard the day I came home from school and Magic retired because of his HIV and his press conference really touched me and I have since bleed purple and gold.

that’s why no matter how much I think P.E.R. is trash. It’s his meal ticket. I understand that so I have backed off from trashing him. Blame ESPN for ramming it down our throats.

And don’t call me Surely.

Two important things to remember about PER are that it’s per-minute and is pace-adjusted.

Because it’s a per-minute measure, it allows us to compare, say, Jordan Farmar and Derek Fisher, even though there is a disparity in their minutes played.

I also adjust each player’s rating for his team’s pace, so that players on a slow-paced team like Detroit aren’t penalized just because their team has fewer possessions than a fast-paced team such as Golden State.

Bear in mind that PER is not the final, once-and-for-all evaluation of a player’s accomplishments during the season. This is especially true for defensive specialists — such as Quinton Ross and Jason Collins — who don’t get many blocks or steals.

What PER can do, however, is summarize a player’s statistical accomplishments in a single number. That allows us to unify the disparate data on each player we try to track in our heads (e.g., Corey Maggette: free-throw machine, good rebounder, decent shooter, poor passer, etc.) so that we can move on to evaluating what might be missing from the stats.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&id=2850240

Bynum is going to play hell of a lot less minutes than Kobe and be immensely efficient in those limited minutes in terms of 1) FG%/TS% 2) rebounding 3) blocked shots. Adjust his minutes up and as we’ve seen in the past, he grows less effective. As such, PER isn’t an evaluation of who is a better player but who is more efficient in the minutes that they do play (as it’s a per-minute stat). It’s to Kobe’s credit that his PER is incredibly high despite all the low-percentage looks that he takes (which largely owes to the myriad other ways he contributes on the court) and his enormous usage rate. Someone has to take the inefficient looks on a team and convert them at a decent rate (or your team’s offense is going to be awful), and that’s a natural depressing rate on one’s efficiency, especially for perimeter players.

It’s not horribly difficult to wonder why Pau’s PER is similarly high, especially because we were practically screaming at this team the entire playoffs to pass the ball to him more since he’s incredibly efficient with it. His awesome TS% and decent assist ratio speak for themselves.

It’s also fairly obvious that an efficiency statistic can’t be the be-all end-all of player determination because of the obvious intangibles and things that don’t go in the compiling of the statistics and that it’s a per-minute stat. For instance, two years ago, Carl Landry had a higher PER than Tim Duncan for a good part of the year. Was Landry better than Duncan? Of course not. He was simply incredibly efficient in the limited minutes that he had; he was probably 1) facing inferior defenders 2) not adequately accounted for by opponents. Conversely, Duncan faces a myriad of defenders with various schemes to stop him for 35+ minutes a night.

Is Hollinger guilty of using PER as a be-all end-all despite his claims? Certainly. His annual All-Defense selections are particularly laughable. That said, efficiency statistics, including PER, are simply tools for evaluation and while you have to consider supporting factors alongside them, dismissing it outright isn’t a good way to look at it.

Have to figure out whatever this bug is that’s cutting out most of my lines.

If you use dashes “-” you have to leave a space between the dash and the letter. Otherwise the editor thinks you want the text as strikethrough. So if you type – this – but without the spaces it will appear as this.

I couldn’t of said better myself. In an article posted earlier this week by Wondahbap in the Credits, the author pretty much stated that “statistically” the Lakers were better with LO in the line up as compared to Kobe. But then he backed off and said that Kobe is better than LO. He used their plus-minus stats to try and prove his lame point of view. When I hear that sort of nonsence it just irritates me and makes me less inclined to put that much weight on stats.

Namely because his PER marks in ‘90-’91, ‘92-’93, and ‘95-’96 weren’t far off (and in the case of ‘90-’91, better than many of them) the marks he set before the three-peat years. Also, you have to take into account the slightly obvious fact that by then, MJ was getting old, and he obviously didn’t have the same explosiveness he did in the years surrounding his prime, hence the lower scores in other three-peat years and excluding his messy comeback season.

Also, as far as Kobe doing less, his usage rate has been practically the same for the past decade excluding the ‘05-’06 outlier (26.8, 31.8, 30.4, 32.9, 29.1, 31.7, 38.7 (the ‘05-’06 outlier) 33.6, 31.4, and 32.2 are his marks for the last ten years). Now, was the ‘05-’06 version of Kobe better than last year’s? That’s a matter in which more intangibles, like trusting one’s teammates, being a better leader, etc. come into play. It’s fairly easy to say that the Kobe of ‘05-’06 was a more efficient player, but perhaps not necessarily a better one depending on your view of the intangibles that he brings.

All that said, as far as his play goes, it’s fairly obvious that he’s declined, namely in regards as to the ease at which he gets to the basket. Kobe of a few years ago blew by defenders with impunity to get to the rim. Kobe of now can still do that, but not on every other play; it’s a much more measured attack, hence the uptick in midrange jumpers. The obvious indication of this is his work with Hakeem, as he’s taken into account that he needs to finds other ways to be effective on offense. As far as how this relates to efficiency, shots at the rim are obviously more efficient, and if Kobe is blowing by people more often, he’s generating more free throw attempts, and the biggest decline last season was the number of free throw attempts he generated, which obviously depresses his efficiency, as free points at the line are a major supporter of one’s efficiency for obvious reasons.

Developing a post game with Hakeem will maintain his efficiency, but he’s obviously not going to be as efficient as he would be next to the rim. The parallel here between Kobe and the older MJ is painfully apparent — MJ’s development of a post game and his fadeaway jumper were responses to his declining athleticism and corresponded with relative decreases in his efficiency.

Again, my more general point (going back to my initial reply to Purple’s post) was that Kobe being surrounded by better players wasn’t necessarily depressing his overall efficiency, but rather that he’s adapting to age, and adopting a style that suits him but is naturally more inefficient. Now, is the more team-oriented Kobe of now better for the team’s overall performance than the more statistically sound one of ‘05-’06? That’s an entirely different question.

I probably should stay away from Vanessa.

And they cheat an average of 3-6 times per game.

I guess you could say that breaking the rules with intent is cheating, but unless you are willing to lump every intentional foul under the heading of cheating, I just don’t think this type of things qualifies.

And it certainly doesn’t specially qualify Jordan or Bryant as cheaters because they were able to get away with more than others. Just because they are more succesful at “cheating” doesn’t make them cheaters and the people who get caught non-cheaters.