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Ed. Note:  When you're done reading this post, make sure to go read Part 2, the follow-up post in which C.A. really digs into the numbers to explain why PER undervalues Kobe Bryant.

If you've got a lot of time with nothing to do, go into any NBA chat room or message board and ask the following question: 

Who is the best player in the NBA? 

It's a fun subject to dive into, as long as you are running with the right crowd.  If people stay respectful and stick to arguing things on merit, making points based on logic, evidence and knowledge-based observation, it can be a jolly good time, with many different answers, each with their own valid points.  You could go with LeBron James, the do-everything superstar.  He scores, he passes, he rebounds, he makes julienne fries.  If efficiency is your style, you could drop Chris Paul in the conversation.  Nobody is better at turning the ball in his hands into points on the board for his team, either through extremely proficient shooting or very adept passing.  If you like the big play, maybe Dwyane Wade is your man.  He scores with the best of them, and does it all in a way that looks great on SportsCenter.  If big men are your cup du jour, you could go with the young stud, Dwight Howard, or the old guard, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.  And, of course, this conversation wouldn't even be interesting if you didn't include Kobe Bryant.

There are tons of fans who put Kobe on the top of that list.  Sure, lots of them are homeristic Laker lovers who create that list as much with their hearts as with their heads.  But they aren't alone.  There are plenty of NBA personnel who put Kobe at the top, or very near the top, of that list as well.  He was second in the MVP balloting last season, behind LeBron James.  A survey of NBA GMs ranked Kobe as 2nd most likely to win the MVP this season, and ranked him first in categories like "The player you'd most like to take a shot with the game on the line".  In that same survey, the question was asked "If you were starting a franchise and could sign any NBA player, which player would you sign?"  Kobe came in 3rd, behind LeBron and Dwight Howard, despite being more than 7 years older than some very attractive candidates like Wade and Paul.  The point in all this?  Kobe is very, very highly regarded in this league, both by people who think with their hearts, and people who don't.

So if I were to put a group of names in a list like this: 

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant

and ask you "Which of those players doesn't belong, and why?",  it might be a tough task.  You might think "Kobe is older than the other players" and you'd be right.  You might think "only LeBron isn't a guard."  But if I were to ask you "Which player on this list is significantly worse than the other three?", you'd be hard pressed to come up with an answer.  They're all incredible, right?

Not according to advanced statistical metrics, they aren't.  In fact, according to advanced statistics, Kobe Bryant is a distant fourth to the other three players.  According to the most well known advanced statistic, Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Kobe was the 6th most productive player in the league last year, barely registering above Brandon Roy.  He wasn't even the most valuable player on his own team, according to the Win Shares method (Pau Gasol) and the Adjusted +/- method (Lamar Odom).  No matter the method, Paul, Wade and James comprise the top 3.  No matter the method, Kobe is not ranked in the top 5.  That's a pretty big disconnect with what was described earlier.  In a two part piece, I will look at one particular advanced stat (PER), break it down to its individual components, and compare Kobe to other players in an effort to fully explain the disconnect between Kobe's analytical place in the game, and his statistical place in the game.

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Last season during the playoffs, I ran a regular column here at SS&R titled Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown. In it I used a toolkit of unorthodox statistical measures to take apart the Lakers performance game by game. The idea was that by looking at game stats in a different light - in particular, by analyzing the numbers per individual team possession, rather than per game - we might learn things about how the Lakers play that you can't glean from the conventional newspaper box score.

TFBB is back this year, slightly reworked. It won't run for every game during the regular season, but we'll do one for each of the life-and-death contests (Boston, Cleveland, a couple other opponents) as well as weekly pieces looking at stat trends as they develop over the season. And don't worry: when we get to the playoffs, we'll resume our usual every-game dissection of the numbers. (I know you were worried!)

The other change is the name. Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown, let's be honest, is the most boring name given to anything ever. I should know, I came up with it. Sorry to have inflicted it on you last spring. To inject some much-needed heat and passion, I've renamed the column Laker Stats Orgy. It's shorter and punchier and I hope will trick search-engine users who type in the word "orgy."

I can tell you're excited, so let's throw some plastic over the furniture and get going. Bow chicka bow-wow.

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More photos » by Bill Baptist - NBAE/Getty Images

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So this is what Kobe Bryant in decline looks like?

For the first time in three years, this summer, Kobe had the summer off. That's not to say that he took the summer off, mind you — Kobe being Kobe, I can guarantee you that he put in just as much hard work as ever. But unlike the last two summers, which he devoted to USA basketball, first preparing for and then winning a gold medal, this summer was all Kobe's, to do with whatever he wished.

For Kobe, that meant only one thing:  Working on his game. As J.E. Skeets of Yahoo! Sports' Ball Don't Lie blog pointed out, it's one of the things that makes Kobe so special. While young players like Andrew Bynum are casting off Hall of Fame mentors as though they've learned all they can, Kobe Bryant, the best player in the game and a 14-year veteran, is still learning, still seeking out mentors.

As Phil Jackson recently pointed out (via The Press-Enterprise), "Kobe always has a goal. He doesn't go through summer playing golf or fishing. He's got something in his mind he's going to work on with his game during the offseason." This offseason, that something was his already-stellar post game. To that end, as you have all heard a dozen times by now, he called up the most skilled post player ever to play the game, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon.

A mere six games into the season, the effects of Kobe's offseason work on his game are stunningly obvious.

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More photos » by Pat Sullivan - AP

"Memphis ... MEMPHIS?!? AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! RUN!!! Oh, umm... OUCH! Coach... coach, I'm hurt. I'm hurt, coach. It hurts a lot, and probably won't feel better until Saturday... I mean, if I was gonna take a guess..."

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By now, if you didn't watch it happen in person or on TV, you've all heard the news:  On the final Lakers' final offensive play of the fifth game of the year, in overtime, Andrew Bynum took a hard foul and injured his right arm. Collectively, of course, Laker Nation held its breath, and slowly began to lose its mind.

Not me. I know what's going on here.

The good news was that Bynum's arm was functional enough to make one of two free throws for him, effectively winning the game for L.A. The bad news was that after the game, Bynum couldn't use the arm to get dressed.

Of course, by now we have "more information" — or at least, that's what they're calling it — on this so-called injury. While it was originally thought to be a sprained elbow, they are now calling it a strained elbow, and he appears to be day-to-day. The word, passed along by the L.A. Times' Mike Bresnahan (via Twitter), is that an MRI revealed nothing serious, though Bynum won't play for the Lakers on Friday, and may or may not be back on Sunday.

For his part, according to the L.A. Times, Bynum is said to be "relieved that the injury wasn't 'too serious.' He had better range of motion this afternoon after being unable to use his right arm while getting dressed after Wednesday night's game." Lakers fans can breathe a sigh of relief; no big deal.

That's the official story. Of course, I know the truth:  This is all about Memphis.

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Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. I didn't include a specific number because that's not what this is about, but he's up there. He is also, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most polarizing presence in all of basketball. The Kobe Haters lambast him for everything from selfish play to his poor moral choices of years past. The latest trend is to label all of the changes that he's made (to his game, to his personality, to his interactions with teammates) as fake. On the other side of the coin, the Kobe Lovers defend him with religious zeal, often lumping anyone who has the smallest criticism of their hero amongst the "Haters" category. Thus, opinions surrounding Kobe Bryant tend to be pretty black and white, because any shade of gray is inevitably forced towards one end of the spectrum. It's easy to figure out why people love Kobe. The majority are Lakers fans who simply adore their favorite team's star, and the rest love him because of his success, his game, or because of his frequent offseason trips to China. But why is the Hate side of the spectrum so large?

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Let's get straight to the point, shall we? We've got high standards for you guys. Yes, higher standards than we have for "them." Because we have a vested interest in your behavior as Lakers fans, we're going to be a bit stricter on Lakers fans, here at SS&R, than on others — even trolls and "haters." We have good reasons for this; allow me to illustrate.

A couple weeks ago, Kelly Dwyer wrote a piece on the on-court drama that went down between Kobe Bryant and Golden State's Stephen Jackson. It was an excellent piece, and the opinion KD expressed is one I absolutely mirror and agree with. You can find it here.

(Sidenote:  While I'm linking to it, let me just say that it's a great piece, and like KD, this is one of the reasons I love Kobe. Also, I think if you really pay attention to it, you realize that Kobe isn't so much an asshole, as he is painted by many, but just a competitor in an old mold, and one that's not afraid to get into his opponents' heads to achieve an advantage. Denver knows how that feels — he's gotten in their heads in two straight playoffs series, with 2008 being the best example. Read the post, it's a good one.)

If you actually read the post, you realized it was a pro-Kobe piece. No, KD is not kissing Kobe's ass; he has written anti-Kobe or pro-LeBron pieces just as often as he has written posts like this one. But the bigger point is that he writes it as he sees it, and though his opinion isn't infallible, I think his motives are pretty unassailable.

I read the first page of comments, and was immediately saddened and angered, at the same time. Most of them were from apparent Lakers fans, very harshly (and sometimes quite vulgarly) accusing KD of being a Kobe hater. I was puzzled... did they not get that this was a pro-Kobe piece?

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More photos » by Kevork Djansezian - Getty Images

Artest in Purple & Gold is looking better and better with every game

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As I've mentioned before, we're participating in CelticsBlog's giant round-up of previews. We've seen the Atlantic & Southwest divisions, and I just posted links for the Central & Northwest divisions a few moments ago (be sure to check those out). Southeast division links will be coming soon, but now it's our turn.

Yes, I'm aware that a season preview the day after the first game of the season is a bit unusual, but hey — CelticsBlog organized this, so see it as a positive thing: another reason to blame the Greenie Weenies, right? Meanwhile, we've done a lot of detailed, in depth work here at SS&R, over the last two weeks, to preview our Lakers, meaning that some of this will be a bit redundant (it's too much to link; just browse our recent archives if you haven't seen it yet). Part of the idea here is to help those who don't know our team as well as we do to get better acquainted with the Lakers (though I think that may be more of a concern for the Grizzlies than the Lakers); for those of you who have been with us as we geared up for the start of the season, consider this a final summary of what we here at SS&R expect for the season.

With that, click on through for our final season preview piece of the 2009-10 season.

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This cat knows what time it is. You can see it in his eyes.

He's had enough of the preseason. Oh, sure, he's enjoyed the mouthwatering previewage we've dished up here at SS&R like so much sushi-grade tuna. Our positional previews - covering the Lakers' point guards, shooting guards, small forwards, power forwards, centers and coaching staff - very much agreed with his palate. Ryan's review of the long history of Laker repeat attempts made him purr for hours. He rubbed his head affectionately against Chris's look at the top challengers to the Lakers' crown, and even found my piece on statistical trends to watch in the new season useful as a litterbox substitute.

But just look at him now: that cat's got the Game Face on. He's done monkeying around with our asses. He wants real basketball. He knows it's time to get serious.

We agree entirely, so to wrap everything up on Opening Night Eve, we're going on record with our bottom-line predictions for this season. Check ‘em out after the jump, and leave your own predictions in the comments.

Serious Cat will be unamused if you don't.

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