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Good win.

PER mostly fit with conventional wisdom... in the outcome, in the rankings. It was probably pushed that direction to fit with conventional wisdom that values scorers higher than rebounders.

@justin

Yeah the Lakers are real close to 4 20+ on PER thanks to their huge budget and the help of Jerry West, Kobe's agent, Odom "sacrificing" for the love of LA and winning and taking a high schooler and keeping him.

2007-8 Celtics weren't close to it at all on PER that season. They were closer based on the past history of the big 3 and the future of Rondo. Defense was a huge part of their success and half of all defense (shot defense) is missing in PER.

@Thunder S

PER was developed by John Hollinger, I believe in the mid-90s. Somewhat similar systems existed for a decade or two before that. He says he used simple regression analysis to help set the stat weights. The biggest choices he made were to setting the break-even point for getting positive credit from shooting fairly low and giving lower weight to defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds.

The first choice is often criticized by Dave Berri (creator of Wins Produced) because it makes it look like you are being positive even when shooting in the high 30%s or low 40%s for FG%. That especially helps the PER of volume shooters, like Westbrook. It is questionable from the perspective where every action is a separate independent event but more reasonable in another- namely one that recognizes the possibility of and typical rate of offensive rebounding and gives shooting performance a a less harsh conditional score in light of that context where every team in the league rebounds 20+% of their misses and almost always has.

The lower defensive rebounding rate is also a conditional contextual value that recognizes that almost all teams got 70+% of defensive rebounds so players aren't doing something that has 50/50 even odds against the offensive players. Berri however prefers to look at it and score it as a ball in the air of equal value to either side who gets it.

There are other metrics but PER had an early start and mostly fit with conventional wisdom. There may be better ones but that there is a lot of debate about what is better and what makes it better.

@JJJ

2003-4 Lakers had 4 over PER17. 2 over 20.
2003-4 Mavs had 4 over 20 if you count a player a bit short of 20 minutes. Another was at 18.
2006-7 Nuggets had 4 over 18. 1 over 20.
2008-9 Nuggets had 4 over 18. None over 20.
There might be others in the neighborhood of what you specified.

@Thunder S
I can't give you much of an explanation, other than the fact that its a pretty good all-encompassing stat for offense. Its not perfect by any stretch, but if I want to use one number to illustrate a point about how somebody has played offensively it seems like the best option out there.

Would someone be able to explain why PER has become such a useful/illustrative stat? Just curious because it seems it has become the end-all-be-all of offensive efficiency.

@justin
Yeah, so not that unprecedented I guess haha.

@nick

Nope. I wouldn't worry about it really.

@justin
I'm attempting to do that as well. I figured maybe I made a slight mistake with the formula since its so complicated. My ORTG/DRTG numbers for the season matched BBR going into tonight, though my pace didn't. I dunno, not a big enough difference to get too worked up over I suppose.

Lakers pretty much have four this year, Odom is a tiny bit off.

@JJJ
They never quite got 4 guys over 20, or all that close actually. Somebody had a slightly down year every year. I'm not good at looking that stuff up, I don't know how unprecented that would be. Where's Crow when you need him?

you know its not even funny to know that if we we're in the East we'de prolly be the number one seed, hell if the top 4 teams in the West would be, Boston, Miami, Chicago, and Orlando wouldn't be as good if they had to face Grizzlies, Suns, Hornets, Rockets, Mavericks, Lakers, Clippers(who to me are the best worse team of the league), Spurs, Blazers, and Nuggets 4 times a year. At the moment Utah is 39-42 in the West and they are the 10th spot, but Pacers are 37-44 and are going to the playoffs. Nuff said on that.

@nick

That's weird. Maybe we have different box score stuff in there, the box scores aren't finalized for a bit usually.

I use the Dean Oliver formula off BBR to calculate possessions so that my stuff matches up with BBR...

At least we are not the Hornets

nick :@justin

That would be awesome. Since Perkins started playing I have Harden at 17.4, Ibaka at 18.8, Westbrook at 22.0, and Durant at 24.2 for linear PER. If Harden gets that third year jump and Ibaka bumps his shooting back up a bit to where it was earlier in the season, it would definitely be possible to get 4 guys above 20. That would be impressive.

I wonder how many teams have had 4 players with 20+ PER. How were the Celts over the last 3-4 years?

I had the pace at 98.1, which is different as well, so I'm probably doing something slightly wrong. Oh well.

In 2000 Gary Payton shot 530 three pointers and only shot 34% on them. It could be a lot worse. The year before he shot 281 of them at 29.5%. Jason Kidd did similar things.

Russ has ~100 3PA on the year, if his percentage sticks around 33-36 range that's not a bad thing.

@justin
By the way, somehow my ORTG and DRTG #s don't quite match yours - I had our ORTG at 120.1 and our DRTG at 116.3 for tonight. Which version of pace/possessions are you supposed to use to calculate those numbers?

@justin
That would be awesome. Since Perkins started playing I have Harden at 17.4, Ibaka at 18.8, Westbrook at 22.0, and Durant at 24.2 for linear PER. If Harden gets that third year jump and Ibaka bumps his shooting back up a bit to where it was earlier in the season, it would definitely be possible to get 4 guys above 20. That would be impressive.

I wonder if some of the PFs we put above is Ibaka is due to their offensive production alone. Ibaka's defense has to be better than some of those guys (Dirk?), even though their better offensive threats

Harden ended up redeeming himself after his initial shaky start.

12 pts (3-7 shooting, 5-5 fts), 6 reb, 2 assists, 3 steals, 2 TO

@Thunder247
I dunno, I'm caught in the middle. He's not shooting a terrible percentage from there, and it really changes how opposing players can play defense on him. If we are going to keep two lane-cloggers in Serge and Perk, then it will benefit him and the team in the long run to shoot those threes

However, he really needs to work on when and how to take those threes, like the one he jacked w less than 3 min left.

This still works on the classic / old version of Yahoo boxscores only.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36000

nick :
After tonight, Ibaka is averaging 14.5pts, 10.0rebs, and 3.9blks per 36 minutes since the Perk trade. I have him at a linear PER of 18.8 in the time frame. Awesome.

Third year jumps are supposed to be the biggest. There's a remote chance we could have four PER 20 players in the rotation next season...

justin :
Durant with 2 assists and 7 turnovers might have ruined his bid for a 1:1 A:TO ratio.

I have KD with 2 more TOs than assists at this point - still possible for him to get to 1:1.

After tonight, Ibaka is averaging 14.5pts, 10.0rebs, and 3.9blks per 36 minutes since the Perk trade. I have him at a linear PER of 18.8 in the time frame. Awesome.

Thunder247 :
Also, not happy Westbrook thinks he is a three point shooter. Long term this is very bad. I hope he quits taking them unless it is a big moment.

Depends on his %. I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 a game if he keeps his 3PT% around 34-35%. He has to get a better feel on when to take them though.

Kings turn out to be pretty good sportsmen-apparently hung around and prayed (?) with Thunder guys after game. I'm guessing KD and Nick and others know what it's like to face relocation. softens the DMC thuggery a bit.

Also, not happy Westbrook thinks he is a three point shooter. Long term this is very bad. I hope he quits taking them unless it is a big moment.

cdspark :
Missed the first half but the defense in the second had to be much better. Kings shooting % dropped from 52% to 41%

It was sort of, but they got to the line a ton and also got a lot of offensive rebounds, and did not turn it over a lot.

Good win for us. Too bad Dallas won in OT. Not really happy with the D or that Harden is still getting about 24 minutes a game. Still, a good win.

Durant with 2 assists and 7 turnovers might have ruined his bid for a 1:1 A:TO ratio.

Missed the first half but the defense in the second had to be much better. Kings shooting % dropped from 52% to 41%

@OKC Baby

Agreed

justin :@Joe

I have a spreadsheet that I just plug the boxscore data into. I had a firefox plugin that could scrape ESPN boxscores live during games for it but ESPN changed something and it doesn’t work anymore.

I used to get it through firefox too on a greasemonkey thing but it quit working.

@Joe

I have a spreadsheet that I just plug the boxscore data into. I had a firefox plugin that could scrape ESPN boxscores live during games for it but ESPN changed something and it doesn't work anymore.

not the worst win we've had. Kings aren't great of course, but we did seem to notch it up when we got down a bit. not a great game (D was pretty bad) but not terrible either.

Hey I think the kings could do it if they play this hard man

justin :
ORTG: 124.3
DRTG: 116.0
PACE: 96.5
Held the Kings to only 43.5% eFG but they dominated the boards and we didn’t turn them over (and turned it over too much). What should have been a great defensive game turns into another poor one. That’s three of the last four games that have been poor defensively heading into the playoffs.

Where do you get the Off rating and def rating so quickly?

All I want is to win the next, say, 17 games in a row! Wouldn't that be sweet!! Thunder UP!!

Daniel :
What was up with that huddle just now with Thunder and Kings players? It seemed Serge and another guy in a suit were talking, was it a prayer?

Yep. You could hear the "Amen!" at the end.

@justin
That's really funny. I'm surprised it didn't happen to the Thunder given how poorly they played at times. All in all though, a pretty good win. Taking care of business without our A game.

man Von Wafer must feel like a douche. at least our 2 missed dunks are by guys that normally throw down pretty hard. and neither went all swagger. i'm glad JH and RW will prob be mad at themselves for missing the dunks and not all cocky about it.

c yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Beat the BUCKS!

Come on Spurs, Kings, and Hornets. We want your help. Get us a win and we'll give you shaving lessons from Byron Mullens.

ORTG: 124.3
DRTG: 116.0
PACE: 96.5

Held the Kings to only 43.5% eFG but they dominated the boards and we didn't turn them over (and turned it over too much). What should have been a great defensive game turns into another poor one. That's three of the last four games that have been poor defensively heading into the playoffs.

KD pretty much killed his chance at having more assists than turnovers on the season tonight..

justin :
At least nobody on our team did this today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3OXVegfbIA

Yeah that was bad.

That ending was kinda lucky. But Thunder came out better in the second half no doubt