I think the wings are stacked already, and I wanna make sure there's minutes to go around for Belinelli and Azubuike

Questions? Complaints?

(AIM: JetForze; email: Jon.d.ma@gmail.com)

See this entry in Larry's FAQ:  I'd quote it but I cannot seem to make tables appear correctly:
http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#41

From John Hollinger's (the inventor) explanation on ESPN PER takes into account all of a player's statistical contributions -- points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, missed shots, turnovers and fouls -- and rolls them up into a score for every player in the league.

...

Benefits:

• It adjusts for "pace", so guys on a uptempo team like the Suns, who have more possessions per game, don't get a crazy advantage, and teams like Houston, who play glacially slow, don't get hurt.
• It sets league average to 15, so you can have a baseline to compare to.

Note: 15 would be a league average starter, so a bench player with a PER of 15 would be pretty good for his particular role.

I'd also like to add that it might have another flaw:

It's primarily a "rate" measure, so it measures how much production over a certain amount of time. This means a guy like Ike Diogu, who shoots an extremely high percentage and scores pretty well, will look real good despite playing few minutes. His flaws, however, defense and an inability to play in a complex offense w/ movement and passing, mean his coaches (Monty, Nelson, Carlisle) have been reluctant to give him more playing time.

As an example, let's look at a random real world example: "miles per hour (mph)". If you wanted to know how "fast" I went, I could tell you:

"I went 100 mph!"

Which would be great. But if you wanted to know "how far did you travel", you'd need to know how long I sustained that rate of speed (mph):

"Yeah, I went 100 mph!...for a second."

And suddenly my accomplishment wouldn't seem so hot, cuz i actually only traveled .83 miles.

So again...it's useful, but like very statistic, needs to be taken in context of what it is trying to do.

To truly get the big picture, one would need to look at multiple stats, not just PER, and also see the player play. Mix subjective and objective.

Questions? Complaints?

(AIM: JetForze; email: Jon.d.ma@gmail.com)

Of note, such high volume, low FG% players are often popularly considered to be very good players.  They score many points, and point per game is the one measure that most people look at first when trying to evaluate players.  The problem with this is that it's a poor measure for predicting team success.  Allen Iverson is perhaps the best example of this. While many consider him one of the best in the game, his presence in a team's lineup seems to have very little influence on the team's record.  His points aren't actually that difficult to replace with the efforts of several players and the abundance of missed shots he has requires that his team rebound at an incredible rate else those misses become wasted scoring opportunities.

Ideally, you want player ratings to have something to do with wins since the object of the game is to win rather than to have a high PER.  It does this to a degree, but not as well as I'd want.  Swapping players with equal PER, even with similar playing time, doesn't necessarily mean that the two teams will perform more or less the same as they did before the trade.  Some argue this is because basketball is just too difficult to equate with formula and stats, and some of that may be true, but it's also because PER doesn't weight shooting efficiency as highly as it should.

PER is becoming popular because it's an "OK" measure (better than PPG certainly) but moreso because Hollinger has a gig at ESPN and thus has a vehicle to present PER to an audience.

For almost all of his career, he's been a negative in net +- meaning his teams (both the good ones in Indy and bad ones in ATL) have been better when he's been on the bench. This year the numbers are a bit skewed because the on court time was all post trade and off court time included all the games before he and Jackson arrived and, importantly, after Richardson got healthy. The off court time includes the beginning of the season when Richardson was absent or totally ineffective.

Since rebounds are important and shooting efficiency is important, this isn't really surprising that his +- hasn't been good nor that his PER isn't particularly good.  It's only when you focus in on points per game that Harrington starts to looks above average in any regard.

Also, hopefully Mullin isn't finished wheeling and dealing, so they could eliminate a player or two from their roster, by taking back one less player in a deal (eg: Jason Wiliams for Pietrus and Jasikevicius).

Forwards: (7)
Jackson
Barnes
Harrington
Wright
Croshere
Lasme
Pietrus

Centers: (4)
Biedrins
Perovic
P.O.B.
Foyle

Guards: (5)
Ellis
Belinelli
Azuibuike
Davis
Jasikevicius

As OZ mentioned, the Warriors don't have to go into their exceptions to sign Pietrus, as they still have the "Bird" rights, but the reason they would have to get rid of a player (poossibly Pietrus) is not because of the amount $ of their salaries but because of the amount of players they are allowed to have on their roster.

Also, on Azuibuike, I think he signed for a little more than the minimum, but it fit under the salary cap at the time of the signing.

The distinction between "minimum" and "vet minimum" is just the number of years in the league for the most part, though after (I believe) 2 full years in the league, anything above the scale for a 2 year vet gets paid by the league and only the 2 year amount ($770k this season) counts against the cap and the lux tax.