I always like looking into PER in the NBA and seeing how the players stack up. This week I looked deeper into career PER and how the historical greats compare to each other. A significant issue with this is that the NBA did not start tracking steals and blocks until 1973 and turnovers until 1977. Therefore, you can compare older players against each other, but you are missing a big piece of who they were, especially talking about someone like Russell who blocked a lot of shots. So, when we look at these, keep in mind that the players who were great before 1973 are not getting a fair comparison. As a recap, the PER basically takes all the good things a player does, subtracts the bad things, and divides by minutes played. That's an over-simplification, but a good summary. It says how productive players are, how much they do to help win.
NBA top 40 all-time:
Lebron is right on Jordan's heals, but will probably start to decline slowly going forward; I doubt he can finish #1. Robinson is a surprise. Bob Pettit is a huge surprise. Good results for Dirk. Great results for your boy Dwyane Wade. Bill Russell is no where to be found because he didn't score, shot a low percentage from field and line, and we don't have record of his blocks/steals. This list makes sense in a lot of ways. Kareem played so long his numbers dropped near the end. Barkley dominated the stat sheet. West, Robertson, and Baylor played before the steals/blocks categories.
For fun, here is the ABA top 10 list, with ABA games only counting in the totals:
The Doctor was operating in full flight!
S
1 comment:
I am not a fan of historical players being included.
I think, I posted once what the numbers would be based on player and newspaper reports for Wilt.
I believe his lifetime is higher than a couple of seasons for the rest combined.
j
Post a Comment