APBRmetrics

kbomb · Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 5 Location: Gardena, CA

I was looking at the PER rankings on ESPN and noticed that Gasol had the 7th highest PER at 24.22. I am wondering how much of his PER was boosted by the coaching change from Mike Fratello to Tony Barone. Gasol missed the beginning of the season when Fratello was in charge of Memphis and they were playing at a snail's pace. Following the dismissal of Fratello, Memphis posted one of the highest pace factors in the league. I can't ever remember a team going from one extreme to the other within the season like Memphis did this past season. Anyhow, I think this causes PER to wildly overrate Gasol since most of the games he played was under Barone and the pace factor for the entire season is used for PER calculation. Has anyone done calculation on what Gasol's PER would be after taking account of the change of pace? While an All-star, I subjectively don't think Gasol was anywhere close to being one of the ten best players in the league like his PER suggests this past season.

Mike G · Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 1494 Location: Delphi, Indiana

For a while last year, Gasol was ranked #1 in PER. I think you are on the right track, and the team pace was quite different with the coaching change.
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admin · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:50 am Post subject:

Memphis' pace was 91.9 under Fratello, 98.2 under Barone and 95.9 over the course of the season. If you look at strictly games Gasol played, some of which were under Fratello, their pace was 97.4.

If you use the 97.4 figure instead of 95.9, Gasol's PER is 23.84. Technically, because there was a big logjam, that does drop him out of the top 10 and all the way to 12th in the league, but it's not a huge change in his evaluation.

I think your issues with Gasol's PER lie elsewhere besides the pace factor issue.

KD · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 143

Mountain · Joined: 13 Mar 2007 Posts: 199

If there are databases with specific game pace then ideally PER and other metrics would utilize it over seasonal average to make the calculation and then sum up results to seasonal level. Play by play databases could conceivably utilize the on court in a particular game pace.

gabefarkas · Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 879 Location: Durham, NC

KD · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 143

Don Babbitt · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 9 Location: California

kjb · Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 660 Location: Washington, DC

The Washington Bullets ran out some similar lineups back in the day. Consider:

Michael Adams
AJ English
Harvey Grant
Pervis Ellison
Charles Jones

And who could forget...

Andre Turner
David Wingate
Harvey Grant
Larry Stewart
Pervis Ellison

Or

Michael Adams
LaBradford Smith
Harvey Grant
Tom Gugliotta
Larry Stewart
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KD · Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 143

I just like the fact that the prerequisite for starting the quadraphonic power forward starting lineup appears to be the inclusion of a 5-9 point guard.

One unhappy result of another summer spent with the aforementioned DVD collection: the idea that Derrick Coleman, Bill Murray and I should start a band called "The Pockmarks" at some point.