Thks in advance: why Jokic's PER was higher in 21-22 than this season?

[dhsilv2]

Bonner led the Spurs in On/Off just once, in 2009, when he had his career best season across the board. His total On/Off with the Spurs in 10 seasons was +1.9

However, if a player of Bonner's stature really was leading his team in On/Off for several years, I would think it an indication that said player was underrated and underutilized rather than the stat being a horrible metric. Think about it: if for several consecutive years across all sorts of roster and rotation changes, a given team has its highest net rating when one particular player is on the court, it really should say great things about how effective that player was (given an adequate volume of minutes).

In small samples or with uncommonly unbalanced rotations, I agree On/Off can throw wild results such that in any given year it can have a lot of noise but over the long run I think it gives very good indications of effectiveness.

I will copy and paste a discussion on this…

I remember Popovich going on an amusing semi-rant about this many years ago. Basically how all the nerds in the organization were badgering him to give Matt Bonner as much PT as possible because their lineup data was off the charts when he was on the court. And yet from his perspective, all he could see was him getting his ass kicked on defense while making some 3s here and there and never passing so he said he eventually threw all that stuff in the trash and told them to stay out of his office. And then they'd try to point out that Manu also rated incredibly high in order to bolster their argument, and he'd be like yeah, but I don't need some guy with 10 degrees from Harvard to tell me that.



You have to put context in any stat esp this one.

Let’s put this in the big picture, any stat that says Matt Bonner is more important than Tim Duncan should immediately be thrown out.

I don't know of any all-in-one stat which doesn't routinely return some results which are at variance with common sense. EPM is justly respected but this year it says Zubac was better than AD, Garland was better than Ant, Pritchard was better than Brunson, Cam Johnson was better than LeBron, DFS was better than Banchero, Quickley was better than Booker, Kris Dunn was better than Trae, etc, etc, etc. This basis can be used to discredit all all-in-one stats.

On/Off needs to be used with more caution and context than most all-in-one stats because it's totally raw (RAPM is obviously a better +/-) but that doesn't make it horrible or useless. Again, if for years as you initially mistakenly claimed, the Spurs had a higher net rating when Bonner was on the court than off, with all of the roster and rotation changes the team went through, it should indicate that Bonner's true value was beyond his stature.

The biggest issue with RAPM based metrics is that they're misleading.

If a player is +1 and another player is +1.1, we have a tendency to say well player B is better than A per this stat. But...that's not exactly true. There's a margin of error. These metrics are looking for a best fit but there are countless possible best fits. They're just all within a reasonable range. So +1 and +1.1 are basically the same thing.

That's before we get into roles and minutes and all that.

[f4p]

PER was created in the early 2000's and it wasn't created to use per 1974 seasons. So at the time Jordan had the top 4 PER seasons of all time.

Now there's a good discussion for how a metric that sets the league average to 15 and how it works as you expand the league if the top PER's are scaled the same. But I don't think that's the issue. The issue with higher PER's is back to John's view that volume (usage) is because coaches are smart. And today coaches actually ARE smarter and it turns out top players get higher usages than in other eras. Thus we have higher peaks in PER.

Wilt's PER numbers are not "real" PER as they werent' done by John. That's was someone's attempt to create a PER for that era and basketball reference co-mingles. I don't have an issue with this but it's two different creators works.

Great explanation, thks!!!

Still, Jordan's usg% in 87-88 was far above Jokic's two seasons above him in PER, just .7 below Giannis' 21-22 also above him and -slightly- superior to LeBron's 2008-2009 only .04 apart in PER from Jordan's best season.

I'm assuming that's because the game is more productive and efficient nowadays. Am I right?

The game is more heliocentric than it used to be. Partly by design from analytics, partly because load management means guys like giannis and jokic can go all out for 33 minutes while players in the past probably went all out for 33 minutes and then kind of coasted for 7 minutes if they played 40 minutes. So the best players are hoovering up more of the action than before.

Watch older games, especially before the 90s, and you'll be surprised how often role players just took random shots that weren't created by the superstar. And they were usually pretty terrible shots from a value perspective. A 25 PER would have finished 2nd in I think 1986 (one of the mid 80s seasons).

And usage percentage is only looking at FGA, FTA,and TO so it doesn't factor in the assists that stars get by having the ball so much but PER does care about assists. So even though Jordan was getting the ball basically more than anyone in his league, he still wasn't really controlling as much of the per possession action as a jokic or even giannis. And wasn't going all out for 33 minutes and then resting for 15 minutes. I mean jokic or giannis might still have the all time season record if they played 40 minutes, but it would be very close I suspect.

[rand]

I will copy and paste a discussion on this…



Let’s put this in the big picture, any stat that says Matt Bonner is more important than Tim Duncan should immediately be thrown out.

I don't know of any all-in-one stat which doesn't routinely return some results which are at variance with common sense. EPM is justly respected but this year it says Zubac was better than AD, Garland was better than Ant, Pritchard was better than Brunson, Cam Johnson was better than LeBron, DFS was better than Banchero, Quickley was better than Booker, Kris Dunn was better than Trae, etc, etc, etc. This basis can be used to discredit all all-in-one stats.

On/Off needs to be used with more caution and context than most all-in-one stats because it's totally raw (RAPM is obviously a better +/-) but that doesn't make it horrible or useless. Again, if for years as you initially mistakenly claimed, the Spurs had a higher net rating when Bonner was on the court than off, with all of the roster and rotation changes the team went through, it should indicate that Bonner's true value was beyond his stature.

The biggest issue with RAPM based metrics is that they're misleading.

If a player is +1 and another player is +1.1, we have a tendency to say well player B is better than A per this stat. But...that's not exactly true. There's a margin of error. These metrics are looking for a best fit but there are countless possible best fits. They're just all within a reasonable range. So +1 and +1.1 are basically the same thing.

That's before we get into roles and minutes and all that.

I agree, +1.0 and +1.1 in RAPM or any plus/minus stat is the same thing. People can be really odd with where they let statistical comparison get hung up.

I love RAPM but I recognize its results as needing context and analysis just like all other stats. I would never say Player A > Player B just because they had a higher RAPM but I'd consider it a valuable data point, just like I'd never say Player A > Player B just because they had a higher EPM, or LEBRON, or RAPTOR, or what not.