Post#16 » by threrf23 » Thu Apr 3, 2008 10:33 pm
I like counterpart PER, but it needs to be taken in context with other measures....counterpart PER, if you look at it league-wide, also seems to be dependent partially on one's team, indicating that team defensive schemes tend to proportionately affect this measure aside from individual differences. (quick note: I'm not sure how 82games comes up with the figures for this, for example, on the by position page it shows that KG's opponent counterpart posts a PER of 13.5 when he is at PF, and 16.6 when he is at C).
Looking at defensive +/- concurrently helps to balance this impact, because being on a team with a good defensive scheme makes it tougher to post one of the team's better +/- figures. Moreover, guys like Kobe and Lebron, who tend to post better counterpart PERs partially because their counterpart has to spend so much effort guarding them, tend to be hurt by defensive +/- because their teams score so much when they are in the game their opponent is liable to score at least X many extra points for every extra point scored when they are in the game.
Ray Allen for example is posting an even better counterpart PER, but has one of the worst defensive +/-'s on the team. Whats extremely impressive about KG, is aside from his really low counterpart PER, and his respectable enough box score stats, he's got the best +/- on the best defensive team in the league. (whats also interesting here is this would indicate that Ray Allen is a good man defender but poor team defender, but Perk and Rondo complement that, perhaps a large part of our success....another random note from 82games.com - Posey has a poor defensive +/- and one of the poorer counterpart PERs, but his counterpart PER seems to be a bit lower when he is @ SF, his offensive +/- is poor as well, which objectively means that those calling for no Posey @ PF are on target for the most part).
You could argue KG's counterpart PER is more impressive since we often have him guarding the opposition's best big man, but I don't buy into that because you also have the phenomenom of, opposition knows he's ur best defender, they are more likely to attack our other guys, and that balances things out IMO.
Anyways, I like KG for DPOY. But IMO he has too much help elsewhere to be my MVP. I think calling him MVP is disrespectful to PP (and vice versa). I'll add, PP also has a real low counterpart PER and a solid enough +/- - thats a solid statement about his defense. It might be different if guys like Kobe and Lebron weren't so damn good and so important to their teams. But IMO one of them should be named MVP.
I'll add further, last year when I played around with the defensive (and offensive) composite scores posted on 82games.com and really made my first foray into being a stat geek, the end results would have indicated that according to last year's stats and performances, KG was the best player in the league - but factoring in positional depth and the fact that he couldn't be considered a C or SF, he was the league's third most valuable player behind Duncan and Lebron, respectively. This season he's done more in some respects, but has done less in others (rebounding, for example) because he hasn't had to.
