Peja(Prime) Vs. Peja(Now)

[SpeedyG]

Logically, using the word "prime" indicates a level when he is at his best, thus, any player in his "prime" is better than that same player at any other time in his career.

[Alex_De_Large]

kings pedja was allstar, so enough said.

[Bgil]

So were you not arguing he is the same Peja?

The leading question of your op asks which year is superior. Not something that I EVER brought up and a blatant misrepresentation again.

[The Notic]

-= original quote snipped =-



No he was not. He just happened to be the best scorer on a very good team which got him MVP recognition ONE year.

Yes he was. Until Webber came back, Stojakovic was a top 3 MVP candidate putting up wicked numbers on unreal %'s for a jumpshooter while winning (I think they had the best record in the conference?) Do you even remember that season?

[tsherkin]

Peja had a nice year that year, sure, and he was indeed a legit MVP candidate, even statistically.

Statistically, you have to look at him leading the league in OWS, tying Kobe in WSAA, coming second in total WS... he wasn't top 5 in PER but that's not necessarily meaningful and while he didn't have a super-high scoring output at 24 ppg, he was still the leading scorer on a well-balanced Kings squad. Too, he was scoring pretty well in the first chunk of the season.

He went for 25, 23, 27.4, 25.5, 26.8, 21.3 and 20.8 ppg during each month of the season (though of course that 25 is from 2 games in October). His FG% is inflated by about 1-1.5% from the first 16 games of the season, he was pretty consistently in the 46.2% - 47.8% range after then (never higher than 47.8% and never lower than 46.2%). His 3P% is a little inflated because he shot 50% one month and otherwise only shot 43%+ in one other month (he averaged 43.3% from 3 that year), so that's a little misleading but still, he was freaking hot pretty much until the end of the season (from 3), when he dropped to 37.8% over the last 8 games or so.

Perhaps most notably, he was EXTREMELY consistent, be it home or away or from one month to the next. His scoring average fluctuated but that had more to do with opportunity and teammates than anything else; his efficiency and passing were rock steady, though his rebounding spiked over the second half of the season.

Remember, Webber played in March (15 games) and April (8 games), so until then, Peja was doing his thing.



Is Peja now any different? Sure, he's 4 years older (30), he's had three consecutive injury-plagued seasons (including a 13-gamer last year) and there is a marked difference in his efficiency outside of the Sacramento offense.

He doesn't have Miller and/or Divac alongside Webber and Bibby helping to facilitate ball movement and floor spacing. Instead, he's got Paul and West who, while extremely talented (especially Paul, as a primary distributor the likes of with whom Peja has never played), are only two guys instead of three and that changes the way the defense spreads the floor, the looks he gets, etc.

I'd say that his situation is obviously different from the time he spent in Rick Adelman's system with some of the best passing bigs to ever hit the league and alongside an underrated point guard and shooter.

But given how Peja performed in that year compared to other years before and after, I think it's pretty clear that Peja experienced a peak season and that it wasn't indicative of the kind of player he was for any great length of time. MeloTelfair is right; it was just a single season, though that has no bearing on whether he was a legit MVP candidate or not.

He was; he was the leading scorer on a team that won 55 games and finished 4th in a tough Western Conference.

And then he proved once again that he lacks testicles by completely disappearing in the playoffs. He's only ever performed well over ONE postseason, the year before his MVP candidacy. But of course, that's a postseason trait, not a regular season trait and the MVP is a regular season award.

So we get back to the OP:

Which version of Peja was better? are they equal?

Peja 03-04: 24.2 ppg, 6.3 rebounds per, 2.1 apg. 48% fg%, 43.3% 3pt, 92.7% ft%.

Peja now: 16.4 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 1.2 apg. 43.9%/44.1%/92.6%

So he scores a whole lot less, at a much lower clip, and he can't finish as well due to numerous injuries sapping his athletic ability, but they are equal, right?

Very clearly, the performance put forth by Peja in 03-04 was superior to what he's doing now; he was hitting more shots and shooting the 3 about the same... in both percentage and volume, which means his FG% is suppressed by the volume of 3s he's taking, which is a function of his reduced role in New Orleans as a third option as compared to that year when he was the first option for the bulk of the season and the team's leading scorer (and he was scoring more than Webber during Webber's 23 games, too).

So it's debatable; would Peja be able to post similar numbers in a more forward role in the offense? He's done it before. He's also shot about 48% from the floor on about 16 FGA/g (1 less than his career year) twice before, though both of those instances were again in that ridiculously deep and fluid Sacramento offense.

I think that yes, 03-04 Peja was better but Peja now might be undersold a little because of the deflated FG% and his status as 3rd option.