Posted by Bonn1997:
It's hard to project per 40 min when a player's only averaging 19 mpg
No it's not, in fact it's quite easy. Just multiply the relevant stat by 40 and divide by 19 and there's your per 40 stat.
Seriously though, I know what you mean, but the primary purpose of per 40 stats (or per 48, or any other minute normalizing measure) is
not to imply that if player X played 40 mpg, this is what he would average. Rather, the primary purpose of per 40 is to eliminate the effects that differences in minutes played have on stats when comparing players. So for instance, Villaneuva is averaging more ppg than Frye so far, but this in itself doesn't tell us much because Villanueva has averaged about 12 more minutes of playing time. In fact, if we normalize their minutes played to some common level (here, 40 minutes), we see that Frye has actually been a much more potent scorer; Villaneuva's higher ppg is due entirely to the fact that he just plays more minutes.
Now, in order to get this normalizing effect, all that matters is that we scale the mpg of the players we want to compare to the same level; it could be 40, it could be 48, could be 36, could even be 1. All of those per-X minute stats would show the same thing, that Frye has been a more productive scorer than Villaneuva thus far.
There is a secondary purpose to choosing higher values (say, per 40 minutes instead of per minute), and that is just to get a sense of how these stats compare to leaguewide averages. Big-time NBA starters typically average around 40 mpg, and the stats of these players are what we use intuitively to get a grasp on how to evaluate individual stats, for instance the common milestones of 20ppg and 10rpg as very good numbers for those particular stats. So by doing per 40, we can see that not only has Frye been more productive scorer than Villaneuva, but also that Frye's scoring efficiency when he's been on the court has been extremely good, even by league-wide standards. But again, we're not saying that Frye would average 25 ppg if he actually did play 40mpg, but just that Frye's scoring output in what he has done so far with his 19mpg compares very favorably to what some of the NBA's better scorers do with their ~40mpg.
Of course, these stats still need to be taken with several large grains of salt. For one thing, the sample size is very small, about 5 or 6 games for each player. For another thing, they are only preseason stats, and we can imagine that things will be much more difficult for ALL the rookies when they start playing against better competition in the regular season. (Better comp in terms of both who they play against (starters and rotation guys instead of heavy minutes against bench warmers) and how hard that opposition is trying (vets will coast in preseason and bring it in the regular season)).
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