He looks like he LIVED in a gym in the offseason. He lost 20 pounds, doesn't look like he has one ounce of fat, and is playing the best basketball of his career. And the Clippers are in first place!

I saw him in Vegas over the summer and he definitely lost some weight...I had my Marbury jersey on and I said to him "we need you on the Knicks" and he said to me "call Isiah and get it done"

The Clippers fans were chanting "MVP" as he went to the free throw line tonight!

Mike Sweetney has a higher PER than any Knick. Though Channing is hot on his heels.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Agreed on the first point. I'm not sure about the 2nd point. He's in the best shape of his life. It's not suprising to me tha his production's increased. If he stays in this shape, I'm not so sure his production will fall.

If you look at the current leaders in PER, there are a lot of anomolies, likely due to small sample sizes (only ~10 games for each player) and biases (lots of teams have not played eachother yet; some team schedules doubtlessly have been stronger than others). Putting up a PER of 30 over the course of a season is exceptional and unusual; since 1978, it's only been done 9 times, by 4 players: Jordan (88, 89, 90, 91), Shaq (99, 00, 01), David Robinson (94) and McGrady (03). Meanwhile, currently we have 3 guys over 30 for this season (Duncan, LeBron, AI) with Brand just tenths of a point behind, and we have other guys with unusually high PERs (Scott Padgett at 28.2, Barbosa at 25.4, Richie Frahm at 23.7, etc.).

So it's mostly a statistical thing; with more games, as sample sizes increase and scheduling biases get ironed out (and also, as players become fatigued and teams adjust to eachother and gel), we should expect these anomolies to begin to disappear and have players' PERs approach something more representative of their true value. Brand's career PER is 22.1. It's not a given that he will drop-- he could very well sustain his current level-- but I wouldn't bet on it. However, it does seem that this could be a career year for Brand nonetheless, and I would not be surprised to see him end up with a PER significantly better than his best year to date (23.6 in 02).

Posted by Bonn1997:

A lot of the anomolies will return to normal with larger sample sizes. Most of the anomolies probably don't have such a clear plausible cause to the increased production, though, as EB has: He's in the best shape of his life. I don't think you can treat EB's increased production the same as another player who has no credible cause to his increased production.

I'm not saying his improved numbers thus far are *only* due to a statistical fluke, but I do have to think that accounts for part of it. If he kept up this pace, as I mentioned before, he'd rank in the top 10 PERs among all players since 1978. Brand is good, and I'm sure his conditioning has helped his game, but I don't think he's *that* good. We'll see though. If anything, I'd predict something like maybe a full season PER of 25 or maybe even 26, which would still be excellent. To put that in perspective, last year's top 5 PERs were:

1. KG 28.2
2. Duncan 27.0
3. Shaq 27.0
4. Amare 26.6
5. Dirk 26.1

I would not expect Brand, even in a career year, to quite match up to (let alone exceed) the statistical output of a Duncan or KG over the course of a full season.

[Edited by - tomverve on 11-20-2005 10:30 PM]

Posted by tomverve:

I would not expect Brand, even in a career year, to quite match up to (let alone exceed) the statistical output of a Duncan or KG over the course of a full season.

you have really good posts on this thread tomverve. Actually, I think its about time Brand's stats start to match Duncan. Brand is a better rebounder than Duncan and has just as many low post moves IMO. I hope his stats start to show that now.

What is the big deal? Elton brand has been putting these numbers up for a while. Now that Sam cassell came in to save another team he is a the talk of the town?

Yeah if his team wins then he should finally get his props. But don't get it twisted! This guy has been playing like this for a while. He's been slimming out the last couple years too it just no one noticed.

Posted by Ira:

How do you calculate PER?

http://basketball-reference.com/about/per.html