Eyebrow on fleek

Look at the NBA's current league leaders in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and you'll find one player towering over the rest of the league by about the same margin as he towers over the average human being:

Rank	Player	PER
1	Anthony Davis-NOP	37
2	Brandan Wright-DAL	28.3
3	Stephen Curry-GSW	27.4
4	DeMarcus Cousins-SAC	27.2
5	Dirk Nowitzki-DAL	26.2
6	LeBron James-CLE	25.3
7	Chris Paul-LAC	24.8
8	Tyson Chandler-DAL	24.4
9	Derrick Favors-UTA	24.4
10	Dwyane Wade-MIA	23.8
11	Brandon Jennings-DET	23.7
12	Damian Lillard-POR	23.6
13	Gordon Hayward-UTA	23.4
14	Kyle Lowry-TOR	23.1
15	James Harden-HOU	22.9
16	Klay Thompson-GSW	22.8
17	Kyrie Irving-CLE	22.7
18	Jimmy Butler-CHI	22.6
19	Isaiah Thomas-PHO	22.3
20	LaMarcus Aldridge-POR	22.2

PER is a metric developed by John Hollinger who defined it this way: “The PER sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance.”

But without diving into the complex formula, all you need to know about Anthony Davis' current PER of 37 is that Michael Jordan owns the NBA record for career PER at 27.9. Jordan also owns the NBA career playoff record for PER at 28.6.

There are many great stories in the table above, but this is by far the most astonishing. Small sample size notwithstanding, what Anthony Davis has done thus far this season is play some of the best basketball that's ever been played. Just enjoy.

Eyebrow on fleek.

Miscellany

1. Fewer Harvard MBA's took jobs in finance this year than last. That might be a good sign for the stock market according to one theory.
2. Don't like the idea of the Miami Heat's Big Three taking pay cuts to lure in Carmelo Anthony to form a Big Four super team? Perhaps the solution is a radical one: remove the ceiling on individual player salaries. There is no small measure of poetic justice that the a team in which its top three stars took a discounted salary to allow their owner to sign other strong players (the Spurs) just defeated a team in which the top three stars took the maximum salary possible, leaving the rest of their roster very undermanned (the Heat).
3. We're living in an art market boom. I'm saving up for my first Jeff Koons'. I may have to settle for stealing a kleenex after he blows his nose in it.
4. The wonderful economic test beds that are multiplayer video games. “A multiplayer game environment is a dream come true for an economist. Because here you have an economy where you don't need statistics. And elaborate statistics is what you use when you don't know everything, you're not omniscient, and you need to use something in order to gain feeling as to what is happening to prices, what is happening to quantities, what's happening to investments, and so on and so forth. But in a video game world, all the data are there. It's like being God, who has access to everything and to what every member of the social economy is doing.”

Whatchoo talkin' bout Willems?

“Like most bipedal parents, we all discovered Harry Potter together, reading the books aloud to our kids,” said [J.J.] Abrams in an interview with The New York Times. “But one of my favorite children’s authors was introduced to us by our youngest son. When he was in kindergarten he brought home some books by Mo Willems, who has one of the most remarkable comedic voices I’ve ever read. His sense of humanity — of heart and generosity — is staggering. I was so blown away, I got his number from his agent and called him. I was essentially a sycophant, expressing what a deep fan of his I am, how I would love to work together one day. He was quiet on the phone, almost monosyllabic, disinterested. Frankly it was a bit of an odd reaction. It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered that I had, in error, called Mo Williams of the Portland Trail Blazers.”
 

J.J. Abrams on a case of mistaken identity. This is a story from last year, but I hadn't heard it until now. 

“I got a lot of friends and I played in L.A., so I got a lot of Hollywood friends, so I thought it was someone I had met or someone I came across,” said Williams. “I was corresponding with him then I realized he might have have me kind of messed up with somebody else. We’re going back and forth on email, that’s the new age of communication. We were actually talking and he was giving me a lot of compliments. I felt like he was talking about me, you know, how great of a person I was. I was like ‘Yeah, that’s me! That’s me.’ I told him thank you. Then he said something that caught me like ‘Well, I don’t really remember that.’”

The “something that caught” Williams was Abrams referencing Willems’ work, which includes titles such as “Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale”, “Don’t Let The Pigeon Stay Out Late” and “The Duckling Gets A Cookie?!”. But as it turns out, Williams was considering going into Willems’ business, which only added coincidence to confusion.

“The crazy thing about it, I’ve been talking to friends about writing children’s books because I have a lot of kids,” said Williams.
 

This story is particular funny because it's this specific NBA player, Mo Williams, who isn't a superstar but also isn't a scrub who sits at the end of the bunch. He's just the right level of NBA famous. It wouldn't be as hilarious if it were someone much more or much less famous.

Who do you want taking the last shot?

TrueHoop looked at the last 5 minutes of 2012 NBA playoff games to try to answer the question: who should take the last shot, your superstar or a random wide open teammate?

And you know what we found? The Archangel, Hero Ball offense isn't the best. Though it may not be as fun, if your star has a passing lane to a wide open shooter, that's almost certainly better.

Through last night's play, “go-to players” are shooting 41.8 percent (71-170), including 25.6 percent (11-43) from 3.

Other players who happen to be open are shooting 54.2 percent (58-107) on field goal attempts, including 36 percent (18-50) from 3.

That is a massive difference. Teams shooting 41.8 percent from the floor almost never beat teams shooting 54.2 percent. It is a strong reflection on the power of competing against no defense. 

You get a sense for why this might be watching NBA players warm up for a game. When they're shooting without anyone on them, NBA players make a shockingly high percentage of their shots.

Another entertaining data point to support this case: this video of Gilbert Arenas's 3-point shooting contest with teammate DeShawn Stevenson in practice in 2007. Both shot 100 3-pointers, Arenas using one hand from college 3-point range, DeShawn using two hands from NBA range. The outcome is entertaining, but just as impressive is the sheer number they make.

ShotScores

The great Kirk Goldsberry has pulled back the curtains on a new measure of basketball shooting prowess which he calls ShotScores. 

By overlaying players' shot constellations, we can estimate the expected total number of points that an average NBA shooter would produce, based on where he took his shots; then we can compare a particular player's actual yield against it.

When you put it like that, it sounds so basic, yet it's been difficult until now to measure something like this. But no more. We can finally factor in degree of difficulty when judging a player's shooting ability.

Goldsberry ran the numbers for last season, and the top three players in ShotScores were the following: 

1. LeBron James
2. Kevin Durant
3. Stephen Curry

Always helpful when you create a new statistic and it passes the eye test. Counter-intuitive results are more intriguing, but it's helpful for adoption when your results mesh with the opinion of NBA scouts and analysts. 

Incidentally, the NBA signed a deal with STATS Inc. to install SportVU cameras in all of its stadiums for the upcoming season, so we're about to enter a Golden Age of basketball analysis. I'd argue that the NBA, of all the major U.S. sports leagues, has released the most comprehensive set of statistics to the public through its website. I could spend hours just combing through that stuff, and it will only get better if they include SportVU data.

As an example, Henry Abbott of Truehoop highlights a few new basketball strategies that have become accepted wisdom in the past few years thanks to new analysis.