With the season 'half' over (the Sonics have actually played 51 of 82 games), it's a natural time to step back and look at who is contributing the most to the team. According to PER, which is one of the premier statistics available to the masses (and as frequent readers know, the statistic I reference most), the Sonic's best player has easily been Chris Wilcox who is posting a PER of 17.35, which ranks 67th overall in the NBA. Four Sonics cluster together next, with Kurt Thomas, Wally Szczerbiak, Nick Collison and Kevin Durant all with a PER between 15 and 16. Everyone else on the team has a PER below 15. Since 15 is the league average, that means only 5 players on the Sonics are above average. Presumably, a good team either have a greater percentage of above average players, or who's best players would have significantly higher PERs. The Sonics, of course, do not qualify as a good team.
Thus far, the Sonics are 13-38, and are being outscored by an average of 7.3 points per game. Suppose we want a stat that's more directly tied to how many points the each given player is producing? That's were the adjusted +/- statistic comes in. It's computed by simply subtracting the number of points allowed by the team from the number of points scored by the team while any particular player is on the floor. Then the number is scaled to account for the effect of the teammates on the floor at the time (since a player is likely to look better when Lebron James is on the floor, then when his backup is in), and scaled for 100 possesions per game. Basketballvalue.com has taken it upone themselves to keep updated adjusted +/- statistics, which I'll be borrowing here. The leader at midseason for the Sonics? Mr. Kurt Thomas, who stands at +11.22 ppg. This is far and away the highest number on the Sonics, with Chirs Wilcox a distant 2nd at +7.20 ppg. Collison, Szczerbiak, and Johan Petro are the only other players with positive numbers all checking in at around +5 ppg. Thus far there's pretty good correlation with the PER statistic. 4 of the top 5 in PER are also 4 of the top 5 in adjusted +/- with the only exception being Kevin Durant.
But enough about the good guys, who's hurting the team? Not surprisingly, one of the Sonics 'point guards' (I'll take the quotes off when they start producing at even a slightly below average rate) in Delonte West at -12.08 ppg. So he's been worse than Kurt Thomas has been good. He's followed by the Sonic's rookie duo of Durant and Jeff Green who check in at -9.29 and -9.13 respectively. Staring 'point guard' Earl Watson is good for -8.17 ppg, and the only other players who have enough minutes to be properly evaluated are Damien Wilkins and Luke Ridnour at -6.24 and -3.61 ppg respectively.
From this, we could ascertain that perhaps Ridnour (when healthy) should be getting more minutes after all. The point guard position is going to be trouble no matter what. Shouldn't the Sonic's go with the lesser of three evils (much lesser when compared to Delonte West). Jeff Green's numbers are no surprise; he's largely struggled since his insertion into the starting lineup, and if the Sonics had anything to play for, he would be sitting. As it is, the front office hopes taking lumps now will pay dividends later. I can't find month by month data for adjusted +/-, but I suspect that Damien Wilkin's numbers have gone off a cliff since November.
The big surprise, is of course Durant ranking 2nd worst in +/- after ranking near the top of the PER leaderboard for the Sonics. Why the enormous discrepancy? As John Hollinger has said, "PER takes everything into account, EXCEPT for positional defense". So PER takes everything Durant does well at this point, (create shots, score, etc.) and neglects his biggest weakness: defenese. On the other hand, adjusted +/- begins by blindly comparing how many points a team scores and allows while a particular player is on the floor. If a player scores 10 points and gives up 20, that's going to show up in the stats.
I'll be back tomorrow with a 2nd half game plan, including suggestions to get the most out of the team.
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