ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger, a good friend of TKB, and the lone intelligent voice on that website, described his self-developed Player Efficiency Rating (PER) as “summing up a player’s positive accomplishments, subtracting the negative accomplishments, and returning a per-minute rating of a player’s performance.”

Simple enough, right? Still, many teams, scouts, and “pundits” don’t buy into the mathematical analysis. First and foremost, many talent evaluators will place athleticism over production at the college level. Obviously a 6′5″ power forward who averages 19 points a game in a mid-major won’t be able to adjust to the professional level. But, after a while, shouldn’t teams pick up on the fact that role players who knock down open jumpers and play sound defense are more valuable than high-flying swingmen who can’t shoot? Or say, overweight centers?

The prime example is none other than the San Antonio Spurs who last season, started two undrafted players in Bruce Bowen and Fabricio Oberto. And, as one scout noted, “If they went to the NBA Pre-Draft camp this summer, neither of them would have had a chance of getting selected.”

It’s no surprise that the majority of the Knicks do not fare very well in this statistic considering the team finished 29th out of 30 last year in team efficiency. Here are the individual numbers from last season, with the player’s ranking among his position in parentheses.

PG
Stephon Marbury PER 13.84 Minutes Per Game 33.6 (26/70)
Chris Duhon PER 11.13 Minutes Per Game 22.6 (55/70)
Mardy Collins PER 5.89 Minutes Per Game 13.8 (70/70)

SG
Jamal Crawford PER 15.99 Minutes Per Game 39.9 (21/67)
Nate Robinson PER 15.38 Minutes per game 26.1 (23/67)

SF
Wilson Chandler PER 11.70 Minutes Per Game 19.6 (48/65)
Quentin Richardson PER 8.54 Minutes Per Game 28.3 (58/65)
Jared Jeffries PER 7.95 Minutes Per Game 18.1 (60/65)

PF
Zach Randolph PER 18.04 Minutes Per Game 32.6 (13/62)
David Lee PER 18.01 Minutes Per Game 29.1 (14/62)
Malik Rose DID NOT REGISTER

C
Eddy Curry PER 15.08 Minutes Per Game 25.9 (25/60)
Jerome James DID NOT REGISTER

Newcomers: Anthony Roberson, Allan Houston, Dan Grunfeld, Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Ewing Jr.

As you can see, none of the Knicks other than Randolph and Lee really fared well in this statistic. Again, this is a stat that I find to be incredibly important. I understand the critic’s point of view who will say that the game is played on the court and not on a calculator. But, when you see LeBron James, Chris Paul, Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Garnett, and Dirk Nowitzki as the five most efficient players in the league, you realize that this is not some arbitrary formula.

If you look at the significant minutes played by inefficient players such as Richardson, Marbury, and to an extent Crawford, you wonder how much of an improvement the team would have if they were to just give the most minutes to the five best players. Seems logical that over the course of the season, if your five most efficient players lead your team in minutes, then your number of wins will increase.

This is where Mike D’Antoni comes into play. While in Phoenix he was notorious for having an incredibly well-conditioned team and a very short player rotation that varied anywhere between 7 and 9. (Albeit, much of that was due to the makeup of their roster). He owes no duty to any of Isiah’s guys, whereas Isiah felt compelled to play his acquisitions in an attempt to justify the reason.

Should training camp and the preseason prove that one of the team’s five most efficient players is an unlikely source such as Chandler, Gallinari, or even Roberson or Ewing, Jr., I feel that D’Antoni will have the cajones to sit a high-priced player.