John Hollinger's Draft Rater Reveals a Few Surprises

As a former math guy myself, I have a lot of respect for the analytical side of sports and I think that stats can paint a pretty good picture of how a player is performing (or how he will perform). It is by no means the be-all and end-all of judging a player's value or potential, but it can get you in the right ballpark. If there was one thing I learned while trudging through Calc III, Differential Equations and Advanced Statistics, it's that numbers are powerful. ESPN's John Hollinger developed the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) which takes into account the player's statistical performance as well as extraneous factors (like the tempo at which his team plays at) to produce a summary statistic of that player's performance for any given season. He has recently produced a formula for the draft which forecasts a player's third-season PER based on his performance in college. He didn't reveal the details of the formula, which is unfortunate because I'...