Before I get to the weekly Wizards update, I want to take a quick look at All-Stars through the prism of Player Production Average (PPA) — an overall rating system I developed. PPA credits players for things that contribute to winning and debits them for things that don’t — each in proper proportion. PPA is pace adjusted, accounts for defense and includes a degree of difficulty factor. In PPA, 100 = average, higher is better and 45 = replacement level.
As usual, fan voting doesn’t correlate well with my metric or with what causes teams to win. I’m not one to complain much about that reality — the fan vote is a popularity contest, not a referendum on who’s best. The top vote-getter typically appears on about a quarter of all ballots cast. I first noted this phenomenon with Michael Jordan, who regularly collected the most All-Star votes. Going by All-Star voting, roughly 75% of NBA fans each year thought Jordan (wildly popular and widely considered the best player in the game — if not all time) didn’t deserve to be an All-Star.
Anyway, I’ll present the list in two ways: the first using PPA, which is a per minute metric; the second using total production (which could weed out guys who missed time due to injury).
| Per MINUTE | EAST | WEST |
| G | Kyle Lowry | Chris Paul |
| G | Dwyane Wade | Stephen Curry |
| F | Lebron James | Kevin Durant |
| F | Paul George | Kevin Love |
| F | Andre Drummond | Anthony Davis |
| G | John Wall | Mike Conley |
| G | Lance Stephenson | Goran Dragic |
| F | Brook Lopez | Dirk Nowitzki |
| F | Al Horford | DeMarcus Cousins |
| F | Joakim Noah | Tim Duncan |
| G | Kyle Korver | Ty Lawson |
| F | Carmelo Anthony | LaMarcus Aldridge |
The quality imbalance between the conferences is evident in these lists. Carmelo Anthony takes the East’s final frontcourt slot while ranking just 21st among all frontcourt players league-wide. The Wizards only All-Star, John Wall, rates as the East’s third most productive guard per minute, but ranks just 16th in the league (minimum 500 total minutes).
Here’s the “totals” list:
| TOTAL PRODUCTION | EAST | WEST |
| G | Kyle Lowry | Chris Paul |
| G | John Wall | Stephen Curry |
| F | Lebron James | Kevin Durant |
| F | Paul George | Kevin Love |
| F | Andre Drummond | LaMarcus Aldridge |
| G | Kemba Walker | Damian Lillard |
| G | Aaron Afflalo | Wesley Matthews |
| F | Carmelo Anthony | Blake Griffin |
| F | Joakim Noah | DeAndre Jordan |
| F | Paul Millsap | Anthony Davis |
| G | Lance Stephenson | James Harden |
| F | Chris Bosh | Dirk Nowitzki |
Probably the biggest surprise for me was Kemba Walker. He hasn’t impressed me much, but he’s an above average producer on a per minute basis and he plays a lot of minutes. Notice Brook Lopez and Al Horford dropping off the list in the East — their total production is down because of injury. DeAndre Jordan is another mild surprise. It’s easy to focus on his limitations, which are abundant. However, Jordan rebounds, blocks shots, and limits his offensive repertoire to things he can do well: dunks, layups, put-backs and setting screens.
Moving on from All-Stars, let’s talk Wizards. (See what I did there?)
| PLAYER | GMS | MPG | LW | PPA |
| John Wall | 40 | 36.9 | 140 | 147 |
| Trevor Ariza | 35 | 34.6 | 144 | 144 |
| Trevor Booker | 31 | 21.4 | 137 | 137 |
| Marcin Gortat | 40 | 32.1 | 132 | 135 |
| Martell Webster | 39 | 30.4 | 109 | 105 |
| Nenê Hilario | 33 | 29.3 | 107 | 102 |
| Bradley Beal | 31 | 33.1 | 73 | 84 |
| Jan Vesely | 28 | 16.0 | 73 | 72 |
| Chris Singleton | 14 | 10.6 | 64 | 60 |
| Kevin Seraphin | 28 | 10.1 | 12 | 20 |
| Glen Rice | 11 | 9.9 | 18 | 18 |
| Eric Maynor | 22 | 9.5 | 13 | 13 |
| Al Harrington | 7 | 18.6 | 7 | 7 |
| Garrett Temple | 38 | 11.2 | 2 | 6 |
| Otto Porter | 19 | 9.7 | 15 | 3 |
It’s largely status quo, which is normal at this point in the season. Players have established their performance levels for the most part so I don’t expect to see major changes week to week. Any large changes are going to show up in lower minute players for whom a one-week sample size can still be significant.
Improvers this week include Wall, Beal, and Seraphin — the big Frenchman upped his production for a fourth consecutive update. Temple also did a little better, but still has been less productive this season than even Maynor.
On the downside were Webster, Nenê, and Porter. Nenê is interesting and worth further analysis. The team continues to be better when he’s on the floor even as his personal production slides.
Now for the shameless plug: check out the FREE first chapter of my mystery novel set for publication later this month.
