John Hollinger is the phony a-word who invented PER (Player Efficiency Rating) and then goes around telling people that "higher PER" is the same as "better than."
This list of
Career PER leaders may give you a reason to be skeptical toward anything Hollinger has to say:
Code:
Rank Player PER
---------------------------------------
1 Michael Jordan 27.91
2 Shaquille O'Neal* 27.63
3 David Robinson 26.18
4 Wilt Chamberlain 26.16
5 Bob Pettit 25.41
6 Tim Duncan* 25.17
7 Neil Johnston 24.78
8 Charles Barkley 24.63
9 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 24.58
10 LeBron James* 24.24
11 Magic Johnson 24.11
12 Karl Malone 23.89
13 Tracy McGrady* 23.88
14 Dirk Nowitzki* 23.84
15 Kevin Garnett* 23.84
16 Hakeem Olajuwon 23.59
17 Julius Erving 23.57
18 Larry Bird 23.50
19 Kobe Bryant* 23.49
20 Yao Ming* 23.22
21 Oscar Robertson 23.20
22 Jerry West 22.92
23 Elton Brand* 22.75
24 Elgin Baylor 22.72
25 Dolph Schayes 22.02
You'll note that according to Hollinger's little number-crunching game, David Robinson is the third best, all-time. You know, ever. As in, ahead of Barkley, Dream, Larry Bird, Kareem, Magic, etc. Seriously.
Reasonable people would point out that Hollinger is probably full of crap, or at the very least is overstating the importance of the phony performance metric that he himself created.
