Top 25 Greatest Players Ever

[Murphy3]

One thing that probably throws you off is just looking at the raw numbers. Yes, Johnson might have averaged a higher number of assists, but his assist percentage was less than Paul's. But the big thing is turnover percentage. There was a year in which Magic had TOV% (turnover percentage) of almost 25%. That is absolutely horrible. For his career, his TOV% was 19.4. Chris Paul is at 13.3 for his career. That's a rather large difference, and it's safe to say that this is why many of Magic's numbers are better than Paul's but Paul's PER is higher than Magic's.

[kingmalaki]

Originally Posted by Murphy3

One thing that probably throws you off is just looking at the raw numbers. Yes, Johnson might have averaged a higher number of assists, but his assist percentage was less than Paul's. But the big thing is turnover percentage. There was a year in which Magic had TOV% (turnover percentage) of almost 25%. That is absolutely horrible. For his career, his TOV% was 19.4. Chris Paul is at 13.3 for his career. That's a rather large difference, and it's safe to say that this is why many of Magic's numbers are better than Paul's but Paul's PER is higher than Magic's.

Even with the turnovers, would you argue that Magic NEVER had a more productive season than Chris Paul's best 2 seasons? If you are arguing that one player was more productive than another based on PER then that's basically what you would say with a consistent argument, right? Or that David Robinson was more productive than Wilt and Kareem.

If someone says "Dirk is more productive than Malone or had better numbers, based on his PER" then that means Paul was more productive than Magic or Robinson more productive than Kareem. Those conclusions aren't accurate. I'm not saying ignore PER completely, but some of the crazy conclusions and the fact that it slights defensive impact lead me to not rely on it so much. If you are talking about comparing players based on their PER then I don't see how anyone could go down the list and honestly say they agree with those rankings. I mean, LeBron, Wade, CP3 and Dirk have a higher PER than Hakeem, Kobe, Bird, Oscar Robertson and Moses Malone.