Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that I’m rather fond of metrics like Wins Produced.  Recently, Dave Berri of the Wages of Wins produced two articles I think you all will enjoy, and so I decided I’d draw your attention to them with a full on blog post, rather than dropping them in the news section.

Professor Berri’s first post addresses the sexy new NBA metric: Adjusted +/-.  As a prime exhibit as to the inherent oddities of that metric, Dave Berri details the production of the Hornets very own Darius Songaila.  To summarize, Songaila has posted pretty consistent numbers across his career according to most traditional metrics.  However, according to +/-, his impact has varied wildly, producing a significant positive impact in Washington, and a significant negative impact in New Orleans.

As a result of that post, I had a brief email exchange with Professor Berri about two other Hornets we’ve been focusing on the past month or so:  Our rookies.  That discussion spurred his latest post about the Hornets, addressing the rookies, a brief comparison of Collison to Paul, one of his general breakdowns of the Hornets production on the whole, and even includes a response on our own Joe Gerrity’s post about Emeka Okafor.  Good Stuff.

I am a little surprised by the rookie results.  While it doesn’t surprise me that over the course of the entire season Collison and Thornton have been a little below average – they did start off the season shooting poorly –  I would not have guessed that Collison would have ranked lower than Thornton.  Collison’s assist and scoring numbers have been impressive, and Thornton is almost exclusively a scorer.  Traditionally, one trick ponies don’t rank that high in Wins Produced.  Not the case in this situation.

Of course, that just illustrates the impact of minutes.  Buckets and his recent standard of 20 efficient points in 24 minutes is crazy, and Collison has been wracking up huge minutes to go with his huge numbers, which mitigate them somewhat.

Enjoy.