Player Efficiency Rating

The Player Efficiency Rating is John Hollinger's all-in-one basketball rating, which boils down all of a player's contributions into one number. Using a detailed formula, Hollinger developed a system that rates every player's statistical performance.

Introduction

The ratings are NOT intended to be the final word on how a player performs, but are designed to inform the debate. There are several factors that aren't included in the ratings. The most notable is position defense - the part that doesn't involve blocked shots and steals. But factors like durability as well as less tangible ones (leadership, for example) are others that can't be rated numerically.

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Nevertheless, it's a start, because it takes the statistics that are available and boils them down in a way that's easy to understand. It interprets the things that we do know -- how many shots a guy made, how many rebounds, etc. -- in a much more systematic way than any other player rating system to date.

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The formula, which Hollinger calls the Player Efficiency Rating (PER), adds the good (made shots, steals, assists, rebounds, blocked shots, free throws), and subtracts the bad (missed shots, turnovers, fouls) by assigning a point value to each item (He arrives at the point values in a fairly tortuous way, and that's one of the parts he saves for the book). The rating for each player is then adjusted to a per-minute basis (so that, for example, you can compare subs with starters in the frequent 'he should start ahead of so-and-so' debates), and also adjusted for the team's pace. In the end, one number sums up the players' accomplishments (the statistical ones, anyway) for that season. Hollinger has set it up so that the league average, every season, is 15.00, which produces sort of a handy reference guide:

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