Shall we play a game?

How about Global Thermonuclear War. In the interest of keeping the world far away from the Global Depression/Global Thermonuclear War ledge, let's examine a couple peculiarities in the NBA this season. I can easily switch gears if Matthew Broderick decides to make an appearance on the blog, though.

Anyway, guess the player. All stats are per game averages.

Player A: 40.9 FG%, 83.6 FT%, 11.3 points, 3.5 rebounds, 8.2 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.4 3PM
Player B: 51.2 FG%, 92.2 FT%, 15.1 points, 2.9 rebounds, 8.1 assists, .5 steals, 1.5 3PM

The percentages give up Steve Nash as Player B in this example pretty easily, but who is Player A? None other than Mike D'Antoni's new PG, Chris Duhon. Sure, that FG% is pretty terrible, but considering that Duhon only takes 8.6 shots per night right now, I think you can live with it. The D'Antoni offense is the NBA's equivalent of the Denver Broncos running game -- plug 'n play. I'm not going to attempt to defend Duhon as the better player, but as a fantasy PG, you could do a lot worse -- Duhon is the #5 PG on ESPN's player rater for the season.

Having just watched the Suns play the Mavericks on TNT, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Nash doesn't average double digit assists this year. That team looks totally lost in every phase of the game. Maybe I'm crazy, but if I'm Sun's coach Terry Porter, I'd be a little concerned about my job security. They've got very little offensive flow right now, there were a number of occurences tonight where Nash led Amare Stoudamire in a pick and roll right into the area that Shaquille O'Neal was occupying, cutting off the drive. Realistic goals for Nash this season are probably 16 PPG, 9 APG with 1.5 3PM and his usual stellar percentages. 9 assists per game will still rank Nash among the league leaders, but if I owned him and wasn't worried about 3 pointers and the positive percentages, moving him for Duhon and another piece might make a lot of sense. I'd try to move Nash on the value of his name and his history.

Player A: 42.5 FG%, 58.6 FT%, 10.9 points, 11.2 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.6 3PM, .8 steals, .5 blocks

Player B: 50.6 FG%, 75.5 FT%, 14.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, 1.7 assists, .9 3PM, .9 steals, .5 blocks

Again, huge discrepencies in the percentages. Would it help you out if I told you Player A takes fewer than 2 free throw attempts per game? You might have gleaned that these players are both PF, C eligible from the rebounding numbers. Player A is Troy Murphy. Player B is Mehmet Okur. Both of these players are awkward statistically -- they're perimeter big men. If you drafted them, you probably weren't saying, "Sweet, time to win the rebounding title!" Rather, you likely took these guys to bolster a stellar 3s squad by taking one of the few players that will get a meaningful number of 3PM with center eligibility. They also rebound at a decent clip, but both are usually out of the top 30 rebounders in the league.

Murphy is clearly overperforming in rebounding, averaging 3.2 rebounds per game more than his career average. He is able to do this because of an overall lack of rebounding on the Pacers -- Rasho Nesterovich is another center that generally stays 12-15 feet from the basket and he's also sharing time with Jeff Foster. With everyone else on Indiana apparently disinterested with rebounding, Murphy has a chance to put up his best season on the boards yet. The cool thing about Murphy is that he's shooting 4.4 3s per game, which is the highest number of his career. He's historically converted them at a 37.2% rate. This season he is making 36.5% of his 3s, which would lead you to believe his 1.6 3PM per game are here to stay, too.

The only interesting thing about Okur's numbers thus far, well, aside from being worse than Troy Murphy, is that his 3 point attemps are down from 4.4 per game last season to 2.5 per game this season. Hence the incredible leap in FG% (5% above career average) and drop in 3PM from the prior two seasons (1.6 to .9). Look for Okur's shooting percentage to go down in the near future. That or he'll just continue being worse than Troy Murphy in almost every facet of the game.