Jimmer Fredette Is (Technically) The Best Player In The NBA

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All faithful Cougar fans knew it would only be a matter of time, and now the wait is over — BYU legend Jimmer Fredette is officially the best player in the NBA. (Technically.)

How is this possible you ask? Isn't it true that Jimmer barely gets off the bench for the lowly Sacramento Kings? How could the best player in the league be resigned to such a ghastly fate? Doesn't this strike you as a strange claim given the preponderance of evidence to the contrary?

These are all fair questions. But do you know who cares little for your doubt and skepticism? Mathematics. That's right, arithmetic — which we know is, by definition, never wrong — has unilaterally decreed that one James Taft Fredette is the best player in the NBA. (Kind of.)

Let me explain.

Not so very long ago, in a land not so very far away, a man by the name of John Hollinger decided that the existing ways in which statisticians measured performance on a basketball court were inadequate. Inspired by the work of baseball Sabermetricians like Bill James (think Moneyball), he set out to develop a more accurate metric by which on-court feats could be measured.

With his resulting formula, termed Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Hollinger sought to account for several important statistical categories, place those figures within the broader framework of the minutes and game pace available to each individual player, and then to ultimately produce a single, normalized number that could be used to measure any given player's overall efficiency. Or in other words, to offer a mathematical definition of what it means to be "the best" basketball player.

For context's sake, the average NBA player has a PER of 15.00. According to Hollinger's metric, the greatest/most efficient player ever, Michael Jordan, had a career PER of 27.91, and the player with the best single season ever, Wilt Chamberlain in 1962-1963, had a PER of 31.84.

Now for the kicker: Through the Kings' Sunday night game against the Lakers, Jimmer Fredette has a PER of 33.50 — good for first in the NBA, right ahead of Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, and LeBron James.

Think about that for a second. Let it marinate. Allow it to fully sink in to your brain.

According to John Hollinger's magical mathematics, some kid who's getting eight minutes a night for one of the league's worst teams is currently on track to have one of the best, most efficient seasons in NBA history.

Obviously we're seeing the limits of Hollinger's formula here. As much as we love Jimmer, I think we can all agree he's no M.J. or Wilt. So what is going on with this obscenely high PER number?

Critics (and there are many) have long assailed Hollinger's formula for unintentionally giving extra weight to a player's performance in limited minutes, particularly when his contributions are primarily of the offensive variety. Does that sound like anyone we know? Perhaps a third-string point guard from Glens Falls, N.Y., who's been shooting the lights out in very limited action so far this season, despite his myriad defensive flaws?

Maybe this will refresh your memory:

The moral of the story? If you drop 18 points on 7-for-9 shooting in just 10 minutes of action enough times in a six-game span, it's apparently enough to make arithmetic believe you're the Mormon second coming of His Airness himself — only better.

Granted, goofy stuff like this happens early in seasons all the time. With such a small sample size, every statistic is unduly magnified, producing some wacky numbers. As the year goes along and as Jimmer gets more and more minutes, his numbers will undoubtedly come back down to earth. That's not to say our conquering hero hasn't significantly improved his game between this year and last — by all indications, he appears to be a much better, more confident player — but he's also (probably) not having an historic season.

So enjoy it while you can Cougar fans and Jimmermaniacs: According to one mathematical metric, Jimmer Fredette is the best player in the NBA — at least for today.


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