just curious if that’s the reason or you have another reason why it’s not legitimate. I’m always interested to hear your opinion on these statistical matters.

Even though he’s probably weaker than Ben?

Monta is probably the (slightly) better player, but this Pistons reference doesn’t do anything to support that.

BG is a good but flawed player. Another sickening example was the trend in every Nets game I caught. The Bulls run up a big lead, Kidd and Carter take the game back whenever they’re ready. The NBA allows plenty of opportunity for decent players to have a run while the other team’s cruising. BG can be really effective in lower intensity games because he is really good at filling it up, but when his D and handles get challenged hard, they become gamebreakers. When the real action starts, the liabilities get exposed. Hell, I could guard Kobe as long as he’s pacing himself and letting his teammates participate, but he’d put up 150 per 36 when he wanted to.
The question isn’t BG>ME or vice versa; it’s is BG worth more to the Bulls than ME is to GS. And there’s really only one opinion in play right now, Reinsdorf’s.

I never said it was.

But if you’re going to use that point to say Gordon is a bad defender, then the same method should be applied to Ellis.

Let’s look at it this way. We can both agree, I’d guess, that their best use is guarding PGs. And I’d also guess we could agree that despite the 82Games methodology, when they are actually measured as the PG, it’s probably accurate. Because in that case we don’t have the “they were on the court with Baron Davis or Kirk Hinrich” issue in the first place.

So let’s compare that.
Ellis as PG defensive PER: 19.6
Gordon as PG defensive PER: 19.7

That statistic tends to indicate neither of them are very good defenders.

I never said we should use Gordon’s listing at SG any more than I’d use Ellis’.

If you want to avoid the problem of “who’s the player guarding”, you should really look at their defensive PERs at PG. Because both of them are usually best suited to guard PGs, when they’re actually listed at PG (as opposed to playing with a PG who will play SG on defense like Davis or Hinrich), it’s safer assumption that the defensive PER is actually capturing their efforts.

So what are their defensive PERs as PGs?
Gordon 19.7
Ellis 19.6

Lower numbers are good, by the way, so this tells us
1. They are about the same
2. They don’t measure out as very good defenders