Some players are a lock to get you points every night. Others players, on the other hand, can give you nothing, or give you a lot. It's hard to predict a player's performance -- but over-all you can get a gut feeling about certain types. A guy like Al Jefferson, he of 506 regular season games and a career scoring average of 16.0 ppg, has a reputation as a guy who will get you points. Some would call him a reliable scoring threat. We do not have a team filled with Al Jeffersons though. Tom Ziller -- all around NBA Guru and one of the best guys out there on the SBN period -- did a post on volatility.

There's another way in which scorers differ: volatility. Some scorers are more reliable than others; there are the proverbial "you know you're going to get 20 points" guys and the "explosive scorers." We sometimes give credit to explosive scorers, even those in prominent offensive roles, because they could go off at any time and get their team back in the game.

But there's a flip side to that: they aren't necessarily dependable. In the NBA as in any competitive atmosphere, consistency has some importance. If a team's management doesn't know what they'll get out of a star any given night, it's hard to build a proper cast around him. Just how much of a drain excessive volatility is a question mark, at least for this column. (I have no doubt a team or three have conducted studies on the value of consistency, but there's nothing public or publicized in the NBA realm on that issue that I know of.) This exercise is meant to look at which players are volatile compared to their peers. -- Tom Ziller

The formula he used was to get the standard deviation of points scored for a player, and then divide that by their points per game scoring average. I've saved you all the busy work, and I'll just post the results below:

Hey, who knew that Big Al was our more most consistent scorer? (Everyone) By the way, this metric displays that C.J. Miles, the much maligned C.J. Miles, is a more consistent scorer than Golden Child Gordon Hayward this season. They both have different roles on the team and different responsibilities -- but even a guy like C.J. is more consistent this year at scoring. That's something I do worry about 1/3rd into this season now. Jokes and names aside, CJ is getting better -- but we all know that Hayward is capable of being a much more complete *and* consistent player down the line.

Anyway, thanks to @SethPo @TeamZiller for their help with this post! If it wasn't for either of you, this wouldn't have happened.

December was only four games long for the Utah Jazz during this lockout shortened season. January was more than three times as long, a solid 15 games. The Jazz played much better ball as a team, winning 11 games. How did the players perform individually? Click on to see a whole lot of numbers presented in a very easy to understand way. (Really, I mean it…)

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Obviously that title is for that Google SEO stuff, but the rest of this (hopefully short) post is for the rest of the NBA family. The NBA game is one of head liners. The guys who make the most points get the most screen time. They also usually get paid the most too. As of this writing there are 80 guys who have qualified to score between 8.0 ppg and 13.9 ppg. They are a healthy mix of bigmen, wings, and point guards. Many of them veterans, a few former All-Stars; and there are quite a few guys on their rookie contracts as well. It's a big mix of players. And here are the numbers:

• Total n = 80 (Bigmen n = 22; Point Guards n = 21; Wings n = 38)
  
• Total Averages: 10.5 ppg; $5.8m
• Bigmen Averages: 10.6 ppg, $8.3m
  
• Point Guards Averages: 10.3 ppg, $4.1m
• Wings Averages: 10.5 ppg, $5.2m

It should be no surprise that bigs get paid the most. But let's further refine this to look at veterans (guys not on their rookie contracts), okay?

• Veteran n = 52 (15 bigs, 12 pgs, 25 wings)
• Veterans: 10.6 ppg, $7.8m
• Veteran Bigs: 10.7 ppg, $11.2m
• Veteran Points: 10.0 ppg, $5.7m
• Veteran Wings: 10.9 ppg, $6.7m

Wow, that's not a very large disparity in points, however veteran bigs get paid quite a bit. Where does SG/SF C.J. Miles have to fit into this? Well, the 24 year old is averaging 10.3 ppg (slightly below average overall, and just for veterans), but he's doing it at a virtual steal of $3.7 m. Yes, Veteran wings score 0.6 more points per game, but they also play (on average) more mpg than he does *and* they make $3.0 m more than he does. Thanks, I'll take C.J. instead.

The full list of players used after the jump...

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Yesterday Amar explained to us how Paul Millsap is the Power Forward Terminator, a lethal power forward sent from the future to destroy any player in his path. Amar showed us the head to head match-ups and how Millsap has compared to these All-Stars. Amar did this using box score stats and averages amongst them. Today, I’m going to dig a little deeper and see how Sap matches up when we take advanced basketball metrics into account to see how he has surgically dismantled his opposition.

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A Jazz Killer is, naturally, some guy on the other team who routinely lights us up. Many times this individual is a star recognized all over the globe, like a Kobe Bryant. It’s not ‘special’ when Kobe lights the Jazz up – he lights everyone up. It hurts so much more when the Jazz killer is a guy who is decidedly average, but his eyes light up when playing against us. Probably the best example, in recent history at least, is the Toronto Raptors Linas Kleiza. We fear and respect him. We also wonder: "What did we ever do to him to make him hate us so much?" He’s done everything to us. He set his career high. He even had close to a double double in just garbage time. He always seems to find a new way to rip our hearts out of our chests. He is one in a seemingly endless line of Jazz Killing role players. Here’s a look at only 5 (there are more) of his Jazz Killing games:

• Jan 17, 2008: 41 points, 9 rebounds, 4 threes, 11/14 FTs, and a bunch assists as a member of the Denver Nuggets
• Jan 25th, 2012: 25 points, 5 rebounds, 4 three, 5/5 at the line, in a huge come from behind double overtime victory as a member of the Toronto Raptors
• Jan 25th, 2009: 18 points, 9 rebounds, 3 threes, 3/3 at the FT line, 1 assist, block, and steal as a Denver Nugget
• Jan 6th, 2007: 17 points, 2 rebounds, 1 three, 6/8 at the FT line, 1.89 PPS, again, a Nugget.
• April, 12th, 2006: 16 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 6/9 from the FT line, once again, Denver Nugget

I could go on and on, listing all the times he came away with a win, while embarrassing our scouting department. In the old LHM days he would have demanded that we somehow trade for him or sign him as a free agent. For his career he averages 8.6 ppg (44.6 fg%), 3.6 rpg, and 0.8 apg. Against the Jazz, well, I don’t even want to tell you. He’s a beast.

No. He’s a Jazz Killer.

Paul Millsap – The Power Forward Terminator

It’s January 23, 2012. Usually it wouldn’t be too soon to think about the All-Star game; however, this season no team has even played 20 games yet. That said, the All-Star game isn’t cancelled this lockout shortened season (it was back in ’99). So we have to go through this whole, painful process. Each of the Western Conference’s top teams (and even some of the bad ones) has an All-Star worthy forward making solid contributions. Let’s briefly go over them:

• Oklahoma City Thunder: Kevin Durant (26.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 3.3 apg)
• Denver Nuggets: Nene (13.4 ppg, 9.1 rpg, 2.4 apg)
• LA Clippers: Blake Griffin (21.0 ppg, 11.5 rpg, 2.9 apg)
• Memphis Grizzlies: Rudy Gay (18.6 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 1.9 apg)
• Utah Jazz: Paul Millsap * (16.6 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 2.0 apg)
• San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan (12.6 ppg, 7.3, 2.9 apg)
• Dallas Mavericks: Dirk Nowitzki (17.5 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 2.3 apg)
• Portland Trail Blazers: LaMarcus Aldridge (23.3 ppg, 8.8 rpg, 2.6 apg)
• LA Lakers: Pau Gasol (15.8 ppg, 9.3 rpg, 2.8 apg)
• Minnesota Timberwolves: Kevin Love (24.1 ppg, 14.1 rpg, 1.8 apg)

Obviously Kevin Durant will be voted in, and will be voted in every year forever, even if O.J. Simpson discovers that he was the real killer. The rest of these guys are PF/C types, and Rudy Gay. And there’s also the Utah Jazz’ Al Jefferson who deserves consideration as well, this year. I decided to take a look at Nene, Blake, Paul, Tim, Dirk, LaMarcus, Pau, and Kevin. What I found out is that, among other things, Paul Millsap is the Power Forward Terminator.

Don’t believe me? Read on beyond the jump to find a lot of stats. (You don’t have to take your clothes off to travel past the jump like the Terminator universe though, so that’s a plus)

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Four games isn’t much of a sample size, but that’s how it’s just going to have to be for this lockout shortened season. Next month we’ll get a ton more to look at, but from what we CAN see so far, well, it doesn’t look that good.

Players Stats – Offense

Too small? Click here for the Ostertag-size!

First of all, yes, there’s a lot of info here. The first thing I want to point out is that the information should be a lot more digestible than last year. Second, we are playing only one guy under the age of 24 more than 24 minutes per game: Gordon Hayward. Well, technically two guys – because Favors is playing 24.3 mpg. But overall, so far this season, we’re bringing the younger guys relatively slowly. This is going to change month to month as the season progresses and our veteran leaders get their annual injuries. (Oh wait, Andrei Kirilenko, Mehmet Okur, and Carlos Boozer are no longer on the team)

After the jump – we go into this deep. Players stats on offense, defense, and team stats. Of course, the "TL;DNR" version is: BRING ON JANUARY 2012!!

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Two games isn't a large sample size, of course not. But it's never too soon to start over-reacting to any piece of information we have available. Right now there's a lot of displeasure with the current playing time rotation for the Jazz. There's the fan's side. There's the coach's side. There's the management's side. There's also the player's side. (Let's not even get into our media, who behaves like dinosaurs sometimes) I'm clearly a fan, above and beyond everything. So I'm biased. I'm also a guy who knows his way around excel, so I like numbers. Here's a simple (and sloppy) chart that shows all of our guys by playing time on the X-Axis. Against that we have the cumulative value of all their points, assists, rebounds, steals, and blocks, on the Y-Axis. A line shows the one to one ratio of per min to PARSB unit. Some guys are above the line. Some are below it. In one case two guys (Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter) have the same value. In all the other cases, well . . . we see who is doing their best on the floor, with the time they have.

Only two guys are above the line: Paul Millsap and Alec Burks. Everyone else is below. Some of our guys are sinking. The hasty construction of this isn't by accident, nor design. Sorry it looks sloppy. Our players play sloppy. When they deserve better charts I'll make better charts. ha ha . . .