We've beaten this pretty well to death, and I'm certainly not going to look at regular season vs. playoff PERs for every 3rd option on every playoff team. Just a couple general points. Batum should not have been our 3rd option against MEM. He was actually our 6th leading scorer during the regular season (5th if you count Wes and Afflalo as 1 option since we got Afflalo about a week before Wes went down). Batum's major strength is his rebounding and facilitating. He averaged 8.6 RPG and 5.2 APG in the playoffs. Other than LeBron, name one small forward in the playoffs this year that topped one of those numbers, let alone both. I think most teams would take that kind of production, plus his 14.2 PPG, from their small forward in the playoffs. Again, I'm not saying Batum played great, but you don't average 14.2 PPG, 8.6 RPG and 5.2 APG (or 15.2 PPG, 7.6 RPG and 4.8 APG last year) by disappearing.
And, it wasn't just this year. Batum played very well against HOU last year and both his PPG and RPG were up, and his APG about the same in the playoffs last year vs. the regular season.
I admit I discount Batum's earlier playoff performances under Nate McMillan. McMillan always severely under utilized Batum. Under Nate, Batum's one and only role was to stand in the corner for the occasional corner 3.
Second, PER isn't the be all end all stat to begin with, but it's absolutely HORRIBLE when comparing small sample sizes, like a single playoff series (in Batum's case). Just look at Spencer Hawes, for example. He had an absolutely stellar PER = 18.8 in the post season, compared to a rather crappy PER = 9.8 during the regular season. If you're just going by PER, it certainly looks like Hawes was one of those role players that stepped up his game in the playoffs. The truth is much different. Over two series, Hawes played in 8 playoff games, but did not make one single meaningful contribution to his team. He only played garbage time minutes. In the first round, he scored 2 points in a 27-point loss to SAS. In the second round against HOU, he scored 2 points in a 25-point win, 8 points in a 33-point win and 11 points in a 21-point loss - all meaningless garbage time points that had zero impact on his team's playoff success. But, there's that gaudy playoff PER of 18.8.
Yeah, I know it's just one example, but PER has always led to a large number of what I call S^4 - Small Sample Size Superstars, guys who have all-star like PERs, but don't really help their teams win. Of course, with a small sample size, it can also swing in the other direction. If a player has one bad game, it can drastically skew their PER in a 4 or 5 game playoff series.
BNM
