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538 Article: Most Over/Under Paid FA Signings - Ingles

Then there is hte incredibly ridiculous assertion that Leonard is worth over 40 million dollars a year.
 
538 had a badass ode to Andre article after his retirement. https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ode-to-the-underrated-andrei-kirilenko-edition/


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ODE TO THE UNDERRATED

Ode To The Underrated: Andrei Kirilenko Edition

2:50 PMJUN 24, 2015 By NEIL PAINE

Andrei Kirilenko of the Utah Jazz waits during a foul shot at a game against the Miami Heat in 2010 at American Airlines Arena in Miami.
Andrei Kirilenko of the Utah Jazz waits during a foul shot at a game against the Miami Heat in 2010 at American Airlines Arena in Miami.

MIKE EHRMANN / GETTY IMAGES
It was little more than a footnote in Tuesday’s NBA news blotter, but the retirement of veteran forward Andrei Kirilenko caused longtime members of the basketball analytics community1 to cast our thoughts back over some fond memories. Kirilenko was one of the movement’s first underground stars, a player who, because of his statistical versatility and measurable on-court impact, deserved far more credit than he got from mainstream analysts.

To most observers, Kirilenko enjoyed a decent but ultimately forgettable NBA career, mostly with the Utah Jazz. He averaged 11.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game — practically the textbook definition of “pedestrian numbers” — and although he was voted into one All-Star game and earned a handful of All-Defensive team nods, Kirilenko was never considered an elite player. (At one point he was the league’s sixth-highest-paid player, but the contract was also widely viewed as an albatross.) Tellingly, Kirilenko has less than a 1 percent probability of making the Hall of Fame in the estimation of Basketball-Reference.com’s algorithm, which is built to mimic human voting patterns. By conventional standards, Kirilenko was nothing special.

For statheads, though, he was a superstar, especially in the early stages of his career.

When Dan Rosenbaum,2 then an economics professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, first successfully reverse-engineered Wayne Winston and Jeff Sagarin’s proprietary Adjusted Plus/Minus (APM) metric in 2004, a few of the usual suspects topped his player rankings: reigning MVP Kevin Garnett and statistical legend Tracy McGrady. But third on the list was a surprise: Kirilenko, then a third-year player with modest traditional numbers. It was no fluke, either: Kirilenko showed up third overall in the combined 2005 and 2006 APM ratings computed by Rosenbaum disciple Dave Lewin, and Kirilenko peaked at second overall in Jeremias Engelmann’s Real Plus/Minus (RPM)3 ratings for 2006. During his best years, you could count on one hand the number of NBA players who more positively influenced their team’s performance than Kirilenko.
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Heh, they even titled it ode to Kirilenko.
 
"During his best years, you could count on one hand the number of NBA players who more positively influenced their team’s performance than Kirilenko."

Agree. Unfortunately those best years only lasted about four seasons. Still remember the games he was put on Kobe and frustrated the hell out of him.
 
AK could have been a HOF'er had he stuck to what he did well. I've always said that. What if he retires with 30 5x5 games, top 5 all time in blocks, multiple defensive NBA awards. He could have gone down as one of the most unique players in NBA history. But he wanted to average 20 pts instead of 15. Crazy.
 
green said:
AK could have been a HOF'er had he stuck to what he did well. I've always said that. What if he retires with 30 5x5 games, top 5 all time in blocks, multiple defensive NBA awards. He could have gone down as one of the most unique players in NBA history. But he wanted to average 20 pts instead of 15. Crazy.
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WEll, he could have averaged 20 had he worked on his game and body during the off-seasons. Every year we heard his shot had improved and he had gained 10 lbs of muscle. And then training camp would begin and reality would set in. AK had 50 years after retirement to read Russian novels. All he had to do was work at his craft for 10 years!
 
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