• J.J Redick's trade request has gotten plenty of media attention. Hell, it even made ESPN.com! But nobody has the story covered quite like Kelly Dwyer, who transcribed the conversation that took place between Redick and Magic GM Otis Smith. Shocking.
• 'Hedowned' is Matt's new favorite word. For a formal definition of "Hedownage," refer to this video, as well as this one. Thanks.
• The Toronto Raptors' point guard platoon of T.J. Ford and Jose Calderon is affectionately nicknamed "Forderon". I tried coming up with a similar nickname for our Carlos Arroyo/Jameer Nelson tandem, but the best I could do was "Nelroyo." "Arrson" would be better -- it's scorching hot! -- but the two guys don't shoot well enough to earn that moniker. TheFalcon suggested "Loser" for the composite nickname. Subtle, but effective. It's pretty damn appropriate that his avatar on MagicMadness is a photo of Mark Twain.
• Earlier this week, Will Brinson speculated the Magic would sign 5'5" point guard Earl Boykins. I don't think that would have been a good idea -- how many undersized one-guards does this team need?! -- but it's all moot now. The Charlotte Bobcats, our division rivals, have signed him for the rest of the season. Boykins isn't a great player, but keep in mind that Charlotte was giving Jeff McInnis (PER: 6.4) 26 minutes a game this season. So that's an improvement.
• Hedo + Rashard = Hedard Turkolewis. How euphonious.
• David Berri's Wages of Wins method of measuring a player's value has come under a lot of scrutiny; just take this quiz and see the results. Berri just published a complete list of every NBA player's Wins Produced at the midpoint of the season. Here's how the Magic's guys did - the number in parenthesis is the player's rank out of 446 total players:
  • Dwight Howard (1)
  • Hedo Turkoglu (64)
  • Jameer Nelson (77)
  • Keith Bogans (131)
  • Carlos Arroyo (142)
  • Adonal Foyle (175)
  • Trevor Ariza (219)
  • Maurice Evans (259)
  • Bo Outlaw (297)
  • James Augustine (316)
  • J.J. Redick (322)
  • Rashard Lewis (343)
  • Keyon Dooling (382)
  • Brian Cook (405)
  • Pat Garrity (417)

  According to this method, there are 342 players in the NBA who are more productive than Rashard Lewis. As disappointing as he's been, it's hard to buy that he's really that awful. (Hat-tip: SuperSonicSoul)

• Don't forget to tune-in to TNT at 7 PM eastern to find out who the reserves for the All-Star teams are.

John Hollinger, the statistical whiz who derived Player Efficiency Rating (PER), has released his projected 2007/2008 PER statistics for every player who played at least 500 minutes last season. PER is, as he explains it to Henry Abbott of TrueHoop:

Anyway, PER is a per-minute rating of a player's statistical productivity. It's great for measuring a player's "tangibles"; the one area it struggles is with defense because so much of that remains a black box for the analytical community.

I use it so much because it makes it very easy to make comparisons between players who play differing minutes, or in different systems or what-not -- comparisons which, using conventional stats, are almost impossible.

Here is how PER is derived:

I base the projections on a tool called similarity scores.

For each player, I use as a comparison the players from the past 20 years who are the most similar, based on age, height and stats over the past three seasons. Some players will have more comparables than others, depending on how unusual they are -- guys with freak heights (Yao Ming, Earl Boykins), freak ages (Dikembe Mutombo) or freak stats (Andrei Kirilenko) will have relatively few, while a more generic player like Al Harrington or Devin Brown could have over a hundred.

From that point, I see what their most similar players did a year later, and project those changes onto the stats of the player being studied. So, for example, the reason that Yao Ming's PER is projected to rise sharply this year is because the most similar players also saw their PERs increase sharply at the same age; similarly, Andre Miller is expected to tank because a number of similar players hit the wall at his age.

PER is normalized each year to 15; that is, if you have a PER of 15, you're an average player. After the jump, I've posted a table showing how Magic players fared last year, as well as Hollinger's projections for them this year, and their difference. Alternatively, you can click here to view the predictions directly on ESPN.com. While the raw numbers are free, the player profiles are not.

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