This isn’t exactly news, but Henry Abbott of TrueHoop just tweeted out the link to the latest “Playoff Odds,” which are calculated by ESPN’s numbers guru John Hollinger. Indiana has a 99.1% chance of making the playoffs. Just as nice to see for Hoosiers who still are feuding with New Yorkers over the 90s Pacers/Knicks battles, it looks like the team from MSG that just beat Indy on back-to-back nights remains on the outside with just over a coin flip’s shot to play more than 66 games this year.

You can see every team in the league’s chance to make the postseason above or by heading over to ESPN.com.

Not all of the answers are encouraging for Pacers fans. But here’s what we all had to say about the consensus most-positive aspect of the Pacers’ past season.

2. Fact or Fiction: Paul George is the answer at SG.

Tim Donahue, Eight Points, Nine Seconds: Fact. Strictly speaking, Paul George is the answer at something — not necessarily the 2, but, close enough. He showed a lot in terms of defense and maturity, but he needs to find an offensive identity. Frank Vogel’s offense cannot ignore him the way it did down the stretch last season. George needs to be given a prominent, defined role.

John Hollinger, ESPN.com: Fact, sort of. George is absolutely the answer to something — I think he’s one of the best young wings in the league — but at 6-8 he’s stretched both defensively and as a ball handler at the 2; his future is more likely to be at small forward. Which is a bit problematic given that Danny Granger already plays there.

Jonathan Santiago, Cowbell Kingdom: Fact. There’s consensus among observers that George played phenomenal defense for the Pacers in their first-round playoff appearance. The Pacers have witnessed their other defensive wings fizzle out (Dahntay Jones, Brandon Rush), but it seems that George may buck that trend.

Danny Savitzky, Nets Are Scorching: Fiction. When the Pacers nearly nabbed O.J. Mayo at the trade deadline, it was an indication that they aren’t totally content with George as a major part of the future. Even after a subpar first season, though, he still has the time to convince Vogel and the rest of management that he can be a reliable rotation player.

Jared Wade, Eight Points, Nine Seconds: Fact. He is an excellent athlete who takes pride in defense. He is dangerous in transition and refined enough to score in the half court. He can handle the ball from both wing spots and guard three positions. Nationally, a lot of people took notice of the way his defense disrupted Derrick Rose in the playoffs. People in Indiana knew before that.

In related news, I also submitted a video commentary segment on the how the team will integrate George Hill into the offense. Some detractors about the deal have worried that Hill and Darren Collison are redundant and the Paul George should be playing 35 mpg per night. I don’t share those concerns and think Indiana now has the best back-court situation it has since I can remember.

Watch and don’t be disturbed by the presence of my giant, shiny, bald head.

It’s mostly harmless.

But resident ESPN stat guru John Hollinger has put George on his “2012 Team” that recognizes under-the-radar performers who he expects to be even more productive next year. John even highlights one stat that I didn’t even realize was so great: the kid is shooting 56.7% on two-point shots so far this year. That’s pretty swell.

Hollinger’s rationale:

If there is one reason to watch the Pacers this year, it’s this guy. While the Griffin-Wall-Cousins rookie trio still hogs all the attention, it’s become increasingly clear that George was flat-out stolen at No. 10 by Indiana. A long, silky finisher who looks as if he could easily ramp up to the go-to scorer role, George is shooting 56.7 percent on 2-pointers.

His main shortcoming has been that he has taken a ton of 3-pointers and struggles to make them. That talent should develop in time, as his shooting stroke looks solid, and if it does the 20-year-old will be nigh unguardable.

But that’s not all.

Hollinger also has liked what he has seen from ostensible-rookie Tyler Hansbrough.

Hansbrough did virtually nothing the first two months and briefly fell out of the Pacers’ rotation entirely, but lately his play has been more encouraging.

One thing new Indiana coach Frank Vogel did was give Hansbrough a consistent role, playing him about half the game off the bench at power forward. That strategy has allowed Hansbrough to play more freely on offense, and he’s averaging nearly a point every two minutes on the season and proving adept at drawing fouls. But to be a long-term starter, he needs to raise his shooting percentage from 43.0 percent.

Nice little feathers for these guys’ caps.

This, really, is all Hollinger was saying. He did drop a line that “[Rush will] claim the dubious distinction of being the worst player ever to lead his team in minutes,” but the word “worst” in that sentence is likely just blunt Hollinger shorthand for “worst under this metric of defining a player’s worth.” If you talked with the man, I’m sure he would readily admit that he hasn’t watched a ton of Pacers games this season. Very few people who have no connection to this team have. They’re just not very watchable.

Meanwhile, as Indy Cornrows points out, another stat-head has seemingly lept up like a knight in shining armor to defend Brandon’s honor. Wayne Winston, who spent years employed by the Mavericks as Mark Cuban’s right-hand man for advanced stat knowledge, states that under his preferred system, adjusted +/-, Rush has more worth.

Specifically, he has more worth than Troy Murphy.

Rush has an Adjusted +/- of around 0 and Murphy has a -7 Adjusted +/- which means  we estimate that Troy Murphy in for 48 minutes is 7 points worse than an average NBA player. So we believe Murphy must be doing some bad things that do not show up in the box score and in all likelihood Rush does many good things that do not show up in the box score.  Jim O’Brien must also believe that Rush has “hidden virtues.”

He goes on to note that the Pacers play better when Danny is on the floor with Brandon than they do when he is on the floor with … you guessed it … Murphy.

For exmaple, [sic] we find that when Granger is in the Pacers play 2 points per game worse with Murphy in than Rush in.  When Hibbert is in, the Pacers are 12 points per game better with Murphy out than with Rush out. A bad PER does not necessarily mean you hurt the team and a good PER does not imply that you surely help the team!

Interesting stuff. And stuff that definitely adds some more nuance to Brandon’s statistical contributions to the team.

What Winston doesn’t take the time to point out, however, is a player’s adjusted +/- over a single season can often be misleading. The Mavs themselves learned this the hard way, as I heard Mark Cuban himself say twice at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, aka Dorkapolloza. (Here is one of the panels I covered there.)

Cuban overvalued a young Evan Eschmeyer at one point based on his high adjusted +/- numbers, signing him to a deal that later turned out to be way more than Eschmeyer was worth. After that — and just with a lot more experience, evidence and understanding acquired over the years — Cuban said that he now values the insights shown by adjusted +/- over multiple seasons in his decision making a lot more so than anything it can turn up in  single season. Essentially, for Cuban, seeing a good adjusted +/- number for one year is like having a hypothesis. Seeing it recur over several seasons starts to give you a theory.

As a billionaire, it comes as little shock that Cuban prefers to make decisions based on theories rather than hypotheses.

And in addition to that, Cuban also has about a million other metrics — many of which are gathered through proprietary means and don’t exist in the public domain — he uses to cross-reference findings to see if something like a negative PER is an outlier. Does it match with adjusted +/-? Does it sync up with other defensive metrics, like the opposing team’s FG% while a player is on the court? Does it look similar to what you see on that players customized Synergy Sports video channel? Does it align with any of the other likely-amazing metrics to evaluate a player that I have never even heard of?

Getting back to Winston … let’s just remember that he really isn’t saying that he thinks Brandon is great. His main point is merely that Troy Murphy is worse. And more than even caring one way or the other about these two players, he seems to mainly be advocating that this is one time when adjusted +/- tells a better story than PER.

In other words, this feels more like a statistician pissing contest than it does a nugget of enlightenment for Pacers fans.

In his short response to Hollinger, Winston may have used better gravitas to state his case than did John, who I imagine many Pacers fans think overstated his case when he brought the word “worst” into the equation. But, as with most all of us who talk flippantly on the internet about the NBA, Winston isn’t exactly above being a little overly blunt himself.

Here are some of his previous thoughts on Murphy:

In an interview with True Hoop I said Troy Murphy had done little to help his team. I apologize. I should have said that with Golden State he had done little to help his team (average rating of -8 points in his last 4 years with Golden State). But in the last two years with Indiana he has improved to the level of an average NBA player(which is very good indeed). Kudos to Troy and the Pacers coaching staff for this improvement. It is rare to see such an amazing improvement during the middle of a player’s career,

There is a good deal of sarcasm in there if you didn’t notice.

Basically, Winston’s preferred adjusted +/- system of analysis finds that Troy Murphy is very bad. John Hollinger’s preferred PER system of analysis finds that Troy is pretty good. Winston’s adjusted +/- finds Brandon Rush to be decidedly average. Hollinger’s PER finds Brandon to be very bad.

Ultimately, what we really have here is John Holinger saying, “Statistically, Brandon Rush sucks.” And Wayne Winston’s response is, “Yeah, well, statistically, Troy Murphy sucks more.”

No offense to either man, both of whom I think are invaluable basketball minds to the NBA community, but we’re not exactly looking at a Plato’s Republic-level debate here. We just have two guys pointing out what their preferred systems of statistical analysis says about two guys on the Pacers.

I love advanced stats and think both PER and adjusted +/- belong in the discussion of player’s worth (and, please, let’s use some of these numbers when talking about Brandon and Troy in the future). But if all we were going to learn here is that Brandon Rush hasn’t played that great over the past 75 games and that the Pacers get smoked when Troy Murphy is on the floor …. well, I could have told you that a lot more simply just by saying:

“Yes. That has definitely happened.”

ESPN’s resident stat guru John Hollinger devoted an entire True Hoop post this afternoon to a dubious honor that Rush is about to earn.

If he manages to maintain his lead, he’ll claim the dubious distinction of being the worst player ever to lead his team in minutes. My search through the record books unearthed only two other players in the post-merger era to lead their team in minutes with a single-digit PER: Bruce Bowen with San Antonio in 2003-04, and Jason Collins with the Nets a season later.

Brandon’s PER of 9.96 is well below 15, the benchmark for average.  Additionally, only Solomon Jones, Jeff Foster, and Travis Diener have posted worse PER’s for the Pacers this season.

Mr. Hollinger’s not making a lot of friends in either the Pacer front office or the fan base, but how right is he?  Well, PER by itself is far from definite proof on the quality of the player.  Even Hollinger admits this, so he’s being a bit casual here.   Still, when you think of it from the perspective of all of the players who have led their team in minutes, you have to believe that Brandon is a whole lot closer to the worst than he is to the best.

The one thing that many in Pacer land love to give Rush credit for is his defense.  It is true that Brandon is the best defender on the team, but that’s not exactly what you’d call a towering accomplishment.  However, Hollinger even took issue with that.

But those were two of the best defensive players of the decade (if not ever, in Bowen’s case), so it’s obvious why they played so much. Rush is just an average defender, making his usage more perplexing.

I can hear the “harumphs” echoing through Conseco now.

This isn’t the first time recently Brandon has received a less than glowing review from a national media member.  Chad Ford recently tweeted:

Tournament draft busts? Ed O’Bannon, Sean May, Chris Wilcox, Brandon Rush, Christian Laettner, Mateen Cleaves, Patrick O’Bryant …

Then, in response to @pacersdigest, who was protesting that Brandon was not a bust:

If NBA games were played only in March & April that would be true

Harsh words.  So, what do you think?

Sounds high. His thoughts:

It’s weeks before the All-Star game, and John Hollinger’s playoff odds are already saying that nine teams — nearly a third of the League — are essentially out of the running for the playoffs. The Wizards are given about a 5% chance of making it. Trailing that miserable standard are the Sixers, Pistons, Clippers, Pacers, Warriors, Nets and Timberwolves. For the sanity of the people who support those teams, I’d love to see them have some potential for something positive on the horizon, for instance some of the various proposals for a playoff play-in tournament at the end of the season, or some way they could play themselves into a better draft pick. Two-thirds of a season is too long to go without hope.

It sure is, Hank. It sure is.

I’m one of the few people who don’t really thing the lottery system is that bad. How about you? Should they revamp it to fix the “huge problem” of “tanking” that Bill Simmons has made such a popular sentiment among NBA fans? How about a playoff for the 8th seed?

A “Pacers Game Minus Pacers” would probably be pretty sweet. Someone CGI that.

And given the number of non-AP recaps proliferating around the internet, Pacer fans can probably spend all day reading different people’s takes on the opener. The internet keeps it thorough like that.

I can’t say I’ve read them all yet, but it’s hard to believe that anyone can sum up Indy’s painful offense last night better than Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie did.

(it’s like the Hawks had five Deion Sanders’ out there, at times), and it was only the sweet shooting of Earl Watson (you read that right) that kept the Pacers in contention.

The sweet shooting of Earl Watson. I like that. Let’s try that again.

The delicate stylings of Napalm Death.

The cogent musings of Gary Busey.

The rapier wit of Jay Leno.

The definitely not stabbing anyone of O.J. Simpson.

Don’t complain about O.J. Simpson jokes. I learned from the rapier wit of Jay Leno.

When it comes to Pacer/Hawks recaps, I think Dwyer just earned himself a chicken dinner. Here’s the best of the rest for your reading pleasure.

• Cornrows: “Possession of the ball is nine tenths of the loss.”

• Mike Wells: “The Pacers’ supposed new defense was nowhere to be found in the Atlanta metropolitan area”

• Indy Basketball Report: “Indiana finished the game with one steal while Atlanta registered 16″

• John Hollinger: “Indy’s interceptions ruined a superb shooting night”

• Pacers Digest / UncleBuck: “One thing the Hawks aren’t very good at is half court offense, but they seemingly had no problem scoring against the Pacers defense”

• AP: “The game finally turned when Atlanta started cutting off the driving lanes and Johnson got in Granger’s face. Indiana’s star was held to four points in the final period”

• Sekou Smith (ATL): “Horford had a masterful opening night, finishing with 24 points, a game-high 16 rebounds and two blocks as all five Hawks starters scored in double figures.”

• Hoopinion: “Through a little more than three quarters, Jim O’Brien got a lot out of Dahntay Jones and Earl Watson. Then he asked them for more and learned they’d given all they had.”

• Peachtree Hoops (ATL): “Jeff Teague enjoys the game out there. After that steal and dunk, the kid was uncontrollably smiling.”

• Human Highlight Blog: “Granger was in the game he must have been wearing his Cloak of Invisibility, because he found himself wide open a bit too much for someone of his considerable talents.”

Repeat after me: It’s only one game. It’s only one game. It’s only one game.