For all intents and purposes, the regular season ended tonight, as we were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. With the rest of the season basically relegated to garbage and / or spoiler time, I thought that this might be a good time to select our MVP.

My criteria is quite unscientific. I looked at each game from the beginning of the season through tonight, and awarded each player (per game) in the following manner:
1 pt. for every point scored, rebound, assist, block and steal.
-1 point for every shot and turnover.

Based on these numbers, eight different players wound up being the best player for the night during the season:

8. Spencer Hawes did it twice.
   
7. Mikki Moore did it four times.
   
6. Beno Udrih did it five times.
   
5. Francisco Garcia did it six times.
   
4. John Salmons did it ten times.
   
3. Ron Artest did it ten times.
   
2. Kevin Martin did it thirteen times.
   
1. Brad Miller did it twenty times.

Now, there is a lot here that is not covered, such as how the opposing player did, + / -, awarding more for wins as opposed to losses (for example, Hawes was the leader in the blowout loss in Miami and the loss in Memphis), etc.

However, having said that, Brad Miller easily wins this competition. I must admit, I did this exercise to determine whether Artest or Martin was the MVK. It didn't dawn on me that it would be Brad. But from the beginning of December through the end of Frebruary he was the top player 19 times. Of course, had Artest and Martin not been hurt they probably would have cut into that number. But they were hurt. And as a result Brad was our best player the highest number of times.

Brad Miller, the 2007-08 MVP for your Sacramento Kings.

Begin discussion, and poll below.

The past couple of days there has been a rather spirited discussion regarding Francisco Garcia. What's his worth, value, and is he good to his mother?

I was a little startled and amazed to find that there even was an anti-Garcia camp, considering that he has been very productive (and hit some big shots) for very little money. Now I like Cisco, so I thought there was a chance that my opinion of him might be skewed.

I set forth to compare Francisco Garcia to other players in the league in his price range, as one of the first factors in determining value is knowing the cost factor. So the first criteria is that the player must be making less than $2 million a year (El Flaco will earn $1.2 million this year).

Next, the player must score at least 10 points a game or grab at least 5 boards a game or hand out at least 4 assists a game. This eliminates a couple of reasonably decent players like Hakim Warrick, Jarrett Jack and Jordan Farmar.

Also, I did not figure per 40 as I was interested in their actual contributions. My post, my rules.

I wound up finding 17 players. Here are 11-17 with their high points (in no particular order):

Jason Maxiell ($1.1M, 5.3 reb., 1.2 blk.), Linas Kleiza ($1.0M, 11.7 pt.), Josh Boone ($1.1M, 6.9 reb.), Sean Williams ($1.4M, 5.4 reb., 1.9 blk.), Al Thornton ($1.7M, 10.9 pt.), Rashad McCants ($1.8M, 14.5 pt.) and Paul Millsap ($700K, 5.8 reb.).

And now the top 10:

10 - Ronnie Brewer  Brewer averages 11.8 pts. and adds 1.9 steals for $1.7M.

9 - Francisco Garcia  12.6 pts. and 1.1 stls. for only $1.2M.

8 - Jameer Nelson  11.2 pts. and 5.6 asts., barely squeaking into the field at $1.961M.

7 - Beno Udrih  12.1 pts and 1 stl. for $760K.

6 - Grant Hill  Grant has already made his millions, so he signed with a contender for only $1.8M and contributes 14.8 pts. He is also at 4.9 reb., 3.2 ast., .9 stl., .8 blk.

5 - David Lee  10.3 pts. and 8.3 rebs. for the ridiculously low price of $1M. That's why we love him and that's why we can't have him.

4 - Rajon Rondo  Castigated early in the season as the reason Boston would falter, Rondo has responded with 10.7 pts., 4.7 asts. and 1.7 stls. per game, more than earning his $1.4M paycheck.

3 - Danny Granger  Maybe the most unheralded of the young up and comers, Granger has quietly put together 18 pts., 5.7 rebs., 1.9 stls. and 1.1 blks. He will make $1.5M this year.

2 - Kevin Martin  Yes, he has his payday, which kicks in next year. But look what you're getting this year for $1.8M. 23.1 pts., 1.2 stls. The 4.6 boards? Not bad for a 2 guard. Does he need to improve in some areas to earn the jing next year? Yes. But for 2007-08 he is a feakin' cash register.

1 - Monta Ellis  This does not mean that I like Ellis better than Martin. But Monta is giving the Warriors 18.9 pts. and 1.3 stls. His rebs. are close to Martin and his assists better, but the main difference is the salary - $700,000!!! He won't be this kind of value next year, but right now he is the reigning champ of value in the NBA.

The frightening result of this exercise? Not only is Garcia a great value, so are Udrih and Martin. I'm sure that if you ran value for $7-9M players that Artest would rate high, too. How can a team with this much value not make the playoffs? The answer lies at cower forward, where we have almost $21 million (that's Tim Duncan or KG money!) tied up in The Landlord (S.Williams), The Landfill (K9(woof!)), The Landlocked ('Reef), The Land With No Hands (VdM), The Land Swap (Lo.Wright), and the Land-Ho's (the late great 3-Wil and Daryl Watkins). Never have so many been paid so much to do so little.

Last summer, we took the assumption Kevin Martin would see a big jump in usage this season and forecasted how that might go. (We were right, by the way: Martin's usage has jumped from 20.8 last season to 23.7 in his 600 minutes this year.) We looked at the bump years for Reggie Miller (1989-90) and Michael Red (2003-04) -- Miller took his usage bump very well, Redd lost a bunch of efficiency.

How has Martin done? Here are the stats for all three players in the mini-study.

Two factors have made Martin less efficient this year: He's taking fewer threes, and his two-point shooting is bad. He's shooting at a better clip than ever from deep; while he takes more of his shots from behind the arc than either Miller or Redd did at this point in their careers, he could do to take more. Why hasn't he? And why have his free throws shot up so much? Well, about a third of his season-to-date was played without a point guard. Martin was forced to create his own offense. It's something he can obviously do -- only five two-guards have a better TS% this year, only three of those play starter level minutes, and none approach Martin's usage rate. But being forced to create offense takes away a major weapon for sharpshooters -- the assisted three-pointer. In 2006-07, 60% of Martin's made jumpers were assisted. This year, 51% of Martin's made jumpers are assisted. (This is just all jumpers -- I'd assume the effect is magnified were you to have the data on just threes.) It's a fair difference, and it's simply easier to get off a three off a draw or screen than when you're forced into dribbling on the perimeter.

Of course, the increased creation has been a boon to Kevin's free throw numbers -- and those numbers have teamed up with the accurate three-ball shooting to keep that TS% high. (Not seen in the numbers above: His rebounding has been great. That's the cause -- along with perhaps his steals -- which keeps his PER above Miller's 89-90 figure.)

I think we'll take that -- Martin's lost some efficiency with the bigger load, but remains among the most efficient scoring guards in the league. (Chauncey Billups, Steve Nash and Deron Williams are all in the conversation; none score to the level Martin does. Manu Ginobili's scoring volume is similar, his efficiency slightly lower.) We have a clear All-Star on our hands (assuming he keeps it up). Well worth the investment.

Choose your weapon.

Relive the excitement.

We've chalked up a hundred things as factors to Mike Bibby's down year: A lingering injury; Eric Musselman; the loss of Rick Adelman; the sporadic presence of Brad Miller; the ascension of Kevin Martin; Ron Artest; age; David Stern's microfiber fetish; bullheaded stubbornness. At least one of these has something to do with it -- but we cannot prove any of those factors (unless someone comes up with either a wrist x-ray or footage of Mike Bibby confessing to his pastor he wants nothing more than Musselman to get canned).

But we know Mike Bibby's game has changed, we can see it. And we can prove how he's changed as a player.

These graphs tell part of the story. Bibby has become more reliant on threes the past two years. The top graph shows the breakdown of Mike's shooting possessions. The bulk of his shots have traditionally been twos, though his reliance on threes has increased quite a bit recently, while the frequency with which he draws fouls has remained rather consistent. That extra reliance on threes hasn't been due to a sudden surge in his efficiency from that range; Bibby's three-point shooting percentage has trailed off a bit since the championship contention years. His two-point shooting and really his overall shooting performance has remained fairly consistent; his effective field goal percentage has been between .478 and .514 every year save his rookie campaign. He's really a very consistent player year-to-year...

...which doesn't explain the major change in his game. This does.

Bibby's assist rate has absolutely plummeted. Even if you ignore the start of his career, when he was much more a distributor than a scorer -- he's no longer really a point guard. Look at 2001-02, his first season in Sacramento. Both his assist and turnover rates sunk sharply. Why? On a team with so many passers (from Doug Christie on up to Chris Webber and Vlade Divac), he wasn't asked to be a typical playmaking point guard. It's common sense, right? So it would be common sense to assume his assist (and even turnover) rate would bounce back up when the team turned back into a more traditional setup, with an ironhands power forward (any one of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Corliss Williamson and the namesake Kenny Thomas) and a scoring shooting guard (Bonzi Wells, Kevin Martin). But that never happened.

In fact, his assist rate got even worse, which seems unexplainable. We know Bibby can be a point guard -- even on the well-passing Kings teams of 01-02 through 04-05, Mike put up assist rates well north of 20 (24.7 in 2004-05). You'd think when the team again needs a big-time distributor to help Brad Miller with playmaking duties, Bibby would step up. Nope. Instead, he shot the ball more than ever.

Sure, the Kings needed him to look for his shot with Peja Stojakovic gone. But to the point of ignoring his positional duties? And these numbers remove the blame from Musselman, Artest and Martin -- the assist rate was actually worse in 2005-06 than 2006-07. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but it sure looked last season like Bibby was on a one-player team out there, not trying to set up his running mates at all. The statistics show our brains weren't tricking us -- Bibby has had one of the worst assist rates among all point guards the last two years. He's still an above-average player, but he's a point guard in name only. A PGINO, if you will.

This team needs a distributor. Mike Bibby can do it. Will he? Probably not. And that sucks.

ESPN.com's John Hollinger projects player stats every summer. He used to do it in the epic Basketball Prospectus; when ESPN bought up his talent, they decided to save trees and bring the whole kit online. Well, it looks like next week will see Hollinger's offseason baby unleased, because his individual PER projections seems to be done.

The full player profiles for most players have not been updated as of yet, but the rankings are up to date. After some browsing, I have some surprising news: Hollinger thinks Kevin Martin and Ron Artest will regress from last year's performance, and he projects Mike Bibby to not improve from the worst season of his career.

Martin finished 2006-07 with a PER of 20.12; Hollinger projects a PER of 18.99 next season. 20+ is All-Star level; 19 is very good but not elite. For what it's worth, Hollinger projected Martin at 15.76 last summer... so if Martin outplays his projection by 4.5 PER again, we have an all-NBA guy on our hands. (Insert smiley emoticon to insinuate cheekiness.)

Artest overshot his projection last season, as well. Hollinger projects a fall towards average, predicting a 16.93 PER for Ron-Ron (who finished with a PER of 18.59 last season). Statistically, last year was the best of Artest's career. Can he keep the shooting percentages up? That will decide how good Ron-Ron (and probably the Kings) are this year.

Hollinger slots Mike Bibby as the #14 point guard in the league. Francisco Garcia, John Salmons, Brad Miller and Kenny Thomas are projected to remain below-average; Mikki Moore is supposed to devolve rapidly. According to Hollinger's projections, the only King who will have a meaningfully better season is... 30-year-old Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who actually slides into 'above-average' territory. Cheers to that, I guess.

While we're talking about PER, you should check out a conversation happening on the merits of Hollinger's favorite stat as well as APBRmetrics as a whole. Start with Carter Blanchard's post at Plissken at the Buzzer, and follow with my response at Ballhype, if you're interested.

Brad Miller is not a good defender. I think we all accept that as fact (if not as a fact of life). Over the last two years, he has become slow, he has lost all lift in his legs, and he frankly has little business even trying to guard the better bigs in the West. His rebounding has become inexcusable for a man his size. His lack of blocks, while not surprising, is a constant drag on the team's overall defensive efforts. You'd be pressed hard to find another point guard/center combination unable to passably guard a pick-and-roll -- Mike Bibby is too slow lazy ineffectual to get over the screen, and Miller could make the right decision every time and still not make a difference due to his lack of athleticism.

So we accept all of this. Then how do we square with the fact the team was much, much better on defense when Miller was in the game?

When Miller was on the court last season, the team's defensive efficiency was 106.4 -- which is roughly league average. When he was not on the floor? The team's defensive efficiency was 111.2, an extremely terrible mark. When Brad played, the team had 48.9% rebounding rate. It was worse when he was gone, 47.5%. The Kings also blocked more opponent shots when Miller was present (4%) versus when he was not (3%).

All this squares to give Miller the best on/off on the team. (Ron Artest shares the honors -- both had a net on/off of +7.4. Maurice Taylor's figure was higher, but he barely played.) On/off tells us about a player's impact on the game beyond scoring and rebounding... but it also includes noise regarding both the player's substitute and his competition. This noise is where our answer about Miller's quizzical import lays.

Miller played 44% of the team's minutes at center. Shareef Abdur-Rahim, of course, took over center duties during Miller's injuries, and logged 33% of the team's center minutes. Corliss Williamson (?!) logged 8%, and Justin Williams had 7%. Others divvied up the rest.

About two-thirds of Reef's minutes were at center. Overall, the team with Reef on the court had a defensive efficiency of... 110.7. Ouch. Without him, it was 107.3. Again: We know Miller is not a good defender. We suspect Reef is also not good, but not god-awful... as a power forward. Defending centers? He's god-awful. I repeat: The team's defensive efficiency with Miller on the court was 4 points per 100 possessions better than with Reef on the court. Kind-of astounding, isn't it?

(Note: Only 25% of Reef's total minutes came with Miller on the floor. The team was actually decent on defense in that time -- not great, but decent.)

So why does any of this matter? Because the team has height now. We know Miller sucks on defense, and we know his replacements last season were active but small players. (Reef is 6'9.) But the team played better defense with the tall, crappy guy than the short, OK guy. Enter a few new 'tall, OK guys' -- Mikki Moore and Spencer Hawes. Moore is said to be an active defender, certainly not a shotblocker of note or a deft rebounder. But he's 6'11 with long arms. Shawes likewise won't be great shakes at a defensive pivot. But he's big, Lord is he big. And I think he'd beat Brad in a footrace. Of course, Justin Williams is also present... something that wasn't the case during Miller's early season injury a year ago. Williams is not pleasant to watch working the screen-roll, but his ecstatic shotblocking makes up for it in spades (or at least clubs).

Signing up tall dudes isn't the answer, of course. But when the other option is to go super small (with these non-Ben Wallace players at least), height is the better option. With Miller back and legitimate center options in place, the team defense could actually improve and maybe slip into the top half of the league. (It was 22 out of 30 last year.) The team offense was 15th of 30 last season, perfectly average. We all fret 60 losses like a plague, trying to cure our cries with dreams of Derrick Rose. But playing for the ping pong balls doesn't work. Let this give us hope...

WE CAN BE A PERFECTLY AVERAGE TEAM THIS YEAR!

Go Kings.

As louismg noted this morning, the Kings have moved their focus to backup point guard. Mike Wilks will reportedly get an audition. If he's lucky, he'll get the Jason Hart Memorial Seventh-String Point Guard Locker.

Wilks is a 28-year-old journeyman, late of Seattle's parade of flawed ones (with noted compatriates Luke Ridnour and Earl Watson). Wilks played a similar number of minutes as Ronnie Price did this past season, and Mike's career high for minutes was barely more.

A comparison, if you will. (All statistics via basketball-reference.)

We know Price can bring it defensively, though. Sadly, I haven't seen enough Mike Wilks over the years to cast aspersion or compliment on his oppositionary mettle. I've sent out feelers to those whom would know, though I can't imagine tomes will come down, given the player's lack of long-term residence before any set of eyes.

Honestly, barring a Bibby trade which does not return a starting level point guard, this player -- be it Wilks or some other -- will not see much playing time at all. It was a joke above, the locker of the 'Seventh-String Point Guard.' But honestly: Mike Bibby, John Salmons, Francisco Garcia, Quincy Douby, Ron Artest. All of those men, and possibly Kevin Martin as well, will perform the point guard in name or spirit before he who is hired this week or soon. Geoff Petrie adores flexibility, and due to this fetish interest has assembled a fairly versatile backcourt. The benefit, one which was invisible a season ago, comes in not really needing to find a capable backup point guard. It's a situation much different from, say, the Lakers or the Warriors, both of whom desparately need systemic point guards despite their odd-eyed offensive programs. Sacramento will apparently host a traditional scheme, but thanks to the roster has no need for an Eric Snow or Tyronn Lue. Again, it's a slight benefit... but one nonetheless. (Small victories, friends.)

All said, this dismissal could be of great value to Ronnie Price. He has growth to come, and it would be stunted in a repeated role as occasional murderer of Carlos Boozer. He needs minutes -- real game minutes, not hours driving against Douby in the practice gym -- to hone his NBA point guard skills. He's a guy who can, and should, hang in domestically -- a guy who could, interestingly enough, end up the next Mike Wilks. It's not a terrible existence, hundreds of thousands of dollars to play basketball until you're 30. Moving sucks, and inconsistent job duties suck, too. But it's a job, and for most of us, jobs suck. Waving a towel in the shrinking Arco Arena won't allow that lucrative albeit sucky job to happen; spelling, say, Jameer Nelson or Tony Parker will.

Here are the final statistics.

Nonetheless, things that jump out:

• Justin Williams, obviously, can rebound. I'll beat that drum til it breaks. You want to improve your rebounding? Play Justin Williams.
• Nik Caner-Medley can shoot. He played in Germany last season, and it's clear he wants a shot in the League. I'd expect a training camp invite for him, based on his presence and large number of minutes in Vegas.
• We could have a real battle in training camp between Mustafa Shakur and Pooh Jeter.

This thought exercise is as much for my own personal prejudices as it is for your consumption.

Drew Gooden overtook Shareef Abdur-Rahim as the best per-minute scorer of the bunch this season. Gooden has been the best rebounder of the group for three seasons. Gooden is statistically the best all-around player, and his peak several years ago is slightly lower than Shareef's early 20s peak.

The numbers hidden in the above survey:

Shareef turns 31 on December 11.
Kenny turns 30 on July 25.

Gooden turns 26 on September 24.

Everything we know about aging in basketball says the performance of Shareef and Kenny will decline, all other things being equal. Gooden may still improve, Gooden may decline... but we are fairly certain Shareef and Kenny will decline.

Judging by the numbers, Gooden is a good bet to perform better than both Shareef and Kenny over the next two years. (Gooden's contract runs two more years; both Shareef and Kenny's contracts run for three more years.)

Of course, this trade isn't Drew Gooden for Kenny Thomas or Drew Gooden for Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The answer in either one would be incredibly obvious. The question is this: Is the upgrade for two seasons worth giving up Mike Bibby's production?

This is where a whole host of other factors comes in. What's the other piece Sacramento will get back? Who plays point guard? What will be the total cap dollars savings of the move? How many minutes will Justin Williams have taken away? Will you be able to move either Kenny or Shareef? How does this affect the 2009 timeline? We can't even begin talking about those factors. All we can rationally measure right now is what we've done above -- how much better will Gooden be than Shareef and Kenny? Even that analysis relies on a whole lot more than what we've looked at -- there's no telling what kind of rebound numbers Gooden will get on this statistically odd team, or whether he's usage rate adjustment will affect his shooting percentages and scoring production.

It's clear Gooden is an upgrade. At this point, I don't think the upgrade is large enough to ship out Bibby. In my opinion, there needs to be a serious asset in addition to Drew coming back.

I have a feeling we'll know soon.