We'll have to agree to disagree then. His stats that year were sick good. I'd love to see you list more than 20 players who had a better season than that at age 24 or earlier.

do it after this draft is over to avoid giving away undrafted players please.

plenty of good choices to pair with Shaq

based on the statement I'm pretty sure who it is

I think there are maybe 20 or so OMG incredible players in the draft. They all went in the first round.

24 guys eligible had a higher PER in a single season then Penny (not a perfect stat, but its good enough to use). Hill was the only one out of those 24 who had a career derailed by injuries like Penny.

I'm not even going to count how many guys had a higher PER than Penny's 2nd best season. What in the world makes you think that we should expect him to be the same player he was in that insane season throughout his career? And thats completely ignoring the fact that he is HUGE injury risk.

will agree with you here, although I will note that Hardaway was much more a bulk scorer than those two. They would often post Hardaway up or just clear out for him and let him go one-on-one. This obviously lowers one's efficiency numbers, and the fact that Hardaway still had great TS% is whats so amazing to me. Overall though, as I said, I agree.

don't forget about GP for point guards with great d and ability to score in bulk.

omg - Im not a big cereal guy - but I totally forgot how good Lucky Charms was.

marshmellowy goodness.

Anyway - I think a lot of people are forgetting the whole concept of this draft....and how these guys are going to be restarting their career from their prime on. Its not a certainty that these guys who have been injury riddled throughout their careers will have the same problem....especially if it stemmed from one freak injury.

Im not naming names - and im not getting specific - im just stating whats been stated over and over again in this thread regarding the concept.

qft it's amazing how many "smart" people can be so confused....or maybe they aren't smart to begin with? lols sorry low blow.

Stated over and over again by the people who took injury prone guys.

injury prone is very different than a freak injury.

The wiki quote that you mention:

"He started out the season at the shooting guard position while he learned the point guard position from veteran Player X. By mid-season he took over point guard duties from Player X."

That was his rookie year. The next year this was the staring lineup for the Magic:

Shaq
Penny
HoGrant
Undrafted 6'6" guy who is listed as forward/guard and has averaged 3.0 assists in his career and never more than 4.4 in any season
Undrafted 6'8" guy who is listed as forward and has averaged 1.0 assists for his career and never more than 2.8

If Penny wasn't the starting PG there, then I don't know who was.

shark,

A) quit acting in charge.

B) the problem is a "freak injury" definition. Sure, maybe Grant Hill's ankle was sorta freakish, but a THREE YEAR RECOVERY most definitely is not.

Same goes for Penny (sorta: like I said, reports state he did not have a rigorous offseason conditioning program, didn't lift weights much, which is a must to keep yourself in top physical shape and play like he did). Microfracture can be sorta freakish. Being sidelined the rest of your career and constantly re-injuring it is not freakish.

Penny blew out his knee in 97-98, why did he miss 23 games the year before?

As has been said, PER overrates bulk scorers and underrates efficient scorers. It also doesn't take defense into account.

hes not efficient. The qualifications were:

1. PG
2. Good at defense
3. Efficient scorer
4. Bulk scorer

5. Made of glass

Yea - I wish I could continuously make an argument for Mchale by quoting Barkley as my main point...you sir are brilliant.

Kid, there is no way in hell im saying Grant Hill was just one freak injury away from having a healthy career.

Soooo lets just ignore the fact that PER overrates bulk scorers, while being sad face over the fact it underrated efficiency.

While we are at it, lets just ignore the fact he only had one great season and never got hurt! Best pick ever Assani!

Before recently, everyone who had microfracture surgery was pretty much never the same player(with maybe very few exceptions).

Theres no way that Penny didn't recover from microfracture surgery because he was injury prone. His need for microfracture surgery may have been because he was injury prone for sure, but you can't bash him for not recovering when pretty much nobody did back then.

But today's surgery is much more advanced, especially regarding microfracture. You do realize that this surgery was only invented in the late 80s/early 90s, right? So when Penny had it, it was still a very new thing. Eleven more years of research and development is a huge huge thing.

How about the fact that Penny's production slipped big time once Shaq left? How about the 23 games he missed the year before he blew out his knee?

I'm so confused right now. I said: "PER overrates bulk scorers and underrates efficient scorers." Hell you even bolded that part of my statement. Now you're claiming that I'm ignoring that it overrates bulk scorers. How am I ignoring something that I just mentioned!!

My point was that I'd be willing to bet that several of those players on your list were huge bulk scorers and thats why they're above Penny. Why don't you just list the players and their seasons and we can go in depth into each of them?

Your sarcasm is obnoxious and detracts from our debate imo.

I am smarter than you that's for sure (sorry just had to make it a dick waving contest).

I think those who aren't super athletic can easily recover from Microfracture. Amare is the exception but Kidd who is not super athletic anymore was less effected than guys like Penny, Houston, Webber, etc which basically f-ed their careers.