Montrezl Harrell, Throwback Big Man

Wizards big man Montrezl Harrell Photo by Avi Gerver/NBAE via Getty Images The Statistical Doppelgänger Machine works by comparing a player’s performance across 14 different categories that include age, playing time, pace-neutral box score stats and scores from my PPA metric. All that’s rolled up into a single score that (in theory) provides a list of NBA players since 1977-78 with similar production at a similar age.

The idea is to find players of about-the-same quality who produce in similar ways. Because the game has evolved over the years, the comps tend to come from the same general area. There are exceptions, of course, but few players have quite as many exceptions as Washington’s new…