How did I come up with the records? The Hollinger analysis on the ESPN Trade Machine uses a combination of PER and other factors. I thought it would be interesting to regress the total PER of a team's top 8 (by minutes played) against their regular season record for the last 3 years and see how strong of an indicator PER is. I thought about using a weighted-average PER as PER is a per-play effectiveness stat and for many players decrease as they play more minutes, but decided that this effect should be relatively uniform across the league (i.e. each team has players that play great for <= 20 minutes a game). Also, I ran out of time.
PER is the average of the team's top 8 players by minutes played. Color codes indicate ranking for that particular year.