LQOTD: What does +/- tell us?

Our defense is non-existent. Whether D12 is on the floor or not. And since he's not the same athletic freak he was before the injury, he hasn't been that effective offensively.

JGC wrote:

Chillbongo wrote:So Kobe & MWP playing among the best on our team this year.....and them having the highest +/- doesn't tell us anything?

Pau's +/- stems from his assists & facilitating. Do you guys watch basketball? You know that a player's impact on the court can be made outside of points right?

Do you really think Pau has more on-court impact than Nash and Dwight though?

I'm not saying it's the end-all-be-all stat that determines who is effective & not.

Just saying there is some truth to it....MWP & Kobe have been our most consistent offensive production this year....they also have the highest +/-. Just saying it's not an anomaly

Chillbongo wrote:

JGC wrote:

Chillbongo wrote:So Kobe & MWP playing among the best on our team this year.....and them having the highest +/- doesn't tell us anything?

Pau's +/- stems from his assists & facilitating. Do you guys watch basketball? You know that a player's impact on the court can be made outside of points right?

Do you really think Pau has more on-court impact than Nash and Dwight though?

I'm not saying it's the end-all-be-all stat that determines who is effective & not.

Just saying there is some truth to it....MWP & Kobe have been our most consistent offensive production this year....they also have the highest +/-. Just saying it's not an anomaly

There may very well be truth to it, but I'm not sure how one can know WHEN it is truth and when it is not. I know you think it is not an anomaly with Kobe and MWP, but how do you KNOW it's not an anomaly in their cases? You don't.

So it's basically useless. It's only real value is in being selectively used when it is convenient to support some other argument.

Like "I like Player A and player A has a nice +/- therefore Player A is good". And then when it doesn't work, "I like Player A but player A doesn't have a nice +/- therefore Player A is still good and +/- is not the be-all end-all"

I mean........you could make that argument for PPG. Iverson averaged 30+ PPG.....on like 30 shots a night.

Does that mean he's effective? Efficient? How do I KNOW he's not effective just looking at PPG?

No stat is 100% conclusive...it's a certain filter through which to analyze production.

Nash has been the leader of +/- since he came back from injury... pretty consistently. I am fairly certain his +/- is better than that.

But damn... look at this unit on offense

Nash-Meeks-Kobe-MWP-Dwight - 1.41 Offense... that's 141 points for every 100 possessions.

And only 1.00 on Defense... that's really good.

That BLOWS away every other team in the league... small sample size, sure, but that's clearly the lineup should be starting.

For me the number means less and less the further down the "food chain" a particular player is. If your best player has an aggregate ± in the negative it's not going well for the team..... WTS if Ebanks has a +15 it probably says little about his contributions.

Those numbers are very interesting to me.... not in the numbers themselves but in the delta of the numbers themselves. Dwight's number is considerably less than the other starters.....which would lead me to believe that when he is playing with the bench or a couple starters not named Kobe or MWP that group is not holding their own against the competition.

Chillbongo wrote::man10: I mean........you could make that argument for PPG. Iverson averaged 30+ PPG.....on like 30 shots a night.

Does that mean he's effective? Efficient? How do I KNOW he's not effective just looking at PPG?

No stat is 100% conclusive...it's a certain filter through which to analyze production.

That's exactly what I said earlier about PPG. Most stats are useless in a vacuum. So what does +/- tell us? Not much. It doesn't tell us much on its own.

PPG is slightly different. It does tell you something. It tells you how many points on average a player scores per game that he plays. And that's it. Nothing more.

+/- is even worse because if say, the 5 starters played all 48 mins and one guy scored all the points, then all the players would have the same +/- so it doesn't really tell you anything

I don't really like to put too much stock in stats because they can be miss leading based on what a coach is asking certain personnel groups to do at any given time within games.

but could it mean that MDA is miss using yet another big? say it ain't so .....

Howard's not being able to use his explosiveness on command has been part of his issue but he's not exactly being used in his most effective way which is as face up type of big........ that is where he's had most of his offensive success outside of hustle points....not with his back to the basket for his touches. Gasol has more game with his back to the basket than Howard..... and can pass better out of the post better than Howard as well....... Howard is just not really a polished big in that manner and we don't have the shooters around him to allow him to compensate for it with his athletic face up game.

I still contest we need a system with off ball movement using screens with our bigs with the idea of wearing down smaller teams with our size while creating shots for our less athletic players more in the mid-range...... it would go a long way in opening things up and getting the bigs involved and also slowing down the other teams transition game........

I think the high turnover rate and perimeter friendly shot selection goes a long way to compounding what is a very average at best defense once set..... it's really poor when they just give up soooo many transition hoops to go along with it.... makes these type of numbers deceiving I think.

JGC wrote:

Chillbongo wrote::man10: I mean........you could make that argument for PPG. Iverson averaged 30+ PPG.....on like 30 shots a night.

Does that mean he's effective? Efficient? How do I KNOW he's not effective just looking at PPG?

No stat is 100% conclusive...it's a certain filter through which to analyze production.

That's exactly what I said earlier about PPG. Most stats are useless in a vacuum. So what does +/- tell us? Not much. It doesn't tell us much on its own.

PPG is slightly different. It does tell you something. It tells you how many points on average a player scores per game that he plays. And that's it. Nothing more.

+/- is even worse because if say, the 5 starters played all 48 mins and one guy scored all the points, then all the players would have the same +/- so it doesn't really tell you anything

Well I agree that +/- can be misleading by the reasoning you provided.....but how is ppg any better?

If a player averages 50 ppg , but takes all the shots, it really doesn't tell you anything (other than dudes teammates suck & he's a chucker).