Wow, you're an idiot. Have you stopped and considered that these aren't great players, or if they're known for defense are also offensive liabilities? Michael Finley does not fit well on the Spurs, Bowen is 36 years old, has been getting burned regularly recently, and has zero offense. Jerry Stackhouse is a decent bench scorer but he doesn't alter games, and the other players you listed for the Mavs are 100% scrubs. For the Suns, outside of Bell, you listed three scrubs. Diaw had one good season but has since been absolutely terrible, and nothing more needs to be said about Skinner or Piatkowski. Bell is a decent player but he also limits the Suns offense and is not the greatest defender in the world on this Suns team, where help defense is at a minimum. I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not, but the stats you listed reflect very accurately what actually happens on the court, so saying +/- is worthless is laughable. To everyone else: Look up and down the long list that the guy above me posted. Adjusted +/- is extremely close to a player's relative value to his team, and it isn't surprising that the guys at the top of the plus minus stat are coach's darlings. People wonder why Mike James has been bounced around the league even though he is a decent scorer, but all you have to do is look at his plus minus to see why. He scores, but he doesn't do everything else you need to win a basketball game.
A great case study of why the +/- is worthless is last nights game. Rafer brought the ball up, passed it to Tmac at the elbow and Tmac turned and shot. Assist to Rafer (cough cough) and the +/- goes up for all on the floor. When in reality it was all Tmac getting hot. DD
Wow...your an Idiot. Are you realizing that according to that stat Jaque Vaughn is a more valuable commodity and has a better +/- then Tony Parker? Yeah that stat is useless. Clutch is right, you can ride the wave of better players. Is anyone going to tell me that Rondo's stats aren't inflated playing with Garnett/Pierce/Allen ? Alstons is a terrible player who benefits from playing with TMac and Yao. Nuff said.
Exactly. If people think +/- means how good a player is overall vs another player, then you are misusing the stat. What +/- is good for, especially this early in the season, is to reflect that certain combo of players (i.e. the starters) have generally done better than others (i.e. the suppsedly beefed-up bench). When the starters came out of the game, the bench has not been great-- similar to last year's story despite the supposed additional scoring punches and talent that the team added. Of course, guys like Rafer and Chuck benefited from playing with McGrady and Yao more than the bench guys do, but isn't the whole point of adding James, Bonzi, Scola, etc to the roster/rotation to prevent struggles and p rovide a spark when one or both of the stars are sitting? Perhaps we should not expect the team to play as well when the stars are out of the game, but shouldn't we at least expect the bench keep the scoring margin where they were, or at least not lose too much of the margin? So far, they just haven't done that yet. Now, does that mean these guys won't do better? No, it just means that so far, they have not done better. If you think +/- is worthless because it doesn't tell you player X is better than player Y, it is you who is worthless.
I did, he looks awful out there. I think we should consider replacing him in the rotation. He is not productive out there at all. Everyone puts the blame on Rafer but I believe they both deserve blame. Francis should start taking some of James minutes since he is looking to get everyone involved and he seems to provide a spark. If James shot is not falling he is useless, so yes he has been useless all season except the first two games.
The Mike James that played in Minnetsota, and the Mike James that we have now, is not the same player as the one on this team in 2004-2005, who went on to score 20 ppg efficiently in Toronto. Mike James was on an upward trend when this team traded him for Rafer. He was by far the better player, then. Everyone, including his supporters (and I was one two seasons ago) knew that he wasn't a good playmaker. He was a scorer, and he did that very, very well. Now his shooting touch is gone, so he's pretty useless.
The problem is that you can not compare apples to apples. For instance if 75% of Alston's minutes are with Yao and Tmac, and you are comparing him to Francis who has 25% of his minutes with both, it will sku the stats significantly. It is a pretty much worthless measuring stick when comparing players, but interesting when comparing combos of players (but to collect data on that it takes a LOT of games). DD
Yep, how much you outscore your opponent is a worthless stat. It has nothing to do with winning basketball games. Michael Finley has been a mediocre player for several years now. Bowen's age is catching up to him. Please don't tell me you were surprised about any of these. Jerry Stackhouse doesn't play defense at all, and Bass, Dampier, and Hassell are all below average players. Boris Diaw doesn't fit in the Suns game anymore, so no surprise there. Brian Skinner and Eric Piatkowski are below average players, so no surprise there. Raja Bell has shot 37% on 91 shots in his 9 games this season. That's a horrible slump. I'd bet that when he starts playing better, his +/- comes up with it. Remember, on an average team, an average player should have a +/- of about 0. Being on a good team will bring players up, being on a bad team will drag players down, but it's still a good measure of total contribution to the game.
Gater is not an idiot. He writes intelligent posts. But he is very against any form of what he perceives to be "moneyball" which is, simply put, using any statistical analysis to evaluate players. He is "old school," so to speak, believing using your naked eyes to see how good a player is. Such stubborn aversion of statistics blinds him from being objective sometimes. IMO, uncritically using stats is misguided. But insisting any stats as "worthless" is equally misguided.
He also has a strong bias against any players who don't create their own scoring opportunities. So much so, that he belittles the other things that they bring to the game. I like reading GATER's posts, they're generally well-thought out, and he certainly gets his point across. But he's probably the most stubborn of all the intelligent posters on the board.
What an unbelievable surprise! The posters who think the +/- is garbage just so happen to be the Battier/Hayes/Alston haters. What an amazing coincidence!
