+/- numbers - how accurate/relevant? (Luis Scola in game vs. Hornets)

I'm not sure why people have a problem with the +/- stat. It is what it is. How many points does your team outscore your opponent when you're on/off the court? That's +/-.

+/-, like ANY boxscore stat is subject to various interpretations. How is this stat actually useful in analysis? That's where all the opinions differ, but don't hate the stat.

 

The problem is the interpretation of the stat. People says if your +/- is negative then your team is better without you. Period. That is the problem.

 

Only an idiot would take away that conclusion from a single game stat.

It's just as idiotic as saying Yao isn't an all star because he only scored 13 points last night.

If your +/- stats are consistently negative over a significant stretch of games, then that's when you make the deduction that you're hurting the team somehow. See: Luther Head.

 

I agree with: "If your +/- stats are consistently negative over a significant stretch of games, then that's when you make the deduction that you're hurting the team somehow."

The problem comes in when a guy has a negative +/- in some games he plays well in and then he has a positive +/- in games he does not do anything. If you avg the numbers, they become meaningless.

 

No, they don't. The numbers don't lie. Having a +/- close to zero does not mean the player is useless or not a good performer. All it says is that the team does not outscore the opponent more when he is on the floor as opposed to when he is off. This is usually where the criticism of how dependent the stat is on the quality of the bench comes in, and that is a valid point to take into consideration. If, for example, Scola had Joey Dorsey coming off the bench behind him instead of Carl Landry, you'd probably see his +/- stats look much better.

Bottom line is, the numbers are generally always correct. The problem, most of the time, is that people don't actually understand what they mean, so they just dismiss them instead as useless. The +/- stat isn't a "who is contributing and who isn't" stat, or a "x player is better than y player" stat. +/- simply says when that player was on the floor, his team outscored the opposition by this much. Once you understand that definition, then you can properly process that information and make an informed deduction about the data.

Here's something to chew on. I haven't looked at this too recently and I can't be bothered to look it up right now, but in terms of PER (total boxscore production), Scola historically gives up on average about as much as he produces. He has been playing better lately though, so I don't know how much that has changed.

 

STATS are deceiving right? However winning is not.....next pissing contest please.

 

This and the rest of your post says absolutely nothing.
What the heck does it mean? What does the number mean to you? Don't repeat that it means when the player is on the floor, their team outscores or does not outscore the opponent, that is just repeating the definition.

 

So you want to know what the number means, but you don't want the definition?

What does PPG mean to you? And don't say anything about the player scoring so many points in the game -- that's just repeating the definition.

 

I know the def. If you stop there, it means nothing.

The PPG's meaning is very clear. If your PPG is 15, it means if the coach put u in for the same amount of minutes, he can expect to get about 15pts from you. Some guys might score from 13-17, you then say he is a consistent player. If a guy scores score 10-20, you say he runs hot and cold sometimes. More often than not, if you are not a consistent player, you don't normally have the trust of the coach to play you that same minutes per game. The PPG is black and white, even when it depends on other things.

With the +/-, let's say your number is +5. It does not mean the next game, you team will outscore the opp by 5 when u play. It does not mean your team will outscore the opp by 2 one game and 8 the next either. There are tons of other things that affect it. It might very well be effected by that darn teammate of yours who spent the previous night clubbing or ***** like that.

 

So you don't like +/- because its less consistent game to game? I can't argue with that.

I think stats like PPG are much more specific in what they're capturing on the floor, and they're more consistent. A stat like +/- is much more fuzzy, but it captures more -- everything a player might do to help or hurt the team is in some way reflected in it. It's just hard to tease that information out of it for a single game, unless it's something extreme. For example, if a particular player doesn't do much at all in the boxscore, but his +/- is far and away the best on the team (like, say, a +20 in 13 minutes of work) then that is kind of interesting. It tells me that the player might have been doing something else that wasn't captured in the boxscore to really help his team win. What that is, its hard to say. But if I rewatch the game, I might pay a little more attention to what he's doing off the ball or on defense. If its something like a -4 in 20 minutes, its hard to learn anything from that.

Frankly, I think individual +/- in one game is much less revealing than lineup +/-. Whatever ... it's just one extra column on the boxscore. I'm of the opinion that more information, as long as its factual, doesn't hurt.