Just read the background on adjusted plus minus. The standard deviations on them are freaking huge. And this would especially be true with the Rocket, since by far the most minutes are spent with the 5 starters. I'd take any adjusted plus-minus with a huge grain of salt. I don't know about you, but I personally prefer comparing players rather than comparing their backups. I'm not sure why when comparing Lowry and Martin, for example, that you'd actually be comparing Courtney Lee and Aaron Brooks. Seems kind of whack, IMHO.
It has nothing to do with "most time spent with starters" you could say that about every starter in the league. The problems come into play when you don't have varied enough lineups. Lowry plays with everyone on the Rockets seeing as he gets so many minutes. There's plenty of data from the multitudes of lineups that RA uses to call adjusted +/- fairly accurate for this season. But it's still only one season, which is why they always give multiyear adjusted +/- numbers, so that's where the grain of salt should be taken.
When you say "comparing Lowry and Martin" -- what exactly are you comparing? If your answer is "how good they are," what does that mean? When I'm comparing the "value" of two players on a given team, what I am primarily interested in is the extent to which that player improves the team's chances of winning games. And that depends not only the abilities of the particular player in question, but also the mixture of talent available elsewhere on the roster. Thinking about value in absolute terms, to me, is inadequate when you're trying to build a team and assess which players to keep, which players to let go, how many minutes to give a player, etc. Those are the things that matter most. Not to say that thinking about value in absolute terms is a pointless exercise. When building for the future, you can't assume a stable roster, so to some extent it would make sense to bring in the "best players" irrespective of the other talent on the team. I understand that. But when talking about "team MVP", to me that very clearly means who is the player that matters most on the current team. Maybe we should call it "Franchise MVP" instead of "Team MVP".
Here's one of the most interesting stats I've seen this year: http://www.82games.com/1011/1011HOU.HTM That "net production" of KMart is WELL into superstar range but what's the explanation? Underrated defender? Good rotations? Combination of both?
kmart scores most of the points yea but i dont think we would of one half of the games we won without lowry as the general on the floor.
Tough call between Lowry and Hayes. I didn't vote for Martin because even though he's been tearing it up lately, he did have some struggles earlier in the season and lacked the 4th quarter scoring. I say Hayes, because without him our interior defense would be beyond abysmal. He's undoubtedly groomed Patterson into becoming a good team defender, too. But Scola, Brad Miller, and sometimes Hill are scary to watch defensively (in a bad way). And this season Hayes has even mastered the high post, and can finish around the basket. Without him, we wouldn't be able to hang with the Spurs, Mavs, or Lakers of the league with the big post players. Lowry has been awesome too, but again he's done it more over the past month rather than the entire season. I feel that we would still compete with most teams without Lowry or Martin on a given night.
I have to give it up to K. Martin. Kyle has done an excellent job. but K Marts shot and foul attempts have gotten us out of some tricky situations
Guarding the worse wing, it is more efficient for teams to attack an even worse defender in Scola, and all the help comes to Martin while Hayes is left hanging by himself against much bigger players.
I question the relevance of a stat where the numbers are based on limited minutes. That is all. I'm probably a bigger stat geek than most of the posters here. But I can't just base a player's contribution to a team simply based on a stat that has such high variation. Similarly to how people just generally dismiss single-game +/-. Also, looking at 5-man units, Lowry gets to play with Lee when Martin's not around. Martin gets to play with Brooks when Lowry's not around. Yeah, no kidding Martin looks kind of bad in comparison.
