Just checking the live box score, while watching the Rockets game vs. the Bobcats, I saw this: How is it even possible that one guy has 0, one guy has +2, and the other guys have +4? Doesn't make sense as no other player was in the game yet, and they were all on the floor all the time. Edit: Just saw, the minutes were recorded incorrectly as well...I guess that's my answer. Didn't even see that.
They are good to find out who the No Stats Allstars ala Battiers are but ballhogs like Kobe normally has - and he still is scoring big time
+/- are garbage stats because it doesn't take into account who they were playing against at the time, it doesn't account for the player rotations. for instance, a bench guy might have a big +/- but that's only because their star players were resting at the time.
They're not reliable at all...and the fact that you and others like you use them to defend the play of certain players shows how weak your arguments are. The only reason I respond by posting +/- numbers is to show how silly you guys that use them are.
They are reliable with a large enough sample size and properly adjusted for the players on the floor.
Yes, use a large enough sample size and the results would be a lot more informative. The same goes for all stats. Criticizing the way +/- looks from one game, or part of a game, is like watching a guy start off shooting 1/5 and saying FG% is a stupid stat. Kobe can have a bad +/- for a game, because despite the folk lore he does have his share of bad games. The guy is a bona fide star, but he's in love with his shot and often keeps shooting even when he's cold. The Lakers do lose games, after all. Makes sense to me. When it gets down to it, +/- is the empyrical fact. You have to adjust it to isolate what a player is doing apart from his teammates. But if some uninformed person claims that Player X wins games, and +/- always says his team goes down when he's on the floor, then he's very probably wrong.
People are misinterpreting. He's asking how accurately recorded they are, not how useful they are in reflecting positive and negative contributors (totally different question). ATW, they are accurate enough though errors will creep in from time to time. And, in general, live boxscore can be very inaccurate. The most inaccurate stat in the boxscore would be assists since they are often a judgment call.
from looking at this "problem" before, i believe the answer is simply that minutes and plus/minus only update when a player records a box score stat. that's why players who have been on the court together at the start of a game can have different minutes played. it just depends on the last time you did something. therefore, the plus/minus numbers almost never add up correctly until the game is over.
