+/- is directly observable. It literally can't be misleading. If the other team scores 25 more points while you're on the court, you did not play well this game. There's literally no room for interpretation here. If your entire team is made of negative +/- players, by definition, you will never win a game. If all of your players are positive +/- players, you will never lose. Saying +/- is misleading is like saying the team that scores more points winning the game is a misconception. It's a beyond absurd position.
It's misleading when you compare across different games and teams. It isn't when you compare individual players on the same team in the same game. His impact overall was a net negative tonight but that number is a bit inflated.
Playing devils advocate, it still could be if one guy plays against scrubs and the other vs the opponents best lineup
Jalen Green was a +1 in a 22 point L and KPJ a whopping -25 in 28 minutes? Wth happened in this game?
Very rare serious/trying not to troll response: That seems fairly arbitrary. If Green is +25 in every game against the heat, but is -25 in every game against the bucks, there's definitely information to be had. Actually, I suspect that any in game statistic that is directly observable contains information that transfers across any time horizon. The real question is, what does +/- actually tell us? We're fairly confident that point differential is a good indicator of a team's skill, and that W/L records tends to regress towards point differentials. What variable changes across games, but not within games, that would add noise to the information that individual +/- contains, but would not add noise to team point differential? Maybe injuries?
Except there is nothing as a positive +/- player. +/- is a result of both individual and team play. If a team has a second unit with a terrible guard, most of the time they will have negative +/-. There is not much the players can do to overcome bad constructions by the coach. Our starting five constantly had terrible +/-. EG is gone and there are more defensive guards playing and suddenly the rest of the starters' +/- is much better although they are not playing significantly better, Sengun is actually playing worse.
Imagine the +/- of someone like Kuminga when a healthy Steph, Draymond, Wiggens, Klay are in the line up with him vs Jalen Green +/- with Garuba, Tate, KMJ and KPJ are in the line up. Just totaly different caliber of players. So different context.
