Anonymous
Years ago

+/- of best players on best teams

Interesting looking at the top 3 +/- from each team in last year's NBL. For the best teams, their star players have the highest +/-. For lower teams, it tends to be benchies. Moral of the story is you need your stars firing.

The other thing that stands out is the top guys on those good teams are almost all players who make good contributions at both ends. Got to play both ends or your team suffers.

Perth - Kay, Cotton, White
Melbourne - McCarron, Ware, Boone
Sydney - Lisch, Newley, Bogut
Brisbane - Vukona, Patterson, Gliddon

Adelaide - Drmic, Teys, Deng
New Zealand - Long, Richard, Ili
Illawarra - Grida, Coenraad, Naar
Cairns - Loe, Kernich-Drew, Loughton

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Anonymous
Years ago

That stat is totally overrated. As mentioned earlier, Kay had best for Australia. Was he the best player? Should he be playing major minutes? Should he be in NBA? No!

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Anonymous
Years ago

Using +- to discuss the benefits of a single player is fundamentally flawed.

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Anonymous
Years ago

Coaches love the plus-minus stat.

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Anonymous
Years ago

It's a totally unselfish stat that shows how the team goes when that player is on the court. Check your ego at the door and buy into the team structures. That's why coaches love it.

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AKA
Years ago

Data singled out like this is like a bikini. It shows you some stuff, but not the full picture. Completely overrated on it's own and needs to be looked at with a variety of different numbers.

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Anonymous
Years ago

If you think about it logically, the reason the higher ranked teams have their starters with higher +/- is because they would have had a positive for and against throughout the season, with their starters gaining the most court time to further inflate their +/- numbers. However, for the lower ranked teams they overall have a negative for and against and therefore their starters will have a significantly negaive plus minus while the bench guys appear to have a "better" plus minus, although this is simply due to the fact that they haven't played as many minutes of getting thrashed by the other teams. Shows how looking at this stat in a leaguewide sense is completely flawed as it only favours winning teams who will inherently have positive +/- stats.

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AngusH
Years ago

Did people just discover the +/- stat at the start of these world cup prep games? It's just another stat, meaningless by itself out of context. Rotation +/- stats are a ton more useful than individuals.

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Jack Toft
Years ago

Like everything, context is important. I would like to see the +/- broken down into a "red" or "green" +/-. Ie. green when the team is ahead, or red for behind.

If your team is in the green and they have a strong team on the court, then it should be harder to get a + than if you are in the red and it's trash time. In trash time, a stronger bench will alway beat a weaker bench, especially if the leading team is up by 20 points and they have their weak players on. The know they have won the game, whereas the behind team is playing for pride and the bench playing for extra court time.

Starters with a high +/- are more likely to be playing against starters and most likely in the first half of a quarter, whereas an impact player off the bench comes along with tired starters, or a weaker team. They are more likely to claw back some points from behind as opposed to extend a led.

+/- is good, but context is important. I used to look at +/- per player against their opponent. Quite a bit more interesting with matchups. You might get two point guards who scored 20 points each, but who scored 7 points each on each other and the other 13 points on the backup guard when their man was on the bench.

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Bear
Years ago

As with any statistics Jack, I agree you have to look at them in context and of course a statistic on its own is as subjective as it comes, especially in a game such as basketball.

With +/- though, if you take into account long term consistency I find it can give you some indication of a player's value to his team and as such it isn't a useless statistical measure.

I take on board your comments though, however how hard would it be to determine statistically how hard it was on court during the time a player spends on court, who is / her opponent is or the standard of the other team on court at the time?

A nightmare comparison to attempt to quantify I'd imagine...

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Hoops

+/- of best players on best teams

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