MAVS 108, PELS 92

[dirkfansince1998]

Would love to see what @"dirkfansince1998" thinks about raw +/- and how useful it is in the hands of us message board folk, or in the hands of a coach. 

I think the following is a legit quesiton, but am willing to be coached up if I'm wrong: Do coaches look at raw +/- or do they wait for the analytics department to gather sufficient data, process the data, and issue reports to the coach and others?

Very high on all kinds of lineup, raw +/- data or some of the +/- based advanced metrics.
Agree with @"Kammrath". Just need to know what we are looking at. In case of +/-. The scoring margin when a player was on the floor. The important part for me. Sample size. +/- comes with a lot of noice and I don´t think single game +/- is telling us a lot. But in most cases the numbers normalize as the season progresses. Luka´s numbers would be concerning if they don´t improve over the season. But his +/- was just as bad in december 2020. Same for Powell. And both managed to turn the numbers around.

In bigger sample sizes they are showing clear trends. As @"Kammrath" told us all year long. Richardson was the weak spot in the lineup. +/- confirmed it. Not sure if the coaching staff needed the numbers to make that decision but they adjusted the lineup prior to the playoffs and benched Richardson.

I don´t really think any stat can be good/bad (well I hate PER). It always comes down to the interpretation. What exactly is the +/- data telling us. To use a recent example from pre Luka Mavs seasons. For the most part the starters used to have terrible +/- numbers. Bench players on the other hand looked great. Doesn´t mean that the mentioned bench players are better than the starters. Just that they performed better in their given role. Would need to test those players in a different role to find out.

I think that is exactly what Kidd is doing right now. Kidd/staff might have a prefered starting five but it is hard to keep track of all the different lineups Kidd is trying right now. We are seeing so many different combinations in small sample sizes that it is really hard to come up with a trend. My only halfway confident opinions right now. Single big lineups are outperforming twin tower lineups. Defense is a lot better when Luka is on the bench. I guess we could argue about eyetest vs confirmation bias but in both cases the +/- numbers match the eyetest.


Side note: Talking about more advanced +/- metrics. As far as I know Jeremias Engelmann (creator of ESPNs RPM, before they changed the prior/formula multiple times) is still one of the senior analysts. My best guess is that he is doing similar things for the Mavs.