Will Seasoned Veteran Porzingis Outplay Rookie Lively?

[KillerLeft]

Well I don't pay attention to plus minus on other teams so the Mavs are really all I have to go off. I see a lot of our box scores where Luka will have a bad plus minus. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't. A lot of role players plus minus just depends on if they are in with Luka and Kyrie together or just one of them or maybe a short spell without either. Lively consistently has a high positive plus minus and to my eyes, he makes a significant impact when he plays. That's all I'm really saying. There's just too many variables imo for it to be a end all be all stat.

I agree that +/- requires some context, and at times it's used without that context to be misleading, even unintentionally. 

But, it does indicate something, even in just a one game sample size. Understanding what it indicates isn't anywhere close to a perfect science, but I actually think opinion on its value has swung too far in the opposite direction, and that people have become a little too dismissive of it in recent years. The goal is to outscore the other team, after all. 

At the end of the day, the eye test is what really matters. If not, they wouldn't bother playing the games. The more educated the eye, the more it learns.. Usually, I feel like I can at least theorize why the +/- is what it is by watching, so I have developed a healthy respect for it as a tool to be used in tandem with what I think I'm seeing. There are times when the +/- makes me question what my eyes saw (and rightfully so), and there are other times when my eyes are so sure what I watched that I'm left looking for hidden context to explain it. But, it means something. 

At the end of the day, the stats that matter are Ws and Ls.