Doctor MJ wrote:Bob8 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:
Re: what about Shai's previous years? I mean, a young star is supposed to get better.
Re: dismiss first 5 years. Not when I talk about Shai's career. But when talking about the MVP this season, I tend to focus on this season. (May seem different because of the Luka conversation, but we get into earlier seasons there largely because people try to use small sample size as a reason to dismiss this season's +/- data on its own.)
Re: how could he turned +/- overnight dramatically? Well, that's the most valuable question, and also a very complicated answer that I wouldn't claim to have any monopoly on. Thread-worthy, in other words.
Wherever you see a guy with high primacy & big minutes spike like this, there's a meaningful set of causes to look into and understand.
I can speak to it more later, but try to avoid looking to discredit the data by discrediting me. You should try to explain the data yourself without looking to dismiss it as being an improvement of everything except Shai and see what you come up with.
Re: 70/30/30 and you'd still ignore. I don't and wouldn't ignore any of this data. I just recognize that it doesn't capture the entirety of the competition, and that if that data doesn't match other data, there's other stuff going on that is significant.
Re: Luka beat Shai badly! Cool, and the data for those games exist, just as the data for all the other games do. The head-to-head may end up deciding a playoff series, but what happens against the other 28 opponents matters too.
Re: can be most impactful with negative +/-. In a game this is not common but possible. In a season, in the NBA, this is very, very unlikely.
Re: Jordan. Jordan has outstanding +/- by what we see, just like we'd expect.
If you're making a case about your model for 1 player, saying that 6 years data confirms your thesis, you can't dismiss first 5 years of other player and be impressed by only first 3 months of current year. At least you should give me a viable explanation for that big change. And btw, SGA is born in 98, so he's not that young either.
SGA's sudden rising is basically death sentence for your model, that's why you don't want to talk about it. Yes players get better, but you're not average, by your model, and then become monster overnight. Like Thunder is not become top Nba team, just because SGA's became better, basketball is a team sport, single player, no matter how good he's, alone can't do much. So I would look for explanation in the changes of Thunder's roster, development of other players and not put everything on SGA's overnight rise. But there's the catch, isn't it? If we say that roster is partially to blame for sudden rise of SGA's +/- than we admit that +/- is measuring impact of lineup not a single player.
If someone is averaging 70/30/30 and you don't see him as impactful player, I believe you should watch more basketball and less numbers.
Data for yesterday's game in which Luka had 32/8/9 with 81% TS, + 18, in only 3qs is saying that he had negative on/off, because he didn't played in q4, when lead ballooned from 21 to 35. Whoever has watched yesterday's game and saw what was Luka doing to Thunder as playmaker and as scorer can just laugh at that data. And no, you can't say it's only 1 game, problem is much bigger, if you can't trust single game data, you can't trust seasonal data either. +/- data is over the place, because it measures impact of 5 men lineup not impact of the single player. And yes, players of good teams have normally good +/-, because their lineups are the best.
You have by quality very different starting lineups, by quality very different replacement players, very different benches, different team success and data, which is over the place in single games and we're only at the players team lineup, what about opponents? They play with different lineups too, have good or bad night... And after all those variables you want to represent that data as all in one measurement for impact of a single player? Really?
I would say that knowledgeable observer can see pretty good, what impact the best players have on their teams. Seeing and measuring impact of role players is much more difficult.
Ah, I thought you might be confused on this point. You think I'm changing the sample I care about to suit my bias, but I'm not.
- I'm literally saying I think each guys' this-year MVP candidacy is pretty well-represented by what this-year's +/- data tells us about them right now.
- The only reason I'm bringing up years before this-year in a thread about a this-year award, is because you and others are trying to use arguments to dismiss the stats' validity when talking about Luka Doncic, and when you do that, you talk about what's going on this year as if these things are flukes. But if your thesis - to use your parlance - is that these things are flukes, then looking to other years of Luka's data as experiments is the natural thing to do, and those other years tell a similar story.
- I would acknowledge that there's more uncertainty about Shai's data because the sample of him doing this is still short relative to someone like Luka, and if someone wanted to say that they had no issue with my assessment of Luka's data, but that I was being too hasty with my assessment of Shai, they would be logically consistent, but to be clear, this is not what you're doing.
- "At least I should give you". If to you, this is about you and me, then you're approaching the conversation wrong. That might seem I'm taking words out of context, but honestly, it really seems like you feel like if you can only discredit me then you don't have to deal with the data. And I'm saying: Deal with the data without trying to excuse Luka. Ask yourself honestly: If, hypothetically, there were things about Luka's play that were holding back how much impact he has on his team in a typical regular season game, what might they be?
- But to try to speak some to what all is causing Shai's On/Off to look so much better than in previous years, I think the thing to focus on might be his improvement in ability to handle the ball a great deal, push the pace, and massively diminish turnovers for his team, particularly by avoiding steals against.
Now, like anything else in this team sport, team context has effects here, but so does a player just getting that much more comfortable and as they say "seeing time slow down".
- "SGA's not that young". He's young enough to be of an age where we'd still expect him to be pre-peak traditionally, particularly if he's a guy able to demonstrate improvement toward mastery at things rather than being a fast-twitch superstar.
- "Not average and then a monster overnight". In terms of impact, I'd say that's sometimes basically how it works sometimes. A player can't literally become 200% as good across all skills overnight, but sometimes you figure a particular thing out, and sometimes your team figures a particular thing out making use of what you can do. I do appreciate your skepticism here though. When I see data along these lines, I try to keep my mind open as to what all is causing it.
- If teammates matter, then with +/- then... Value is about teammates too. This is not the Best-Player-in-a-Vacuum Award.
- Re: "If 70/30/30 not impactful...". Okay so, as I add up your numbers, I should walk back what I literally said because I was speaking in principle there that probably wouldn't hold up to such unrealistic numbers. Why?
70 points scoring plus 60 points assisting would give us the greatest offense in history, so while it's in theory possible the defense would be so bad to overwhelm this, when you're talking these types of numbers, the offense just has to be great.
But if I chop those numbers in half, to 35/15/15, I'd get numbers that I think you'd assume must be creating a huge positive impact, while I would say it's not plausible that it isn't. Why?
35 points scoring plus 30 points assisting is a mere 65 points. If I run my offense through a player like this for 36 MPG, and that's literally the entirety of the scoring my team gets, then I have a terrible offense.
This in a nutshell is why it's so problematic to look at individual box score as proxy for impact: "Huge" player numbers are still only a fraction of the team's total, and so the question becomes:
Since most of a team's scoring has to come in possessions where the star is neither scoring nor assisting if we want our offense to be successful, what is our starring doing to help for success in those possessions?
- "+/- all over the place because measuring lineup". So to be clear, I do understand this. I've been explaining to people about the difference between validity and reliability in statistics to RealGMers since well before you were on this site. The nature of +/- is that it requires greater sample before we can use it as confidently.
It feels to me like you're under the impression though that this means we should look to utterly dismiss it until we reach supreme confidence in our interpretation of it without any other supplementary knowledge, and I would object to that as both impractical and counterproductive.
The fact, for example, that Shai's +/- data largely aligns with the box score and occurs as the team is doing great, means what we're actually choosing between is:
a) Great guy looks great across multiple first-pass perspectives, yup, 'bout what we'd expect.
b) Yes, the guy who looks great in every other metric also looks great by impact metrics, but it's merely a coincidence that these things agree because of some mysterious balance of forces.
I'd say (a) is the more likely truth. You are of course free to disagree with my assessment.
Re: one measurement for everything? That's not what I'm doing. What I'm saying is that this is data that needs to be explained in order to understand what's going on with Luka's impact, and that arguments based on the specifics of this year's Mavs are simply possible explanations which cannot explain why the data looked similar in earlier years.
Actually, let me flip something there: You should understand that I'm coming at all of this time-forward. I've been paying attention to all of this data since long before Luka's career, and that means that when I'm talking about what I see this year, it's something that I saw after having seen the previous experimental data - meaning, watching previous NBA seasons.
So I'm someone coming into each season asking: "Is this the year Luka's +/- data looks like I'd expect for a superstar-level player?". We're now most of the way in the '23-24 season and the answer happens to still be "No", and so you and I have this conversation in a way that has moved time-backward. I talk about the past because you bring up arguments about the present that seem simpler to you but they complicate things for me:
If the injury-etc arguments about this year are knocking Luka's +/- in weird ways, then we're getting two things happening at the same time: a) Luka finally figured out how to be much more impactful than ever before, b) but he's getting absurdly unlucky and so all the +/- data still looks about the same.
Is this possible? Yes. But it's complicated and unlikely in my estimation. And further, I don't think most Luka supporters would agree with the assessment that Luka had an impact problem before this year. In my experience, people who believe in Luka's MVP-ness have been trying to dismiss +/- data as a matter of course for years and years.
Thanks for explanation. Now I will explain to you why I'm talking about anomalies, why they're so important to understand what is going on.
It's the fact that players of the best teams have in vast majority of cases the best +/-. We can see that normally multiple players of the best teams have great +/-, some are role players with great +/- too. Because of the nature of +/- it's impossible to understand what's is going on with looking at those teams/players.
So the only possible solution, if you're not total believer in +/-, you need to find anomalies and try to find out, why +/- is behaving like this.
Let's start with SGA,
He's total anomaly in my eyes. Firstly, he doesn't give me MVP vibes at all, when I watch him. Great midrange shooter and great driver and that's it. He doesn't do much for his teammates, is not good passer and is not very good defender. And then you look at his +/- and it's great. Something doesn't add up for me. So I looked at his past +/- and there's even bigger shock, he had awful +/- in first 5 years, he was well in -. His career +/- is still 1.7 worse than Luka’s.
When you see such a discrepancy between 5 years data, more representative, because it's much bigger, and 50 games data, you should ask yourself, what is going on here? How is possible that SGA came
from - 6.8 to + 11.1 in less than 2 years? There are only 2 possible explanations,
1. He became that much better in his year 6. You defended that thesis with some minor improvements in his game. But those improvements can hardly explain 18 points swing. For example, Jokic has only 7 points better +/- from his rookie year. And he’s totally different player now. 18 points swing is a difference between G-league player and GOAT. SGA has jumped from the worst leader of the Nba team, with disastrous impact of -6.8 to the best with 11+ in less than 2 years, by minor improvements in his game? Really?
2. He has much better players around him now. That thesis looks much more plausible to me, especially when we looked at what happened in last 2 years in OKC.
- Second best player Chet, who's averaging 17/7 and 2.6 blocks and has + 9.2 on court, is playing first year in Thunder.
- 3rd best player G-Will is averaging 19/4/4 and is playing second year in Thunder. He is having + 8.7 on court.
So in those 2 years Sga has got legit second and third opinion, that’s huge. And interesting enough they started with fantastic +/- from the start? Why didn’t they need those 5 years like SGA? Because they have great team from the beginning.
Thunder had 17th team D in 2022 and has 5th team D in 2024. And look at this, they had
30th offensive rtg in 2022 and in this year they had 5th!In those 2 years SGA went from - 6.8 to + 11.1 in +/-.
Now tell me, can those a little better ball handling and less TO's bring OKC's offensive rtg
from 30th place to 5th? and defensive rtg to 5th place? Or maybe getting great second and 3rd option is a game changer for OKC. I have no doubt, and I believe anyone honest doesn't have no doubt, what is the reason for OKC's incredible rise.
That should explain SGA's atmospheric rise in +/- and maybe show that good teammates are essential for having good +/-.
But we need some other conformation of my thesis, how essential are good teammates for having good +/-. If I'm right, we should see the same effect, if some starter from bad team, having bad +/- there, comes to a good team.
So let's look at KP, his career +/- is +1.5 and he has fantastic
+ 10.1 in Celtics. Do you believe that he had in his 8th year breakthrough season, like SGA had in OKC? Of course you don't. His great +/- is derivative of playing in the best starting lineup in Nba.
I believe I made pretty good case how essential are teammates for having great +/-, but I still didn't addressed enough Luka's particular situation.
I would use another anomaly for trying to address that. And I would use one of the best guards ever playing the game to help me. Because he's in one way very similar to Luka, generational offensive talent and not good defensively.
What is going on this year with Curry's is basically the other side of the same SGA's coin, sudden fall in +/- of the player, who had always fantastic impactful stats, but this year - 0.2; -4.9?
Like I don't believe that a player can rise like SGA overnight, I can’t believe that all time great player can fall like that overnight, on/off numbers would even suggest that he hurts Warriors, while he’s still producing very impressive numbers. So what's going on here?
Curry's offensive rating is even better than last year, when he had + 5.8; + 8 on/off. So he's still doing what he's paid for, but how is he negative player suddenly? Because his defensive rating fell for more than 5 points. Is this primarily his fault?
Do you agree that Curry was never good defender? And somehow Warriors had always one of the top D. in the league. And this year Curry's defensive rating plunged, taking his +/- together in the hole. Do you think that's because Curry overnight became a lot worse defender? Or maybe his defensive rating has something to do with bad D of Warriors' starting lineup? Warriors team D is only on 20th place this year, so we can safely say, knowing that he was never important player for Warriors D, that's very unlikely that he's the reason for that.
What can we find out from this case? How important is good team D for having good +/-. Which club is notorious for bad team D? Maybe Mavs?
So let's look at Steph and Luka's ofensive rating,
Seth Luka
2019 119.5 107.6
2020 108.5. 116.7
2021 114.2. 116.6
2022 114.1. 113.8
2023 118.1. 118.1
2024 118.3 119.7
Except Luka's rookie year and the year Curry was injured soon, they were more or less on par, Curry having better teammates. Interesting enough, the difference in +/- was always huge. How is that possible? Both great offensive players and both similarly bad in D, although I would still have Luka better there, he can at least rebound.
The answer is really easy, Warriors was always great defensive team and Mavs not.
Let's look at their defensive ratings,
Seth Luka
2019 105.8 110.6
2020 123.7 111.4
2021 109.6. 112.7
2022 103.4 110.3
2023 112.4 116.0
2024 117.6 116.9
We can see that all the difference between Curry and Luka in + /- is generated in defensive side. Watching Curry his entire career, because he was really entertaining to watch, I never thought that he’s a generational defender. But his career def ratings are great. How is this possible? My guess is that Warriors had exceptional team D, and indeed, they had top 5 D numerous times.
Is fair to say that one player is extremely impactful player and other has 0 impact, both being fantastic in offensive side, if 1 plays in team with great team D and other not? I believe we got answer on that question this season. No good team D and no +/- impact for Curry. He's imho still incredibly impactful, but +/- just doesn't recognise that, because it's flawed methodology for measuring impact of a single player.
To some it up, Luka’s average +/- is derivative of his bad defensive ratings. Would it helped, if he was great defender? Absolutely, but Mavs still wouldn’t be great defensive team. We have seen in Curry's case, that you can have great defensive ratings, even if you’re not good defender, if your team is build properly. Having Powell as starting C, no defensive bigs and being to small on wing position, make things incredibly difficult in D. It seem that Mavs are going in the right direction finally, so my prediction is, if Mavs build proper defensive team, Luka’s +/- will skyrocket.
