Player Trio rankings

[breaker91]

I came across this interesting analysis from 82games.com. The interesting thing is that it ranks Roy, Jones and Outlaw has the trio with the highest plus\minus rating. The numbers definately underscore the valuable contribution from Jones. Something we already know, but it is nice to see a statistical analysis back it up.

The worst trio is Roy, Webster and LMA. This is a bit troubling and we've seen the team dig some big holes early on. I'm not singling him out and I know it is a moot point for the next several weeks, but I wonder if we'd be better off with Webster coming off the bench and Jones starting?

http://www.82games.com/trios0708.htm

[Red Robot]

Even more interesting is the Blazers' best duo: Roy and Frye.

Also note that while Aldridge-Roy-Webster make the worst trio on the team, it's actually the second most benign "worst player trio" in the league. They're only giving up 5 points per 48 minutes. If anything, this might just show how balanced and deep this team is.

That said, I don't think this data is particularly useful. When you combine two or three players' minutes like this, the sample shrinks to insignificance. Even for a single player, unmodified plus/minus is already dubious--at least for analysis--because of its small sample size. This just compounds the problem. The data is interesting, but not useful enough to merit conclusions like the ones in 82games' "comments" column.