DuckIII wrote:Really odd post given the content of the thread. I was able to write that post about Doug's +/- because of having watched the game unfold, with my eyeballs, and then using those same eyeballs to rewatch video to confirm what I saw. Eyeballs just publicly depantsed the +/- metric and made sweet love to its wife.
It probably seems odd because my post wasn't directly weighing on either side of what you guys were discussing, so your review of Doug being good or not has no bearing on what I wrote. Rather my point was an indirect one concerning different people's opinions on the same game. You watched the game with your eyeballs, saw Doug do well, and then played up Hinrich's -18, as probably a bigger part of the reason for Doug's on floor number.
(b) Hinrich's +/- was -18.
(c) In the first half (7.5 minutes) Doug's was -7. During that time, the only Bulls to convert shots were Pau, Niko and Doug. Everyone else's contributions were turnovers and missed shots.
(d) Also during that time (in the first half in which the Sixers outscored the Bulls by 7), Isaiah Canaan had just come into the game, and then right after Doug entered proceeded to light up Hinrich for 3-for-3 from long distance in a 2 minute stretch. Indeed, that 2 minute hot-streak by Canaan draining 3s ON KIRK accounts for the ENTIRETY of McDermott's -5.
While in the lead up to this thread in the Game Thread, and a bit carry over here, it was just about derailed with an argument about how Kirk's -18 number meant nothing since he played such a competent floor game. Which was also from someone else who 'used their eyeballs' to watch the game.
I don't think you really got my post, it wasn't about rating Doug's play at all, but about how two people can watch the same game and come away with entirely different reads on players performance. And such is the eye test only method of evaluation.
Those guys didn't all play with each other at the same time.
Kirk, Doug, Nazr, and Moore, as a 4 man unit played together for about 8 minutes and went -7, the 5th guy was alternately Pau then Niko.
I love how +/- is always garbage
In single game sample sizes, it is always garbage. Always. Sometimes is accidentally reflects an individual's level of play, but there is literally always a better way to break it down than +/-. Single game +/- is garbage.
Didn't I just say +/- gets every player a 'little wrong' each game? And some players a lot wrong? I did. But people thinking that means the stat in general is garbage don't understand the stat.
My point was that something real is being captured on the scoreboard when one team outscores another by 5, 7 whatever points. One team played better, the other played worse. And among those 10 players, each is responsible to lesser or greater degrees for that outcome. Whether 10% responsible by virtue of merely being 1 out of 10 players out there, or being much more or less impactful than 10% by being that good or that bad. And we reach a point of incongruency with the eye test when every player that was on the floor when the team did bad, or every player that had a negative, is separately argued by different people's eye test to not have been the reason.
At the end of the season, +/-. and more specifically adjusted +/- tends to suss out the truth more than not, even if in any individual win or loss it over or undershoots each player by a certain, sometimes large %. It's not random coincidence that LeBron James has the best RPM in the league 4/6 of the last six seasons (behind only Howard '11, and Curry, Harden, this year).
